Geography
The islands are divided, both geographically and administratively into two groups:
- Windward Islands (Îles du Vent) (listed from east to west)
- Mehetia
- Tahiti
- Tetiaroa
- Moorea
- Maiao
- Leeward Islands (Îles Sous-le-Vent)
- Huahine
- Raiatea
- Tahaa
- Bora Bora
- Tupai
- Maupiti
- Mopelia
- Motu One (Bellinghausen)
- Manuae
The islands became a French protectorate in 1843 and a colony in 1880. They have a population of 227,807 inhabitants (as of August 2007 census). They cover a land area of 1,590 square kilometres (610 sq mi).
Read more about this topic: Society Islands
Famous quotes containing the word geography:
“Where the heart is, there the muses, there the gods sojourn, and not in any geography of fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay, you think paltry places, and the ear loves names of foreign and classic topography. But here we are; and, if we tarry a little, we may come to learn that here is best. See to it, only, that thyself is here;—and art and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being, shall not absent from the chamber where thou sittest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“The California fever is not likely to take us off.... There is neither romance nor glory in digging for gold after the manner of the pictures in the geography of diamond washing in Brazil.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)