The town and its low line of build­ings set among coconut and man­go trees along the beach front was the first colo­nial cap­i­tal of Fiji, ced­ed to the British in 1874. It devel­oped from the ear­ly 19th cen­tu­ry as a cen­tre of com­mer­cial activ­i­ty by Amer­i­cans and Euro­peans who built ware­hous­es, stores, port facil­i­ties, res­i­dences, and reli­gious, edu­ca­tion­al and social insti­tu­tions around the vil­lages of the South Pacif­ic island’s indige­nous pop­u­la­tion. It is a rare exam­ple of a late colo­nial port town that was influ­enced in its devel­op­ment by the indige­nous com­mu­ni­ty which con­tin­ued to out­num­ber the Euro­pean set­tlers. Thus the town, an out­stand­ing exam­ple of late 19th cen­tu­ry Pacif­ic port set­tle­ments, reflects the inte­gra­tion of local build­ing tra­di­tions by a supreme naval pow­er, lead­ing to the emer­gence of a unique land­scape.