Society Islands, an archipelago in the South Pacific, consisting of 13 principal islands and numerous islets, the chief being Tahiti; they are mountainous, and engirdled by belts of flat land as well as coral reefs; have a fertile soil and luxuriant vegetation, while the climate is healthy though enervating; the inhabitants are intelligent but indolent, and the land is worked by immigrant races.
Population (circa 1900) given as 24,000.
Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)
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