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Torres Islands
The Torres Islands are in the Torba Province of Vanuatu, the northernmost island group in the country. The chain of islands that make up this micro-archipelago straddle the broader cultural boundary that distinguishes Island Melanesia from several Polynesian outliers located in the neighbouring Solomon Islands. To the north is Temotu Province of the Solomon Islands, to the south Espiritu Santo, and to the southeast the Banks Islands. To the west, in the ocean, is the deep Torres Trench, the subduction zone between the Australian and Pacific Plates.
The seven islands in the Torres group, from north to south, are Hiw or ''Hiu'' (the largest), Metoma, Tegua, Ngwel (an uninhabited islet), Linua, Lo or ''Loh'', and Toga. This chain stretches . The highest point of the chain is only above sea level. They are less rugged than the country's islands further south. Contrary to popular belief, only a few stretches of the Torres Islands' coastline are graced with white sand beaches; in reality, much of the shore is composed of rocky coral uplift.
As of mid-2004, the Torres Islands sustained a total population of approximately 950 people, dispersed across at least ten settlements of various sizes, all of which are located on or near coastal areas. The names of these settlements are: ''Yögevigemëne'' (or ''Yögemëne'' for short), ''Tinemēvönyö'', ''Yawe'' and ''Yakwane'' (on Hiw), ''Lotew'' (on Tegua; sometimes misspelled ''Lateu''), ''Lungharegi'', ''Telakwlakw'' and ''Rinuhe'' (on Lo), and ''Likwal'' and ''Litew'' (on Toga). A small airstrip on Linua opened in 1983 and provides the only regular transportation link with the rest of Vanuatu. Lungharegi is considered the administrative centre for the Torres Islands, but this role is very small. It has a community phone and medical clinic, but no bank or police station and only two barely stocked stores.
== Name ==
One of the most important pre-European names by which this group of islands was known by its inhabitants and other neighbouring societies was Vava (or Vave), . However, sometime in the early nineteenth century the name Torres was given to the group by European cartographers in remembrance of the sixteenth-century navigator Luis Vaz de Torres, who briefly visited some of the islands of North and Central Vanuatu in April, May and June 1606, and whose name was also given to the important Torres Strait that separates mainland Australia from the island of New Guinea. Actually, Torres never saw or heard of the Torres Islands, though his commander, the Portuguese captain Fernandes de Queirós (serving the Spanish crown) sailed near the Torres Islands in search of the Santa Cruz Islands. Nevertheless, through its repeated appearance in European charts, the name of Torres eventually stuck and the islands have been known as such for almost two hundred years. Nowadays, the inhabitants of this archipelago have dropped the old name Vave, which is only recalled by a few elder people. They now designate their group of islands as ‘Torres’ – even though they ignore the story and meaning of this name.
抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
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