CAMPBELL ISLAND 259 



visited. Whalers returning to Tasmania from the Ross Sea in the Antarctic, 

 and driven off their course by the ceaseless storms, might drift in towards 

 its inhospitable coasts, but as there was nothing to tempt them to stay on 

 the island they would quickly leave it. 



A turning-point was reached in i8go, when sheep were introduced. 

 Partly for humanitarian reasons, in order to provide shipwrecked sailors 

 with meat, and partly in an attempt to introduce husbandry, domestic 

 animals — • sheep, goats, pigs, cows, and rabbits — have been put ashore 

 on several of these sub-Antarctic islands. Rational stock-breeding has 

 always failed, but some animals have remained and run wild, subsequently 

 becoming a serious menace to the original fauna and flora. This is what 

 happened on Campbell Island. Sheep-farming was introduced on rational 

 lines in 1896, and in 1907 there are stated to have been no fewer than 8,000 

 sheep on the island. But conditions proved unfavourable in the long run; 

 navigation was too difficult, the solitude too great for the Maori shepherds, 

 and the climate too wet and rough. In 1927 the sheep-breeding station 

 was abandoned, but several thousand sheep were left behind. They have 

 held out fairly well. We found them fit and healthy, and so active that 

 even a big-game hunter would find good sport in getting within shooting 

 range of them on the wet and rather inaccessible mountain-sides. But the 

 birth-rate is low and the stock appears to be declining. 



During the war, the New Zealand Government established a permanent 

 coastguard, now a meteorological station, on the island. From three to five 

 men spend a year at a time at this remote spot, where a dank mist invariably 

 drifts down the mountain-sides or alternates with pouring rain (it rains or 

 snows on about 280 days in a year), hours of sunshine being minimal. 

 The temperature is fairly constant, rarely exceeding 15° C, frost never 

 lasting long. For a number of animals — albatrosses, petrels, penguins, 

 elephant seals, and sea-lions — this lonely island is a natural sanctuary 

 to which they return to breed after months of roving on or across the 

 open Pacific. 



The view of Campbell Island from the sea or from Perseverance 

 Harbour reminds one of the Faroe Islands. There are the same mist forma- 

 tions and varied lighting over green mountain-sides, the same chilliness 

 and the same rumbling surf. A closer inspection, and especially a walk 

 over the island, soon reveals the differences. Here we find not the open 

 green hill slopes of the Faroes, but tussock grassland. The tussocks, up to 

 two metres high, consist largely of Poa litorosa, a. plant typical not only 

 of Campbell Island but of all the windswept sub-Antarctic islands. 



There are no trees on Campbell Island. From a distance the more 



