CiiArMAN.— 0/i the Islands south of New Zealand. 499 



" Iiivercauld," wrecked on the ^Yest coast in 18G4. Of the 

 nineteen men who scrambled ashore, three only were rescued, 

 after twelve months of fearful suffering, by a Peruvian barque 

 which put in for repairs under the impression that the Enderby 

 settlement was still in existence. This man had apparently 

 temporarily left the party, and came back to find his com- 

 panions and his last chance of life vanished. The author of 

 the book " Les Nauf rages, ou Vingt Mois sur un Eecif des 

 lies Auckland," bov/ever, professes to identify this man, from 

 some few letters scratched on a slate found with him, as 

 one of the crew of the " I.E.H.," which left Melbourne 

 in 1865, and was never heard of again. Here, too, were 

 several traces of visitors, and amongst others an inscription, 

 fresh and sharp as when cut on the tree in 1865, recording 

 the visit of Captain Norman with the Victorian Government 

 steamer "Victoria." A slate on the same tree told how four 

 men of the "General Grant " had left for New Zealand without 

 chart or nautical instrument. These unfortunates were never 

 heard of again. 



We spent a pleasant evening plant-hunting among the 

 points and islets of Port Eoss. At Shoe Island, a small island 

 in Erebus Cove, where our ship lay, said to be highly mag- 

 netic, w^hich Governor Enderby used as his State prison, we 

 tried fishing, without much success. The poverty of the 

 fisheries of these islands is the strongest feature against them, 

 putting them far behind the desolate islands and coasts of 

 Northern Europe. On the top of Shoe Island the boys found 

 a baby sea-lion, which allowed us to pull him about by the 

 flippers without more than an occasional protest, while his 

 mother swam round waiting for the amusement to end. Here 

 we got Stilbocarpa jjolaris, a splendid plant, allied to the ivy, 

 and closely allied to the Aralia which we found at the Snares ; 

 Cotiila lanata, w^ith sweet-smelling flowers ; and a number of 

 interesting plants. The engineer's men, with shovels and 

 knives, turned over large tussocks, and under them found eggs 

 and young birds in the burrows of the blue petrels (Procel- 

 laria coerulea ?), and diving petrels {Haladroma urinatrix). 

 The mother birds never attempted to get away, and the little 

 fluffy, grey, young birds were so fat that they lived to the 

 end of the voyage without appearing to want food. 



All that remains of Governor Enderby's settlement — for 

 he held an independent commission as governor of these 

 islands, then a separate colony, and once paid something like 

 a state visit to the governor of Van Diemen's Land — is a 

 piece of country which looks as if it had been cleared, with 

 stumps sticking up here and there, a few mouldering graves, 

 and here and there a heap of roofing-slates. This is all that 

 now represents a good deal of English capital, and a great deal 



