356 PEECT SLABEN TRUST EXPEDITION. 



cross the Bay of Eengal and pass through the Straits of Malacca into the China Sea. 

 He visited Pekin, and his narratives appear to have given rise to the delightful stories 

 about Siubad the Sailor. 



The Portuguese, after many unsuccessful attempts, rounded the Cape of Good Hope 

 from the west in 1486, and in 1498 Vasco da Gama reached the coasts of India by the 

 same route. Within the next twenty years Portuguese pilots had made known nearly 

 all the coasts of the Indian Ocean. 



DEEP SOUNDINGS. — Magellan was the first navigator who attempted to take a deep 

 sounding in the open ocean, and in 1521 the remaining ship of his squadron crossed the 

 Southern Indian Ocean when completing the first circumnavigation of the world. It is, 

 however, only within the last half-century that systematic attempts have been made to 

 explore the greater depths of the Indian Ocean by the sounding-line and sounding- 

 wire. 



Surveys were made in the Indian Ocean by H.M.S. ' Cyclops ' as early as the year 

 1857, and by H.M.S. s ' Hydra ' and ' Serpent ' in 1868, in connection with the laying of 

 telegraph-cables in the Bay of Bengal and in the Arabian Sea *. In 1870 S.S. ' Nassau ' 

 took several deep-sea soundings in a Hue running from the north end of Java to the 

 south of Ceylon, and in 1872-73 H.M.S. ' Sylvia ' made a series of soundings from the 

 coast of Natal, south of Madagascar, and northwards by Reunion and Mauritius towards 

 Socotra. 



The ' Cludlenger' Expedition. — H.M.S. ' Cliallenger' during the voyage round the 

 world in 1872-76 crossed the Southern Indian Ocean early in 1874, sailing from the 

 Cape of Good Hope, by Prince Edward, Crozet, and Kerguelen Islands, to the Antarctic 

 ice-barrier, and thence to Australia. The ' Challenger ' was therefore one of the first 

 ships to extend our knowledge of the bathymetry of the deeper part of the Indian Ocean 

 bv taking a line of soundings along the extended track just indicated. 



Subsequent to the ' Challenge)- ' Expedition. — Since that time several ships have made 

 voyages across the ocean from east to west and from north to south, while others have 

 taken soundings from points on the coasts of the neighbouring continents to various 

 islands, and others have done extensive work in the Mozambique Channel, off the coasts 

 of Africa and Australia, and in the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal. 



' Gazelle.' — In 1874-75 the German ship ' Gazelle ' took soundings in the Southern 

 Indian Ocean between Australia, Mauritius, Kerguelen, and the Cape. 



' Enterprise.' — In 1883 U.S.S. ' Enterprise ' ran a line of soundings across the 

 equatorial portion of the Indian Ocean from Zanzibar to the north of Java. 



' Flying Fish: — Three years later (1886-7) H.M.S. 'Plying Eish ' took soundings 

 from the Gulf of Aden to Ceylon and in the neighbourhood of Christmas Island. 



' Egeria: — In the year 1887 H.M.S. 'Egeria' made a series of soundings from 

 Christmas Island to Mauritius, crossing the Central Indian Ocean about lat. 20° S., 



* Captain Shcrard Osborn, in his paper " The Geography of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans and the Mediterranean 

 Sea," Journ. Koy. Geogr. Soc. Lond., vol. xli. p. 54 (1871), gives sections of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean between 

 Suez and Bombay, and of the Bay of Bengal between Ceylon and Pcnang, based on soundings made by these ships. 



