I 



KERGUELEN'S LAND 77 



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destruction of its former forests has produced abundance 

 of good coal.^ Cook mentions the remarkable cabbage, 

 which, to a crew long on salt meat, is an invaluable 

 anti-scorbutic, and to many, a most agreeable dish ; 

 unlike other pot-herbs, it possesses after boiling so much 

 of its essential oil, as entirely to neutralise or destroy 

 any symptoms of heart-burn or flatulence ; nothing can 

 be more wholesome than it is. The root eats hke horse- 

 radish and the young hearts like coarse mustard and 

 cress ; the seeds are the food of the numerous ducks 

 on the island ; growing as it does near the sea, on a 

 spot upwards of 1000 miles from any land where fresh 

 vegetables can be obtained, it seems planted by Nature's 

 hand for the poor mariner, when suffering under his own 

 peculiar malady. 



This curious plant was one of Cook's discoveries ; Hooker 

 had been specially urged by his father and Robert Brown to 

 investigate it on the spot, and it recurs again and again in 

 the letters on either side. From seed he brought back with 

 him, young plants were raised in Tasmania, though it seems 

 without success in estabhshing the plant as a staple of 

 food. Sir William at first failed to raise it at Kew ; his son 

 writes : 



I do not understand your not getting the Kerguelen's 

 Land Cabbage to grow. I have had fifty plants of it from 

 seed. I had it growing in a bottle ! (hanging to the after 

 rigging), on a tuft of Leptostomum during all our second 

 cruise in the Ice, and brought it alive to Falklands. It was 

 sprouting before the Cape Horn plants went home, from 

 seeds I scattered under the little trees. We used to amuse 

 ourselves planting it here and there where we go. I shall 

 fill a Ward's case with Lyall ^ (it is the Terror's second case) 

 at St. Helena, with native plants, and sow the seeds among 

 it. Try it again in a cool place very wet and shaded, in a 

 black vegetable mould like peat. Do not bury it but lay 



^ ' If I could get a piece,' responds Sir William enthusiastically, ' I would 

 have it framed and glazed.' 



* David Lyall (1817-95) was assistant-surgeon on the Terror and a useful 

 botanist. 



