368 COSMOS 



lastly the tri-insular empire of Japan, across the narrow 

 Strait of Saugar (Niphon, Sitkok and Kiu-Siu, according to 

 Siebold's admirable map, between 41 32' and 30 18'). From 

 the volcano of Kliutschewsk, the northernmost on the east 

 coast of the peninsula of Kamtschatka, to the most southern 

 Japanese volcano-island of Tanega-Sima, in the Van Die- 

 men's Channel, explored by Krusenstern, the direction of 

 the igneous action as indicated in the numerous rents of the 

 earth's crust, is precisely from north-east to south-west. The 

 range is carried on by the island of Jakuno-Sima, on which 

 a conical mountain rises to the height of 5838 feet (1780 

 metres), and which separates the two straits of Yan Die- 

 men and Colnet, by the Linschote Archipelago of Siebold, 

 by Captain Basil Hall's sulphur island, Lung-Huang- 

 Schan, and by the small group of the Loo-choo and Majico- 

 sima, which latter approaches within a distance of 92 

 geographical miles the eastern margin of the great island of 

 the Chinese coasts, Formosa or Tay-wan. 



the companions of La Pe'rouse (1787) and Broughton (1797), that 

 Saghalin was connected with the Asiatic continent by a narrow, sandy 

 isthmus (lat. 52 50 ; but from the important Japanese notices com- 

 municated by Franz von Siebold, it appears that, according to a chart 

 drawn up in the year 1808, by Mamia Rinso, the chief of an Imperial 

 Japanese commission, Krafto is not a peninsula, but an island sur- 

 rounded on all sides by the sea (Ritter, Erdkunde von Asien, vol. ii, 

 p. 488). The conclusion of Mamia Rinso has been very recently com- 

 pletely verified, as mentioned by Siebold, when the Russian fleet lay 

 at anchor in the year 1855, in the Baie de Castries (lat. 51 29') near 

 Alexandrowsk, and consequently to the south of the conjectured 

 isthmus, and yet was able to retire into the mouth of the Amoor (lat. 

 52 24'). In the narrow channel in which the isthmus was formerly 

 supposed to be, there were in some places only 5 fathoms water. The 

 island is beginning to acquire some political importance on account of 

 the proximity of the great stream of Amoor or Saghalin. Its name, 

 pronounced Karafto or Krafto, is a contraction of Kara-fu-to, which 

 signifies, according to Siebold, " the island bordering on Kara." In 

 the Japano-Chinese language Kara denotes the most northerly part of 

 China (Tartary), and fu, according to the learned writer just men- 

 tioned, signifies " lying close by." Tschoka is a corruption of Tsyokai, 

 and Tarakai originates from a mistake in the name of a single village 

 called Taraika. According to Klaproth (Asia Polyglotla, p. 301), 

 Taraikai, or Tarakai, is the native Aino name of the whole island. 

 Compare Leopold Schrenk's and Captain Bernard Wittingham's re- 

 marks in Petermann's Geogr. Mittheilungen, 1856, s. 176 and!84. See 

 also Perry, Exped. to Japan, vol. i, p. 468. 



