4 CORAL AND ATOLLS 



this remembrance heer fixed, by his loving and sorrowful wife 

 Ann Keeling." And then, more picturesquely, it goes on : 



Fortie and two years in this vessel frail 



On the rough seas of life, did Keeling saile 

 A merchant fortunate, a Captain bould 



A courtier gracious, yet alas, not old. 

 Such wealth, experience, honour, and high praise 



Few men in twice as many years or dales. 

 But what the world admired, he deemed but dross. 



For Christ : without Christ, all his gains but losse ; 

 For him, and his dear love, with merrie cheere. 



To the holy land his last course he did steere. 

 Faith served for sails, the sacred word for card, 



Hope was his anchor, glorie his reward : 

 And thus with gales of grace, by happy venter, 



Through straits of death, heaven's harbour he did enter. 



Since the group has been for so long known by the name 

 of its discoverer, it is to be regretted that nowadays this 

 name is often dropped, and the group is simply called the 

 Cocos Islands. Not only does this curtailing of the proper 

 name of the islands ignore the claims of a worthy English 

 navigator, but it leads to much actual confusion. For besides 

 this group, there are others that are known by the name of 

 Cocos Islands : — the Cocos of treasure fame, the Cocos in the 

 Andaman group, the Cocos off the West coast of Sumatra, and 

 other smaller islands so named from their bearing coconut 

 palms are apt to be confounded with this atoll. So far has 

 this confusion been carried that mistakes have been made, 

 even by representatives of the Government, and the atoll has 

 received an oflScial visit intended for the Cocos Island in the 

 Andaman group. 



The southern islands — the Cocos Islands proper — were 

 long known by the name of the Triangular Islands, and the 

 name Cocos was given to them apparently by the Dutch. 

 The northern atollon was called Keeling 's Island, or occasionally 

 Killing Island, until Horsburgh, the hydrographer to the East 

 India Company (and after whom one of the islands is named) 

 united the two groups of islands on his charts, and called them 

 the Cocos-Keeling Islands. On many maps of the present day 

 the atoll is named the Borneo Coral Reefs : a name that was 



