136 THE ANTARCTIC. 



Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, then continue 

 the investigation of the land south of Drake's Strait. 

 Turning west again, we shall come upon the regions of 

 Victoria Land and Wilkes Land, and conclude with 

 Kemp Land and Enderby Land. 



i. THE BOUVET ISLANDS. 



On every map of the southern half of the Atlantic 

 Ocean a narrow submarine ridge runs south beyond 40° 

 S. latitude, almost along the same meridian. On this lie 

 the solitary and lonesome islands of Ascension, Tristan 

 d'Acunha, Gough or Diego Alvarez Island, and a few 

 smaller ones. Continuing a line due south, a greater 

 depth is again indicated, though not in figures based on 

 actual soundings. It is, therefore, not impossible that 

 the submarine elevation is again continued further south, 

 and in its extension serves as base also for the volcanic 

 group of the Bouvet Islands, situated to the south-west 

 of Gough Island. 



The peculiar part played by the Bouvet Islands is 

 already known from the history of discovery ; their first 

 discoverer, Bouvet, took them to be the promontories of 

 the great southern continent, yet they remained concealed 

 from Cook, Ross, and Moore ; meantime they were twice 

 re-discovered by English whalers in 1808 and 1823, and 

 their existence, therefore, proved. All three discoverers 

 of the Bouvet Islands have assigned different positions 

 to them, and it is difficult to reconcile these reports, 

 especially as these reports helped neither Ross nor 

 Moore to find the islands at all. According to Bouvet, 

 the western extremity of the land seen by him lay in 

 longitude 4° 30' E., according to his colleague Hay the 

 longitude was 4 15' E., while Bouvet made the latitude 

 54° S., and Hay 54° 6' S. Bouvet described the land 

 as extending from the cape in an E.N.E. direction for a 

 distance of from twenty-four to thirty nautical miles, 

 while the length of the coast to the south-east seemed 



