54 AUSTRALASIA 



on the banks of Rodrigues, have completely disappeared, driven away or exter- 

 minated by the reckless way the fishery was conducted. About the year 17G0, as 

 many as thirty thousand were conveyed in eighteen months to Mauritius. 



Although visited from time to time by the Portuguese and Dutch, Rodrigues 

 was not permanently occupied till 1691, when the Protestant refugee. Le Gruat, 

 resided here for over two years with seven companions. Before the abolition of 

 slavery, a considerable Negro population was employed on the plantations ; but 

 since then large numbers of the emancipated hands have withdrawn to Mauritius, 

 distant about 380 miles. In 1843 the population had thus fallen to about two 

 hundred and fifty souls, but since then it has again increased, mainly by the 

 arrival of blacks, Avho find employment in clearing and reclaiming the land on 

 the slopes of the hills. 



There are only two small centres of population, Port Mathio'in on the coast, 

 and Gabriel in the interior, near Mount Limon (1,320 feet), culminating point of 

 the island. On the southern slope are seen, at various elevations, old coralline 

 beaches pierced with caves. In one of these grottoes were discovered the remains 

 of the pezophas, or " solitary," and of other birds belonging to extinct species. 



During the Napoleonic wars, Rodrigues enjoyed considerable strategic import- 

 ance. After its seizure by the English, it was made the rallying- point of the 

 expeditions organised in India against Mauritius, and thus contributed to the 

 reduction of all the Mascarenhas Islands. 



The Keeling Islands. 



Beyond Rodrigues no lands are met in the direction of the Eastern Archipelago 

 for a distance of some 2,300 miles, the expanse of waters being first broken by 

 the small circular group of the Keeling Islands, so named from the English 

 navigator who discovered them in 16U9. They are also known as the Cocos 

 Islands, from the cocoanut palms lending a fringe of bright verdure to these 

 low-lying islets. 



Although lying about 600 miles from the Sunda Strait, the Keeling Archi- 

 pelago had its origin, probably, in the same terrestrial movements that gave rise 

 to the Asiatic islands, for it exactly faces the fissure now separating Java from 

 Sumatra, and is disposed in a line with the volcanic islets in the middle of the 

 strait. 



Hence it may be assumed that the Keelings rest on an igneous foundation 

 upheaved from the bed of the ocean. At little over a mile from the entrance to 

 the atoll, Fitzroy failed to touch the bottom with a line over 1,000 fathoms 

 long, so that the submerged slopes of the plateau must be inclined at an angle 

 of little less than forty-five degrees. This atoll, visited by Darwin during the 

 voyage of the Beagle, in 1836, has become in geographical literature one of the 

 most frequently quoted examples in favour of the great naturalist's ingenious 

 theory of subsidence and upheaval of the marine bed. According to this view, 

 the circular group of islets may be regarded as the embattlements of the lofty 



