60 AUSTEALASIA. 



buffeted, by fierce gales, are too inhospitable to afford a permanent home to man. 

 Here shipwrecked mariners have often passed an anxious time daily sweeping the 

 horizon in search of a friendly sail. Whalers have also established more or less 

 permanent stations in the neighbourhood of the fishing- grounds. Lying on the 

 ocean highway between Great Britain and Australia, m the track of the western 

 trade winds, these islands are fortunately well known, and have even been 

 carefully studied, especially by the naturalists of the ChaUenger expedition of 1874. 

 All are of volcanic origin, rising above the surface of waters over 1,500 fathoms 

 deep. 



Marion, Prince Edward, and the Crozets. 



Marion, so named from the navigator who discovered it in 1771, is the highest 

 of the western groiip, lying over 720 miles to the south-east of the Cape of Good 

 Hope. It is exclusively of igneous formation, its central cone rising to a height 

 of over 4,000 feet, and even in summer covered with a snowy mantle down to 

 1,000 feet above sea-level. The periphery of this central cone is studded with 

 secondar}^ craters presenting the appearance of excrescences on its flanks, while 

 heaps of red scoriœ, here and there moss-grown, descend to the water's edge. 



Prince Edward, so named by Cook, attains an altitude of 2,000 feet. The 

 Crozets, also discovered by Marion, form an archipelago of several islands, one of 

 which, Possession Island, exceeds 5,000 feet. Hog Island takes its name from the 

 animals here let loose b}^ an English captain to supply the whalers and shipwrecked 

 crews ; but Rabbit Island would now be a more appropriate name, for the swine 

 ha;ve been replaced by thousands of coneys, which make their burrows in the 

 heaps of scoriae. 



Kerguelen. 



Kerguelen, by far the largest of all these groups, was discovered in 1772 by 

 the French captain whose name it bears, and who again visited it the next year, 

 when he found it to be an island, and not a peninsula of the great southern 

 continent sought for by all navigators in the Austral seas. It was again explored 

 in 1776 by Cook, who proposed to call it Desolation Land, a name which it 

 certainly merits, to judge from the reports of the whalers, the naturalists of the 

 Challenger expedition, and of those sent the following year from England, America, 

 and th'e United States to observe the transit of Venus. 



Kerguelen, which lies near the fiftieth degree of south latitude, and which is 

 surrounded by some three hundred islets, rocks, and reefs of all sizes, was 

 formerly almost inaccessible to sailing vessels. Nevertheless it offers, especially 

 on its east side, a large number of deep bays, creeks, and islets, affording shelter to 

 ships that have succeeded in threading the maze of outer channels and passages. 

 These indentations on the seaboard present the same fjord-like formations as 

 those observed on the shores of the north polar regions, which were at one time 

 completely covered by an ice-cap. 



