ROYAL SOUND. 
67 
On the 16th the “ Challenger ” left Betsy Cove, with the intention of returning to 
Christmas Harbour. A gale which sprang up in the afternoon made any further progress 
towards the north impossible. It was therefore decided that we should run south and visit 
Royal Sound, where none of Her Majesty’s ships had called since its discovery by Captain 
MOUNT ROSS, 6120 FEET. 
ROYAL SOUND. 
Cook. On the following day the gale abated, and towards 7 a.m. the land, hitherto obscured 
by mist, was once more visible in the shape of Mount Peeper, one of the curious conical hills 
that rise from the wide plain forming the eastern extremity of Kerguelen. At noon we were 
off the Prince of Wales Foreland at the entrance of Royal Sound. The magnificent basin 
which now lay before us forms an inlet about twenty miles long, with an average width of 
ten miles, and is only separated by a narrow isthmus from Hillsborough Bay in the north, 
and Swains Bay to the westward. Its surface is studded with islands almost innumerable, 
and its horizon fringed with imposing mountain-ranges, whose snows the short summer of 
these regions is unable wholly to melt. We dropped anchor in Three Island Harbour, 
which is, as its name implies, a portion of the sound enclosed by three islands. We found 
here another whaling schooner, and a regular whaling station on one of the islands, with 
