CORINTHIAN HARBOUR. 
71 
to visit were only approximately laid down in the charts, and required to be approached 
with caution. Delayed by stormy weather and a dense fog, land was not sighted until the 
morning of the 6th. The day before, two whales had come close to the ship. Heard Island, 
or Young Island, is the largest of a small group stretching from east to west, of which the 
rocks bearing the name of Macdonald Island and Meyer Rock form the western end. The 
“ Challenger ” passed to the northward of these. About noon Heard Island came in sight, 
and a few hours after we were anchored in Corinthian Bay, on the north coast. According to 
the sketch-chart obtained 
from the whalers, Heard 
or Young Island is 
shaped like a lizard, with 
a total length of about 
twenty miles. The bent 
tail — so to speak — 
forms its south-eastern, 
the head its north-western end, while Corinthian Bay and West Bay, on the opposite side, 
enclose the neck. The approach to Corinthian Bay is marked by Red Island—so called from 
its intense earthy-red colour, so characteristic of volcanic regions—and the entrance of the bay 
is distinguished by huge basaltic towers, bearing the name of Roger’s Head, the vertical sides 
of which consist of curiously distorted columns bent in the form of a fan. The harbour itself 
presents a picture of awe-inspiring desolation, and the whole scene, “ skarfed in rugged folds 
of ice,” involuntarily recalls the ninth circle of Dante’s Inferno. Nature here seems to 
pronounce that emphatic and visible “ No ” which she opposes to the ambitious attempts of 
man to penetrate a portion of the earth for which he is physically unfitted. To westward 
rises a mountain several 
thousand feet high, clad 
in a mantle of ice ; to 
southward, an enormous 
glacier rolls its frozen 
billows down to the 
sea; while beyond the 
light-green waters of 
the bay appears the line of black threatening rocks of the isthmus. The glacier displays in 
a conspicuous manner the more or less regular arrangement of longitudinal and transverse 
crevasses common to these lazily-flowing rivers of ice. The hummocks between them, crested 
with recently fallen snow, are equally remarkable. 
This grim scene, from which all life seemed to be banished, was inhabited at the 
time of our visit by a party of whalers, whose dark silhouettes could be seen upon the low 
basaltic ledge before us. With some difficulty a landing was effected, and the men communi¬ 
cated with. They were living in hermetically-closed houses, sunk in the ground for protection 
