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the name of Hazy Island has been given to one of the largest, of which the rocky summit
alone is seen standing out in bold relief above an almost perennial fog-bank. During our
passage from the Cape of Good Hope to Kerguelen’s Land, Sir James Ross endeavomed to
effect a landing, fh’st upon Marion Island and afterwards upon one of the Crozets, but most
mifortimately for the mterests especiaUy of Botany, om- efforts were frustrated by the tempestuous
weather. In one night, dirring which the ‘ Erebus ’ was hove to for the purpose of
landing upon Marion Island, she was blorni sixty miles to leeward of it ; she then bore up
for the Crozets, to meet a simdai- mishap ; on this occasion, having provisions to land for a
pai-ty of miserable sealers, we again beat up to Possession Island, the easternmost of the
gi’oup, and after the detention of nearly a week in the most inclement season and tempestuous
ocean, only arrived at the time of the brooding of another storm, which rendered it
higldy imprudent for any boat to leave the ship in an open roadstead. The aspect of this
island was, like all the others we sighted, dreary and inhospitable to the last degree ; a
narrow belt of gi-een herbage skirted its shore, above a line of black basaltic cliffs, ivhich
formed the iron-boimd coast ; whde higher again rose crater-shaped barren hdls of blue-grey
or brick-red coloiued rocks, utterly destitute of vegetation and ahke dismal to the eye and
mind. These were the first Antarctic Islands we had seen, and few of us wiU forget the feelings
to which their desolate aspect gave rise ; sensations, which for intensity afford the strongest
contrast with those which an English natiuaUst never fads to experience during his first ramble
on some tropical shore.
M. de Jussieu had the kindness to show me-a small pampldet, containing a slight account
of the Crozets, drawn up from information received through the captains of sealing ships.
The vegetation is described as most scanty. Erom the short interview which we held with
a party of sealers who had been left upon one of the group, I gleaned but little infonnation ;
they told me the species were few, and the famous Callage of Kerguelen’s Land not amongst
them, though another “ sciuvy-grass ” -was abundant. The vegetation that our glasses
enabled ns to detect, formed, apparently, a matted cai-pet, extending from the shores upwards
for a short distance, very simüar to what we afterwards saw in Kerguelen’s Land, though different
from the long grass that appeared to clothe Prince Edward’s Island. Tlicsc two groups
are situated only 800 mdes south-east from the Cape of Good Hope, but being placed to the
southward of the 40th degree of latitude they partake of the climate of the Antarctic Ocean.
Their position between Euegia and Kerguelen’s Land and their formation being probably
the same as the latter, I have little doubt their Flora, when kno-wn, wiU be found to prove
characteristic of the extreme south of America and in no degree similar to that of Africa, with
which they are even in closer proximity than is Tristan d’Acunha. Barren and inhospitable
as are the shores of these islands, there are no spots on the surface of the globe whose botanical
productions woidd be of greater interest to science, for their vegetation is wholly un-
kno-nm, and is wanting to complete our otherwise pretty extensive acquaintance with the
distribution of plants throughout the islands ot the high southem latitudes.
Kerguelen’s Land is the eastern limit to which the Fuegian Flora extends, and though
placed within the 50th degree its desolate natm-e is proverbial. The Antarctic Expedition arrived
there in May 1840, having been blown off its tempestuous coast tivice, after approaching the land
so nearly as to distinguish almost the natm-e of the vegetation wldch skirts the shores of the bays.
The island presents a black and rugged mass of sterile mountains, rising by parallel steppes one
above another in alternate slopes and precipices, terminating in frightful naked and frowning
cliffs, which dip perpendicidariy into the sea. The snow lying upon these slopes between the
black chffs gave a most singidarly striped or banded appearance to the whole country, each
band indicating a flow of volcanic matter, for the island is covered with craters whose vents
have given issue to stream upon stream of molten rock. These are worn aU along the coasts
into abrupt escarpments, rendering a landing impracticable, except at the heads of the sinuous
bays. One bluff headland to the north end of the island is a precipice, 700 feet high, and
exposes such numerous sections of horizontal deposits of red, black, and gi'ey volcanic matter
that it is difficidt to count them, though overlaying one another with perfect regularity and
uniformity. Sterile as Kerguelen’s Land now is, it was not always so, vast beds of coal are
covered by Imnch-eds of consecutive layers of igneous and other rocks, pded to a height of
one thousand feet and upwards, upon what was once a luxuriant forest. Thi-oughout many
of the lava streams are foimd prostrate trunks of fossil trees of no mean ghth, and the
incinerated remains of recent ones, which had been swallowed up simultaneously -with the
fossd, and these occm- in strata of various ages, so that it seems impossible to reckon the
period of time that must have elapsed between the origin, growth, and destruction of the
successive forests now buried in one hill. A section of such a hill woidd display coal-beds
and shale resting upon a blue basalt, at the level of the sea. covered again -ivith whinstone,
whereon are deposited successive layers of volcanic sand, baked clay-stones, porphyries, and
long lines of basaltic cliffs, formed of pei-pendicidar prisms, regularly shaped like those of
Staffa or the Giant’s Causeway, and along wldch the traveller may walk even for a mile without
ascending or descending fifty feet. To calcidate the time required for the original foi-mation
and following silicification of one such forest, and to multiply that by the equal number of
different superincumbent strata, containing remains similar to those displayed at the north
end of Kerguelen’s Land, would give a startling number of years, diuing wldch periods the
island must have deserved a better name than that of “ Desolation.” And if to this be added
the time requisite for the deposit of the arenaceous beds containing the impressions of Fuci,
of the clays afterwards liardcnecl by fire, and of the prismatic cliffs, which, with the arenaceous,
indicate that the land was alternately submerged and exposed as often as these successive
formations occiu-, such a sum would bespeak an antiquity for the flora of this isolated speck on
the siu-face of our globe far beyond our powers of calculation. If from the narrow sphere of inquiry
that a few miles in extent and 1000 feet of elevation in Kerguelen’s Land afford we deduce
siicli grand residts, what must be expected from the investigation of whole continents, whose
culminant peaks reach nearly 30,000 feet, surrounded by an ocean perhaps as elevated above
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