the depth does not much exceed 8000 feet. [104] This matter has been dealt with in my work on the _Pioneers in Canada_. [105] After the father of Queen Victoria--the Duke of Kent. Kerguélen is the largest of these islands--about 1400 square miles in extent. Its mountains attain altitudes of 2400 to 6120 feet. One of them is an active volcano, and the whole of Kerguélen has been subjected in recent times to much volcanic activity, lava having covered much of its surface. This eruption of plutonic forces seems to have followed a severe glacial period, during which the island was covered with ice. It is therefore not to be wondered at that between them fire and ice destroyed a once abundant plant growth; for Kerguélen, in Tertiary times, maintained great forests of trees of South American affinities. On this desolate wind-swept island of snow mountains and crumbling lava the crews of the _Resolution_ and _Discovery_ spent Christmas, partly to obtain fresh water ("every gully afforded a large stream") and fresh meat--the flesh of penguins and other sea birds and seals. The seals (chiefly sea elephants and sea leopards) also provided quantities of fat or blubber, from which oil was obtained for the ship's lamps. The principal feature in the vegetation (there were no trees, except fossil ones) was a plant called the Kerguélen cabbage, actually a kind of cabbage (_Pringlea antiscorbutica_). This was a great boon to the ship's company, who ate it boiled and also raw in their eagerness for vegetable food. Amongst the birds of the island was a land bird, the sheathbill (_Chionis_), the size of a large pigeon, with white plumage, black beak, and white feet, a bird which is related both to the gulls and the plovers. There were also giant petrels, king penguins, albatrosses, gulls, cormorant and a peculiar species of teal. On 24 January, 1777, the coast of Tasmania was sighted, and on the 27th the second party of Englishmen (the men of the _Adventure_ being the first) landed in that southernmost portion of Australia. The following day a party of natives appeared, who approached them unarmed without betraying fear. They were quite naked and wore no ornaments, but their bodies were decorated by large weals or ridges of skin in straight or curved lines. They were of average size, rather slender, with black skins and black woolly hair. Their features were not ugly. The language was wholly unintelligible, and seemed even to be different from that of the natives of New South Wales.