[42] The Solomon Islands are now divided politically between Germany and Britain, Germany having annexed the large island of Bougainville and the smaller Buka on the north, and Great Britain the remainder. The islands are very mountainous and volcanic, and on the largest, Bougainville, one mountain rises to an altitude of over 10,000 feet. In the British Island of Guadalcanal there is an altitude of 8000 feet. The climate is very wet and unhealthy, and vegetation is luxurious, including magnificent forests of sandalwood, ebony, and "lignum vitæ" (a kind of Myrtle--_Metrosideron_). The inhabitants belong mainly to the Melanesian or Negroid stock, and are no doubt closely related to the Papuans of New Guinea. In some of the northern islands, such as Buka, the people often present a striking resemblance in their features, skin colour, and close-growing, woolly hair, to African Negroes. Some tribes in the islands, however, are akin to the Polynesians, and have long, straight hair. They were until quite recently the most ferocious cannibals of any part of the globe. In more remote periods this archipelago was connected with New Guinea, and thence derived the ancestors of its present wild animals, which include numerous Bats of very interesting types, some very large Rats the size of big rabbits, a Cuscus or marsupial Phalanger, and a large Frog about 8 inches long, besides some remarkable Parrots. JUAN FERNANDEZ was a Spanish pilot who appears to have given some study to the Straits of Magellan. About 1572 he was venturing out some distance into the Pacific Ocean from the coast of South America, and thus discovered the two little islands which have ever since borne his name, and which proved for a time such an important harbourage and resting place for the Dutch and English navigators who flouted the prohibition of Spain to enter the great Southern Ocean. Fernandez conceived the idea that there must be some large extent of land in the southern half of the Pacific Ocean, and he may have sighted Easter Island, or some other Pacific archipelago, and have believed that it was an indication of the coast line of this Terra Australis.