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Updated: June 21, 2025
It was a lovely morning, the loveliest that the shipwrecked people had seen since their landing on Kerguelen Land, when the little party started away from Penguin Castle, bidding adieu to the spot which for so many long months had given them a shelter and a home.
"Tell me," said Lagross, "that three-master we saw just now, would she be making for Kerguelen?" "Oh, no, she must be out of her course and beating up north. She's not a whaler, and ships like that would keep north of the Crozets. Probably she was driven down by that big storm we had a week ago. We wouldn't be where we are only that I took those soundings south of Marion Island."
Then, all began to look about them. However, as they surveyed the strange scene, they found to their surprise that they were not the only inhabitants of "Desolation Island," as Captain Cook so aptly named, when he first saw the place, the land which had been previously discovered by Monsieur de Kerguelen.
These five ships at once anchored in the best positions consistent with their own safety to help us; the "Kerguelen" a little on our starboard quarter, and the "Champlain" right astern with our steel hawsers on board and two anchors down. With the second night came a chapter of accidents. At sunset a rolling sea again set in, heavier than that of the morning.
One man longingly speaks of the cabbages which grow on Kerguelen Island. By June 18 there were only nine hundred lumps of sugar left, i.e., just over forty pieces each. Even my readers know what shortage of sugar means at this very date, but from a different cause.
M. de Kerguelen was peculiarly unfortunate, in having done but little to complete what he had begun; for though he discovered a new land, he could not, in two expeditions to it, once bring his ships to an anchor upon any part of its coasts. Captain Cook had either fewer difficulties to struggle with, or was more successful in surmounting them.
Accordingly, the sail was lowered, and, getting out the oars, the two sailors rowed the boat into a little, natural harbour that opened out of the main creek, and in ten minutes her occupants were once more stretching their legs upon dry land; that is, if any land in Kerguelen Island, that region of perpetual wet, could be said to be dry.
Tumble up there! tumble up!" coupled with the information that the sun was "scorching their eyes out" which latter observation, it may be casually remarked, was a slight stretch of his imagination, considering the feeble power of the solar orb at that time of the year on the snow- covered wastes of Kerguelen Land!
We have already had occasion to speak of the Antarctic regions, and the explorations made there in the seventeenth, and at the end of the eighteenth century, by various navigators, nearly all Frenchmen, amongst whom we must specially note La Roche, discoverer of New Georgia, in 1675, Bouvet, Kerguelen, Marion, and Crozet.
Bompard, on his knees, and with a maconochie tin in his left hand, raised his head and looked. "Ay, that's Kerguelen," said Bompard. "And look," said the girl, pointing towards Kerguelen. "Is not that the sail of a boat, away ever so far or is it a gull? Now it's gone. Look, there it is again." Bompard looked.
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