Enderby Island on the extreme north, Ross Island on the west, Ewing Island on the east, and Ocean Island within the harbour. With the smaller islands, these three partly close the mouth of a deep inlet called Laurie Harbour, or more commonly Port Ross. It is completely sheltered, and the islands which shut it in leave a magnificent ship-entrance on the eastern or sheltered side, with smaller entrances for smaller vessels. These small islands are all flat, rough, and scrubby. I landed on Ross Island and Ewing Island, and others visited Enderby Island, but there was not time to cross it and visit the scene of the wreck of the “Derry Castle.” To continue the general description of the group, the main island is the same shape as the group—viz., a triangle. The base of the larger triangle is Adam's Island, a long island running from east to west along the south side of the group, shutting in Carnley Harbour, which cuts right into the heart of the main island. Adam's Island is high land, being a ridge 2,000ft. above the sea, and occasionally higher. The main island is very rugged, and has peaks said to rise up to 1,600ft. or 1,800ft., but I think probably higher. In the whole group there are no less than ten fine harbours, one of which, Carnley Harbour, in the south, with its main entrance in the east, is divided into three branches, and would shelter all the Queen's ships at once. Port Ross was called, I think, by Dumont d'Urville the first harbour in the world. Carnley Harbour is in no way inferior, and is vastly larger.

A map of the islands, reduced from the Admiralty chart planned by the officers of H.M.S. “Blanche” in 1870, is attached to this paper (Pl. XLVI.); and, by permission of the Director of the Geological Survey, I am able to give a number of excellent illustrations of the coast scenery of the group, which were lithographed some years ago by Mr. John Buchanan, F.L.S., formerly draughtsman to the Geological Survey Department (Pl. XLVII.-XLIX.).

Our course before entering Port Ross took us close past the Derry Castle Reef, the extreme north point of the island, on which a ship of that name went to pieces in March, 1887. A few survivors dragged their way through the brushwood to the side nearest the harbour, and there spent five months, until, finding an old axe-head, they made a punt, with which they reached the dépôt, which lay in sight five miles off. They might have got there sooner had they used the skins of the numerous sea-lions to make a boat. We could see numbers of them on a sandy beach as we neared the entrance.

Passing through the fine eastern entrance, we anchored off Ross Island, also a flat piece of peaty land about a mile and a half each way. Here Captain Fairchild introduced us to the

inhabitants. Anxious that we should see the sea-lions at their best, he rounded up a small mob with a manuka switch, flogging them occasionally gently, and not even seriously alarming them. The great clumsy beasts cantered over the rough ground through the tussocks and over the stones in the most ludicrous way. At last they appeared to become quite obedient, and when told to stop did so, turning and staring at their pursuers, literally appearing to obey the word of command. At last they were turned back and told “Now you may go,” and away they capered back, dragging their heavy bodies along the edge of the cliff at a smart pace till they got a chance of sliding down and plunging into the sea. We came across more of them here and there in the tall grass on this island, and, indeed, during the whole of our stay in this group we found them everywhere in the vicinity of the sea, and seldom launched a boat without finding it accompanied to the shore by at least one sea-lion, always as tame as poodles.

Among the woods here,—mostly low rata (Metrosideros lucida) and Coprosma,—we saw and heard the bell-bird (Anthornis melanura) and other songsters; in the grass, the little island snipe were plentiful; terns flew about the cliffs, screaming above the heads of the boys who took their eggs. Among the tall grass grew great plants of the large Ligusticum latifolium, a very handsome plant with heavy masses of seed on the heads, having the general appearance of celery seed. Close to the shore we found beautiful gentians, covered with masses of bright flowers of several colours varying from white to purple, with intermediate shades; here, too, grew rare forms of plantain, and tiny creeping Coprosmas with bright berries, telling the visitor in the plainest terms that he was now entering a sub-arctic region, and that the sea-level plants here were equivalent to mountain plants nearly 3,000ft. above the sea in New Zealand. The grass was everywhere a coarse tussock.

In the afternoon we passed up to the dépôt in Erebus Cove, Port Ross. This may be called the historical centre of the island group, and about it may be found enough evidence to show that a country without inhabitants may have a sad and stirring history.

In the dépôt house a simple inscription in chalk upon a board told the story of the men of the “Derry Castle,” their sufferings and rescue. On a slate in the same room was a record of the story of the “General Grant.” In a little cemetery, a short way off among the scrub now covering the site of the clearing made by Mr. Enderby's settlers in 1850-52, were several graves. One neat stone recorded the death of the child of a settler in 1851. Hard by was the grave of a sailor who had starved to death. He was one of the crew of the

“Invercauld,” wrecked on the west coast in 1864. Of the nineteen men who scrambled ashore, three only were rescued, after twelve months of fearful suffering, by a Peruvian barque which put in for repairs under the impression that the Enderby settlement was still in existence. This man had apparently temporarily left the party, and came back to find his companions and his last chance of life vanished. The author of the book “Les Naufragés, ou Vingt Mois sur un Récif des îles Auckland,” however, professes to identify this man, from some few letters scratched on a slate found with him, as one of the crew of the “I.E.H.,” which left Melbourne in 1865, and was never heard of again. Here, too, were several traces of visitors, and amongst others an inscription, fresh and sharp as when cut on the tree in 1865, recording the visit of Captain Norman with the Victorian Government steamer “Victoria.” A slate on the same tree told how four men of the “General Grant” had left for New Zealand without chart or nautical instrument. These unfortunates were never heard of again.

We spent a pleasant evening plant-hunting among the points and islets of Port Ross. At Shoe Island, a small island in Erebus Cove, where our ship lay, said to be highly magnetic, which Governor Enderby used as his State prison, we tried fishing, without much success. The poverty of the fisheries of these islands is the strongest feature against them, putting them far behind the desolate islands and coasts of Northern Europe. On the top of Shoe Island the boys found a baby sea-lion, which allowed us to pull him about by the flippers without more than an occasional protest, while his mother swam round waiting for the amusement to end. Here we got Stilbocarpa polaris, a splendid plant, allied to the ivy, and closely allied to the Aralia which we found at the Snares; Cotula lanata, with sweet-smelling flowers; and a number of interesting plants. The engineer's men, with shovels and knives, turned over large tussocks, and under them found eggs and young birds in the burrows of the blue petrels (Procellaria cærulea ?), and diving petrels (Haladroma urinatrix). The mother birds never attempted to get away, and the little fluffy, grey, young birds were so fat that they lived to the end of the voyage without appearing to want food.

All that remains of Governor Enderby's settlement—for he held an independent commission as governor of these islands, then a separate colony, and once paid something like a state visit to the governor of Van Diemen's Land — is a piece of country which looks as if it had been cleared, with stumps sticking up here and there, a few mouldering graves, and here and there a heap of roofing-slates. This is all that now represents a good deal of English capital, and a great deal