The extreme dreariness and loneliness of these rugged, dark, and hilly shores during some months of the year can be better imagined than described.
Kerguelen was the first to discover the isle. He was a French admiral, but evidently he did not like the looks of it, and his examination must have been but cursory, for he made but one or two half-hearted attempts to examine the place, putting it down in his log as a portion of the great Antarctic continent, about which we have all heard so much.
But other brave mariners managed to put the world to rights, and so Kerguelen was found to be an island.
The rivalry that exists between all nations in the exploration of the great snow lands and seas of ice has done much good. We have most of us had a share in it, and so whether the first man to find either Pole be British or American, or even a Dane or Frenchman, no one else will begrudge him the honour.
No wonder that Kerguelen and Cook himself were glad to get clear away from this island, for the gales that rage around it are often terrific in the Southern autumn. The very appearance of the sky, too, is forbidding, with its awful rolling cumulus or its hues of leaden grey or inky black.
But it was November when the men of the Walrus rowed our heroes on shore, and the day happened to be calm and fine—hardly a breath of wind, hardly a cloudlet in all the firmament.
Now and then a seal’s great head would be raised above the smooth surface of the ocean, and round, wondering eyes would gaze thoughtfully on the wanderers, then slowly sink once more.
And there were gulls afloat on the water and gulls in the sky.
Cormorants could be seen, skuas, and now and then the lovely snow-white petrel.
Some of these had their nests on rocky cliffs, others on the more level shore, but the skuas preferred higher ground, and the droll and weird-looking king penguins had flocked to higher regions still, and formed crowded cities that they might build and converse in peace.