Their island home

by Jules Verne

On the east, to the rear of Unicorn Bay, the coast showed like a rocky frame enclosing the whole of the desert region which had been previously explored, when the pinnace made her first voyage. Then the cliffs grew lower, and the coast line rose towards the mouth of the Montrose River, where it formed a sharp point to bend back towards the spot where the range rose in the south-east.

Glimpses could be caught of the Montrose, winding like a gleaming thread. The lower reaches of the river ran through a wooded and verdant region; the upper reaches through a barren waste. It was fed by numerous streams from the high levels of the pine wood, and made numerous twists and turns. Beyond the dense forests between the groves and clumps of trees lay a succession of plains and grass lands right to the western extremity of the island, where rose a high hill, marking the other end of the range, twelve or fifteen miles away.

In outline the island was almost exactly the shape of the leaf of a tree.

In the west numerous water-courses gleamed in the sun's rays. To the north and east were only the Montrose and Eastern Rivers.

To sum up, then, New Switzerland, at any rate the five-sixths of it which lay to the north of the range, was a land of wonderful fertility, quite capable of supporting several thousand inhabitants.

As to its situation in the Indian Ocean, it was clear that it belonged to no group of islands. The telescope discovered no sign of land anywhere on the horizon. The nearest coast was seven hundred and fifty miles away, the coast of Australia, or New Holland, as it was called in those days.

But although the island had no satellites lying round its coast, one rocky point rose up from the sea some ten miles to the west of Pearl Bay. Jack levelled his glass upon it.

"The Burning Rock—which isn't burning!" he exclaimed. "And I guarantee that Fritz would not have required any telescope to recognise it!"

Thus New Switzerland, as a whole, was well adapted for the establishment of an important colony. But what the north and east and west had to offer must not be looked for in the south.

Bent round in the form of a bow, the two extremities of the range rested on the coast line, at almost equal distance from the base of the peak which rose in its centre. The portion enclosed within this arc was bounded by a long succession of cliffs, which appeared to be almost perpendicular.