also vast flocks of sea gulls and other birds which bring the fish they catch to the islands, and sometimes seals crawl up out of the water and die upon them. This has gone on for ages, and, since there is little rain, a great mass of manure has accumulated, which is so valuable that it is mined and carried away in ships, bringing in to the people of Peru, to whom the islands belong, many millions of dollars. South of the guano beds and farther west is an island belonging to Chile, which is especially interesting to us. It is known as Juan Fernandez (hoo-än' fĕr-nän'dĕth), and is the island upon which Alexander Selkirk, the sailor whose adventures inspired the story of Robinson Crusoe, was cast away. Selkirk had fallen out with the captain and mutinied, and he was given the choice of being hanged or left alone on this desert island. He declined the hanging, and was landed with a small supply of provisions. He lived all alone on the island for four years and four months, when an English war vessel, attracted by his watch fires, called and took him to England. While there he wrote the story of his adventures, and it is supposed that it was this story that suggested to Daniel Defoe the tale of Robinson Crusoe, although Defoe, having a better knowledge of the islands in the southern part of the Caribbean Sea, has made his story to correspond to them in its descriptions of scenery, products, and plants. It is but a short distance from Juan Fernandez to Valparaiso, the chief port of Chile, and from there one can get ships which will take him down through the Strait of Magellan to the Falklands, about 250 miles east of the South American continent. These islands are farther south than any other place we have visited in our tour; but, owing to the warm ocean currents flowing by them, the grass is green all the year round. The islands all told have only about two thirds as much land as Massachusetts; but they support hundreds of thousands of the finest sheep, and more than half a million dollars' worth of wool is exported every year. The Falklands are about the windiest islands on the globe. The cold winds blow every day, and almost all day long. They blow so hard that not a tree can live, and the people say that potatoes are sometimes blown out. of the ground. It is always cloudy there. The air is moist; there are many swamps, and nature is dreary. The Falklands are owned by Great Britain, and their people are nearly all Scotchmen. The capital, Port Stan ley, is a little town of seven hundred inhabitants, with English churches and schools, and cottages not unlike our own houses. The shepherds live in little huts at wide distances from one another, so that a child has often to ride five or ten miles if he would have a game with his next-door neighbor. They are so far apart that they can not have schools like ours, so the government furnishes traveling schoolmasters who go from one shepherd's home to another to teach the children. The teacher stays with each family a fortnight, and then, having laid out a course of study, he goes on to the next family, which may live twenty miles away. After a time he gets back to his old pupils and examines them on what they have studied during his absence. Below the latitude of the Falklands there are several small islands claimed by various countries, but none of commercial importance. With the exception of Tierra del Fuego, there is no other land so far from the Equator that has any value whatever. The Falklands are the farthest south of all commercial and industrial regions. Cagayan River, 184. Canary Islands, 295–298. Cape Maisi, 362. Cape Verde Islands, 294. 56; Birds, 50-52; Desert, 37; Bagobas, 203. Bahamas, The, 370-374. Ballarat, 39. Bamboo, 188-200. Barbados, 321. Batavia, 228-233. Battaks, 252. Cebu, 194. Chagos Islands, 271. Cloves, 224. Cochineal, 297. Cocoanuts, 125, 269, 344. Coffee, Hawaii, 137-138; Java, 246; Porto Rico, 338. Colossus of Rhodes, The, 316. Columbus, Christopher, 320, 346, 349, 352, 360, 379. Commerce, Wonders of, 71, 260. Cook, Captain James, 14, 55, 90, 131. Copra, 125. Coral, 54, 57, 109; Gardens, 115. Corsica, 306. Crete, 315. Hawaiian Islands, 127-148; Indus- tries, 135-140; Natives, 131, 139– Cuba, 357-370; Government, 357, 366; Hebrides, The, 379. People, 360. Cyprus, 317. Dagupan, 184. Danish Islands, 328, 376-379. Davao, 209. Dunedin, 80. Dutch Borneo, 222. Dutch East Indies, 222-257- Elba, 307. Ellice Islands, III. Emus, 51, 65. Eskimos, 377. Falklands, The, 382, 383. Fiji Islands, 111–119. Flores, 226. Formosa, 186. Franz Josef Land, 379. French Islands, Madagascar, 274-289; Kandy, 267. Pacific, 91-95. Kangaroos, 47, 65. Kauri Gum, 84. Kava, 124. German Islands, 104-110; Samoa, 126. Kingston, 353. Galapagos Islands, 380. |