The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1893-02-18
TWO REMARKABLE ISLANDS.

| 1hS tOlCAnIc hOCES In the 1nuta1 ocean
That FRA ace Has just Annexed.
| The French have just hoisted their
flag over the little islands of St Paul
| and Amsterdam, in the southern part
| of the Indian ocean, about midway be
tween Australia and the Cape of Good
Rope. No one knows what the French
! expect to do with these uninha bited
! speclxs in mid-ocean. Amsterdam is
densely covered with vegetation, but
st. Paul, fifty miles to the south, is al.
most bare, and neither island has any
inhabitants 1t was on st. Paul that
the British steamship Megera, bound
for Australia. with four hundred people
on board, was beacbed in June, 1871,
after springing leak. The castaways
erected huts ard lived on the island
for eleven weeks. when steamer came
within sight of their signal and took
them off.
These volcanic islands are among the
most remarkable in the ocean. The
eruptive rocks that form them were
lifted from profound ocean depths.
Five miles from St Paul the sea is
about a mile in depth. Neither fossils,
animals nor plants testify to an ancient
connection between the islands and the
lavas of the Mascarenes or Madagascar.
Though only fifty miles separate the
islands, they differ greatly in the COM
position of their rocks and proba bly,
they were never united
For century past the islands have
occasionally been visited by ship
wrecked sailors and since 1S4t fisher
men have esta blished themselves for
weeks at a time on the island of st.
Paul Scientific expeditions have also
visited them, nota bly, that of 1874 when
French savants went to st. Paul to OBJ
serve the transit of Venus and profted
by their sojourn to study the geological
structure of the two volcanic masses
All the craters on Amsterdam are ex-
tinct St Paul is only about one-ffth
the size of Amsterdam and has nota-
BILE popularity. The waves gradually
broke away the rocks on one side of its
great crater and finally the sea was ad.
mitted through the large opening thus
made. The sea entering the crater
formed tranquil lake with depth of
about three hundred feet The entrance
from the sea is barred by two peninsulas
of debris, which are constantly chang
ing their form under the action of the
waves. The highest part of the crater
wall surrounding the lake is about
five hundred feet. This wall is
pierced with holes through which
steam and smoke issue. Little depres-
sions in the wall are filed with hot
water flowing through cracks in the
rocks and constantly kept at boiling
heat, SO that fishermen angle in the
crater lake and cook their dinner with
in few feet of the place where they
catch their fish. So, while the craters
on Amsterdam are dead, those of ST.
Paul still exhibit considerable activity,
though, according to the reports of the
earliest visitors, its volcanic energy has
considerably diminished
The scanty fora of st. Paul consists
of about forty varieties of moses and
lichens and fifteen herbaceous plants.
Trees planted by fishermen and bota-
nists have not succeeded. Potatoes,
carrots, and other vegeta bles raised in
st. Paul are sorry specimens Cabbage,
however, seem to thrive in an astonish-
ing way. A few butterflies are found,
but terrestrial shells are entirely lack
ing. Amsterdam on the other hand has
a very considerable flora and fauna.
The French expedition of 1874 found
fifty different herbaceous plants on the
island, of which twenty-five species
were peculiar toit. The Phylica arborea,
a tree which had not previously been
seen except upon the volcanic island of
Tristan da Cunha in the Atlantic, is
also found on Amsterdam. Y. Sun.