Norwich bulletin., 1916-06-17

damage wrought by the fierce storms | of Cape Horn can be expensfyely re- paired, the Falkland Islands are sell dom visited, save by the monthly mail [ boats from England. It must have been a sensational news event, there fore, when the nine hundred Port Stanley inhabitants and the eleven hundred other people distributed over the more than a hundred islands of the Falkland group learned that on the last day of May the intrepid explor- CT Sir Ernest Shaelxleton, had arrived at this town with five companions, after having lost his ship, the Endur- ance. in the antarctic ice last October.
 Not since the trilling naval en- gagement off the Falk1ands in Decem- Der, 1914, when a British squadron, under Vice Admiral Sturdes, sank tie German cruisers Scharnhorst, Gneise- nau and Leipsic, and captured two colliers have these islands figured SO prominently in the news of the day as now.
 The FalkIands are among Great Britain's colonial possessions which cling to the very fringe of civilization They comprise an area somewhat larger than the Bahama group and lie 250 miles east of the mainland of South America and more than 1900 miles south of Buenos Aires. Only two of the isia nds are of considerable l size-East Falkland, which is about ve-sixths as large as Porto Rico, and West Falkland, with an area somewhat less than that of the state of Della ware.
 While the climate of the Falkland group is comparatively mild, the rig ors of it's winters in no degree ap- preaching the cold of the southeast coast of Labrador. which lies in the correspondi eg parallels of latitude in the northern hemisphere, yet the is- | lands hTc r7Iaoa n which to live, as penetrating, drizz- ling rain is experienced here during 250 days of the year
 Except for the palm m-resemDling tussock-grass, which furnishes excel lent forage for the herds of cattle, f1ocks of sheep and droves of wild horses on the islands there is little vegetation. The commerce. which does not rea6Ih a million dollars year, con- sists chiefly of the exportation of wool, hides, tallow and frozen mutton. Bx- tensive peat bogs supply the Scotch shepherds with a satisfactory fuel
 During the last quarter of the eighteenth century Spain laid claim to the Islands and for time threaten ed to go to war with England over their control. The territory belonged to the British empire by right of dis covery however, for just a hundred years after Columbus reached Ameri- car shores John Davis, one of the most dauntlesS naVigators> of the EliZ- abethan era, sightRl this land while on his return voysee from. the Strait of Magellan, where his superior, Thomas Cavendish, had met with dis aster. This is the Davis who is re- puted to have been in command of the Black Dog during the memorable over throw of the Spanish Armada, and who ranks with Baffin and Hudson as the great triumvirate of early Arctic explorers.
 Nearly a century and three quar- ters after Davis discovery the ex- plorer De Bougainville raised the standard of France over these islands, and the latter government ceded tA Ae territory to Spain in 1767. It was up- on this cession that Spain based her claims which she seemed ready to en- force with arms until 1771 The re- assertion of British rights in 1883 marked the withdrawal of the colonial claims of the people of Buenos AiresS
 Everybody's Doing it.