DENSE FOG.

On 12th December the islands discovered by Marion du Fresne and Crozet in 1772 were sighted, and as they were unnamed in the map, dated 1775, given by Crozet to Cook, he called them Prince Edward's Islands, and a small group further to the east was named Marion and Crozet Islands. Then sailing south through fog so dense that, Burney says, they were often for hours together unable to see twice the length of the ship, and, though it was the height of summer, the cold was so intense that the warm clothing had to be resorted to, they sighted Kerguelen's Land on 24th December. The Chevalier de Borda had given Cook 48 degrees 26 minutes South, 64 degrees 57 minutes East of Paris as the position of Rendezvous Island; this Cook took to be an isolated rock they only just weathered in the fog, to which he gave the name of Bligh's Cap, for he said: "I know nothing that can Rendezvous at it but fowls of the air, for it is certainly inaccessible to every other animal." Cook, unaware that Kerguelen had paid two visits to the place, found some difficulty in recognising the places described. The country was very desolate, the coarse grass hardly worth cutting for the animals; no wood, but a good supply of water was obtained; and here the Christmas Day was spent on the 27th, as the 25th and 26th had been full of hard work. A bottle was found by one of the crew containing a parchment record of the visit of the French in 1772; on the back Cook noted the names of his ships and the year of their visit, and adding a silver twopenny piece of 1772, replaced it in the bottle which was sealed with lead and hidden in a pile of stones in such a position that it could not escape the notice of any one visiting the spot. Running along the coast to the south-east they encountered very blowy weather, and finding the land even more desolate than that at Christmas Harbour, they left on the 31st for New Zealand. Anderson, the surgeon, on whom Cook relied for his notes on Natural History, says:

"Perhaps no place hitherto discovered in either hemisphere under the same parallel of latitude affords so scanty a field for the naturalist as this barren spot."

The whole catalogue of plants, including lichens, did not exceed sixteen or eighteen.