THE COCOS-KEELING ISLANDS.

Bruce Herald, Volume XVII, Issue 1757, 11 June 1886, Page 6

THE COCOS-KEELING ISLANDS.

Certain diplomatic events (says the London correspondent of the Manrfiester Guardian) have drawn attention to one of the most authentic cases of the Bobinson Crusoe kind ever known. In 1825 Captain Boss, a Scotchman, visited the Cocos-Keeling Islands, an archipelago of coral formatioDj and but slightly raised above the level of the sea, far out in the Indian Ocean, and till then unvisited by Europeans. Two years later he settled there premanently. He succeeded in inducing some Malays from Java and the Straits Settlements to join him and help to cultivate the Boil, the produce being sent annually to Batavia and Singapore, whence necessaries were produced in exchange. Captain Boss ruled in a patriarchal fashion. In 1854 he died, and was succeeded by his son, Mr. J. E. Chenies Boss, who was educated at the Glasgow university. In 1857 the Islands were formally annexed by an naval officer of the British G-overnment and placed under the Colony of Ceylon. Lately Mr Boss has taken alarm at the manner in which islands are being picked up by various European nations and he applied to the Home Government for some title confirming him in the possession of the Islands. An officer was in consequence despatched from Singapore in a British war vessel for this purpose, and also to transfer the islands from Ceylon ' to the jurisdiction of that of the Straits Settlements. The only drawback to a settlement which in respect to a beautiful climate and perpetual sunshine is a terrestrial paradise is that typhoons at intervals sweep over the islands with tremendous fury. In 1862 and 1875 the islands were devastated by these scourges, but otherwise they are m a flourishing condition.