LOST ISLANDS

Greymouth Evening Star, 30 January 1923, Page 8

LOST ISLANDS

llAl.’l’KNli\G.s LN L’ACIKIC. tome currency lias i-een given to a ruiiiour iron) ijaiiliagu mat ivuster island lias uisappeilivu, wiircs ’ r.t/.li. in lliu “many man. inc most jsoiated island on me gioue, Ita.-.Ui' island, is imies ituiii Li,e nearest, mainland. rr is a triangle 111 anape, witn sides ti by » by .0 nines, and its oills rise 2000 ic-et li'om an almost tidciess sea. A large moutiiiui, 111 train, lor old Ocean to swallow in sudden lasnion ! But there are vaioiotia cases on record in wiiicli a whole island has dropjied irom sigiit. L’alcon Island, near the longas, was first seen in lbbs, but no sooner had the map-makers settled its position than it bobbed out of sight beneath the waves. Yet its clifts were at least 150 ft high. In 1898 it rose again, steaming hot, but since that date it has again disappeared. Then there was Bermeja, a good-sized islet in the southern part of the Gulf of Alexico. It was no upstart like Falcon island. There was not even a reef left, many years. In 1901 a cruiser engaged, in charting could find no sign of the island. There was no even a reef left. In 1841 Captain Dougherty reported an island about half-way between New Zealand and Cape Horn, a great rocky ridge 7 miles long and SOO feet high. Twenty years later the island was described for a. second time by Captain Keatcs. tn the present century the Discovery sailed right over the spot formerly occupied by this island. What is more, soundings revealed a depth of 2000 fathoms, or nearly three miles. .Metis is another I’acilic island which vanished in a similarly mysterious fashion. In 1880 it was a great mass of rock, at least 150 feet high but twenty years later nothing of it remained above the surface of the sea. In charts of thirty years ago there is to he found a. group of five red specks to the south of Australia, named the Royal Com panv Islands. Their exact position was fid. 50.20 S.. long. 143.0 I'l In 1900 the vi-,0,1,-, riidit. over the spot

and found no trace, of them, so the Ad miralty has expunged them from its charts.