COLD, DESOLATE ISLAND.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20242, 30 April 1929, Page 12

COLD, DESOLATE ISLAND.

FRENCH WOMAN'S RECORD. WO WEEKS AMID THE ICE. [from our own correspondent.] CAPETOWN. March 22. Madame Aubert de la Rue, who has just returned to civilisation after two months on Kerguelen Island, has the reputation of having penetrated further south than any other member of her sex, having spent two weeks with her husband, who is a French mining engineer, on Heard Island, a desolate spot 500 miles to the south of Kerguelen. The couple left France in the steamer Rustral at the beginning of September and stopped for 12 days at St. Paul's Island, where they lived in a small tent ashore. At the beginning of November they left for Kerguelen Island, where they were landed with a tent, stores and a paraffin stove, for 100 days. This was their base, and while her husband went prospecting Madame de la Rue spent her time shooting rabbits and wild ducks, gathering wild cabbage, the only edible plant on tho island, and doing endless cooking. For water she had to walk half a mile to a glacier and bring back lumps of ice to boil. Tho only other human inhabitants on the island were two shepherds, who looked after tho sheep taken out for tho whalers in summer. Wild dogs, descendants of animals left on tho island 50 years ago by a German vessel, made it dangerous for her to venture out without a gun and tho on'.y evening amusement was provided by a gramophone.

"Tho Austal called for us'in the middle of our stay," Mine, de la Rue explained, "and we took a trip to Heard Island, where my husband hoped to find min erals. This was much colder than Kerguelen and was covered with ice, so that the quest was hopeless, but I believe I am the only woman to have lived on shore so far south."

M. do la Rue found brown coal in good quantities in Kerguelen Island, while his wife picked up hundreds of, agates on the beach.