[Footnote 124:  Some of Monsieur de Kerguelen’s own countrymen seem more desirous than we are to rob him of his honour.  It is very remarkable, that Monsieur de Pages never once mentions the name of his commander; and, though he takes occasion to enumerate the several French explorers of the southern hemisphere, from Gonneville down to Crozet, he affects to preserve an entire silence about Kerguelen, whose first voyage, in which the discovery of this considerable tract of land was made, is kept as much out of sight as if it never had taken place.  Nay, not satisfied with refusing to acknowledge the right of another, he almost assumes it to himself.  For, upon a map of the world annexed to his book, at the spot where the new land is delineated, we read this inscription, Isles nouvelles Australes vuees par Monsieur de Pages, en 1774.  He could scarcely have expressed himself in stronger terms, if he had meant to convey an idea that he was the conductor of the discovery.  And yet we know that he was only a lieutenant [Enseigne de vaisseau] on board of one of three ships commanded by Kerguelen; and that the discovery had been already made in a former voyage, undertaken while he was actually engaged in his singular journey round the world.

After all, it cannot but be remarked, that Kerguelen was peculiarly unfortunate in having done so little to complete what he had begun.  He discovered a new land indeed; but, in two expeditions to it, he could not once bring his ships to an anchor upon any part of its coasts.  Captain Cook, as we have seen in this, and in the foregoing chapter, had either fewer difficulties to struggle with, or was more successful in surmounting them.—­D.]

Mr Anderson, my surgeon, who, as I have already mentioned, had made natural history a part of his studies, lost no opportunity, during the short time we lay in Christmas Harbour, of searching the country in every direction.  He afterward communicated to me the observations he made on its natural productions; and I shall insert them here in his own words.

“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 verdure which appears, when at a little distance from the shore, would flatter one with the expectation of meeting with some herbage; but in this we were much deceived.  For on landing, we saw that this lively colour was occasioned only by one small plant, not much unlike some sorts of saxifrage, which grows in large spreading tufts to a considerable way up the hills.  It forms a surface of a pretty large texture, and grows on a kind of rotten turf, into which one sinks a foot or two at every step.  This turf, dried, might, in cases of necessity, serve for fuel, and is the only thing we met with here that could possibly be applied to this use.”