Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/575

 THE SEYCHELLES. 471 A geographical dependence of the Comoros are the reefs running north-east of Mayotte parallel with Madagascar, and terminating in the little group of uninhahited Gtorieme islets. About 120 miles farther north lies the coralline group of the Cosmokdos, also uninhabited, but claimed by the English as a dej>endency of Mauritius. Under the same latitude, but seventy miles to the west, is the larger island of Aldabra, a true atoll divided into several secondary islets and reefs. Here a few Norwegian families, chiefly from Bergen, founded a fishing station in 1879. Aldabra is visited by gigantic turtles and myriads of aquatic birds. All these islets lying east and north of the Comoros have a total extent of little over sixty square miles. IV. — The Amirantes and Seychelles. North of Madagascar the main insular axis is continued over 120 miles sea- wards by a submarine plateau about 900 fathoms deep. Above this plateau rise a few scattered islets separated by a profound trough from the two archipelagoes of the Amirantes and Seychelles. All these insular groups belong politically to Great Britain as dependencies of Mauritius. Farquhnr, the nearest to Madagascar, is not quite uninhabited, a few fishermen mostly from the Mascarenhas having established themselves on the western island of Joao de Nova. Farther north follow some dangerous reefs, and beyond them the numerous islets of the Amirantes, so named by the Portuguese in honour of the great " Admiral," Vasco de Gama, who discovered them in 1502. Of the whole group, some one hundred and fifty altogether, not more than six are inhabited by settlers from Mauritius and the Seychelles. They rise but a few yards above sea-level, and are covered with cocoanut groves, and some grassy tracts affording pasturage to a few herds of zebus and sheep. The Seychelles, or better Secltelles, so named from Moreau de Sechelles, form a group of twenty-nine islets besides a number of insular reefs, nearly all bearing the names of French gentlemen of the eighteenth century. They are mostly disposed in circular form, as if resting on a submerged atoll about 90 miles in circumference. But between the coral formations granitic rocks identical with those of Madagascar have cropped out here and there. Such are those of ^lahe (3,200 feet), Praslin (3,000), and Silhouette (2,5o0). Mahe, the largest, has an area of 50 square miles, nearly half of the whole archipelago. Although lying within 300 miles of the equator, these islands are compara- tively healthy even for Europeans, the stagnation of air and water being prevented by the alternating trade winds, while the equable temperature, never excetnling 84° or falling below 78° F., renders this one of the most delightful climates in the world. Although not entirely free from cyclones, as was at one time supposed, the Seychelles are nevertheless rarely visited by these atmospheric disturbances. The local flora comprises altogether about three hundred and forty species, of which some eixty are endemic, including three varieties of the pandanus. But the archipelago is especially famous as the home of the celebrated fan-palm {lodoicea