ON the twelfth we made sail from Christmas Harbour retracing our way to the westward, and leaving Marion's Island, one of Crozet's group, on the larboard.

We afterward passed Prince Edward's Island, leaving it also on our left, then, steering more to the northward, made, in fifteen days, the islands of Tristan d'Acunha, in latitude 37 degrees 8' S, longitude 12 degrees 8' W.
This group, now so well known, and which consists of three circular islands, was first discovered by the Portuguese, and was visited afterward by the Dutch in 1643, and by the French in 1767.

The three islands together form a triangle, and are distant from each other about ten miles, there being fine open passages between.

The land in all of them is very high, especially in Tristan d'Acunha, properly so called.
This is the largest of the group, being fifteen miles in circumference, and so elevated that it can be seen in clear weather at the distance of eighty or ninety miles.

A part of the land toward the north rises more than a thousand feet perpendicularly from the sea.