Dotting the World Britian's Woodier hull Collection of Islands

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 370, 2 June 1928, Page 26

Dotting the World Britian's Woodier hull Collection of Islands

The American viewpoint on England's vast island possessions as expressed below, is interesting and. to Britons, \ amusing. The folioicing article appeared ! in the San Fransisco “Chronicle.’’ iTLcWJj HETHER 11 is done j kvmnWrlyJ/y absentmindedly, done by I i nstlnct or done merely : chance, history and i njCjftlpolf the map reveal that Eng- ; re» land has shown a truly j remarkable aptitude for possessing I herself of little-considered ocean remainders in the form of small islands. One can, of course, see the force of her owning all the islands, even the remotest Hebrides and Orkneys, that cluster around her coast, the litter of them jumbled on the west coast of Scotland, the Scilly Isles, Manxland, Wight, Lindisfarne, Lundy, and the rest; no one except England could

own them, and some owner they must have. But cross the English channel, and there are the Channel Islands, Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, and Sark. Geographically they are a part of France. Politically and administratively they are England’s. They are so French that their legislature functions bilingually. England says, of course, that they are a residue of her oncelarge French dominions, and one must remember that it was not until far down in Victoria's reign that the British House of Lords ceased solemnly to appoint a committee to hear petitions from Aquitaine and Louraine. Enter the Mediterranean. What is Gozo? Gozo is am island of 26 square miles near Malta. To whom does it belong?—oh, to England, of course. “Well," says England, “it is too near Malta to belong to anyone but me." Who 'owns Malta (itself, by the way, only 117 square miles'!?—of course, England owns Malta. It was a use-

j ful base when the Napoleonic wars were raging from Spain to Palestine. | and through Egypt, Italy. Austria, and Dalmatia. Still more important later. Enter now the Red Sea. Here is i Perim, a very small island. England’s, \ of course. Now we are in the Indian Ocean. | Here, as you emerge, is Socotra, pro- \ ducing “dragons’ blood" and aloes, and ;at a strategic point. It is 1.200 square I miles, and is England’s, of course. And here are the Seychelles, 148 square miles, with no distinctive place to fill in the world of sand, air, and water save indeed that here grows beche de mer (vegetable ivory). We pass by Mauritius, for though a ; small island, 720 square miles, it has , a place with the world’s great produ- • cers of sugar. Orfce “Reunion or Bourbon,” it belonged then to Fuance

when she bade fair to own half at least of India, and not merely the small patch, Pondicherry, now alone hers. The British fleet, of course, took Mauritius. We get along through the section of the Indian Ocean known as the Carabian Sea, past the Laccadives. 14 low'-ly-ing coral islands; past the Maldives, 420 square miles, both England's. Round we go into the Bay of Bengal. Here are the Andaman's, 19 islands, ",000-odd square miles, useful to England as a convict settlement. Then comes the Nicobars, 635 square miles—England's. Proceed eastward, at the tip of Malaya we find Singapore, which, though few remember it, is an island 217 miles, to be strongly fortified, for it is very strategic. It is the big gate to the Further East. On, and north, we reach Hong Kong, within call of the Chinese coast, 320 square miles— England’s. Say little of her possessions in the Pacific—they are almost innumerable, counted as separate isles

and islets. In a region where an empire has absorbed Australia, almost 3.000.000 square miles, New Zealand, 104,000 square miles, and Tasmania. 27,000 square miles, to say nothing of the greater part of New Guinea and Borneo, to whom should the rest o r it in fragments like Fiji belong if no: to her?

But away to the Atlantic, rounding the Cape, which by all the rules of the game should be known as Gama's, but is actually known as the Cape of Good Hope. Kerguelen. 90 miles long, almost due south of the Cape. British gazetteers regretfully admit is “claims by France.” The Crozets are uninhabited. but there are the Prince Ed ward Islands, with the familiar red underscore. There are Gough, the ( Atlantic) Sandwich Islands. South Georgia, hundreds of miles apart. The last-named is uninhabitable, but its 1.200 square miles of emptiness are British. Then there are the Falkland Islands, 500 square miles, and the FI dependencies; also the dot of rock and lava known as Tristan. Northward we find St. Helena, the “black warr" rock, with patches of fertility in i * depressions, that England made nseful as a cage for Napoleon. St Helena is 875 square miles. Ascension. 700 miles away. smaller, population 240. Ascension was taken by the British beoajse. « Admiral Cockburn said. “We don’ want some other flag hoisted there to increase the risk cf Napoleon's escape.'’ Then we have the Bermudas 900 miles from the United States, and British since 1654. In the West Irdies are Barbados 170 square miles; St. Kitts, 6S; Nevis. 50; Barbuda, 78: ard her islands in the Virgin group, the entire area oi the group being only 275 miles square In the sea between Jamaica an Cuba are the three Cayman islands dependencies of Jamaica. Of what ■ they are to Jamaica, or Jamaica J them, it would be hard to say. Gran Cayman is 17 miles long, much o * k swamp, much of it white limes*®/ The Caymans were discovered by umbus in 1503. The Spaniards. they took Jamaica in 1509, dre supply of turtles from these isianuWhen Jamaica became 1655, the Caymans were automatic* . tacked on to her, and by S ered a population, some of its being shipwrecked sailors, ot. ® . er sons who for one reason or 8l - * r (often to escape debt) cax J® h from Jamaica to this °ut-° * corner of the world The P°P is now about 4.000. It has . overflow settled in New Orle . Mobile, Central America and Jam There is one other little Islama in the North Sea. which of««£ England took — Heligoland. ’ for ever, swapped it with Germany land in Zanzibar, an achieve b ; t . Lord Salisbury’s that she ' terly to regret during the m