Our IslandContinent Author:J. E. Taylor Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. THE INDIAN OCEAN. Early next morning we left Aden on our long voyage. About mid-day we left the beaten track of outward-bound vessels, and hugg... more »ed the African shores. The day following we were so close to the Somali coast that it seemed as if one could throw a stone ashore. With a field-glass all the country stood out clearly—a great arid desert, grilled with solar heat, not a tree or shrub being visible. A long line of white coral sand lined the shore, on which the long breakers broke into whiter surf. Then loomed up in the distance the perpendicular cliffs of Guardafui— the last we were to see of the Dark Continent. Two days afterwards we crossed the Line. " Hot" is an utterly useless word wherewith to describe the temperature. Eating, sleeping, reading, talking— everything but drinking—was out of the question. There was little or no life visible on the oily sea. A few bonitos chased each other, leap-frog fashion—a few flying-fish every now and then ricochetted from one long roller to another—that was all. Overhead was a sky hard as brass, out of which the equatorial sun glowed like a furnace. This state of things continued for nearly a week, when, in the hazy afternoon, land appeared in sight.As we approached it, we could see little beyond groves of cocoa-nut trees, covering a low-lying bank, evidently a coral island. Two hours later a series of shadowy, cloud-like islands appeared, and just an hour before the sun went down we passed close to one of them, Praslin Island. Mah£ also appeared in sight. To the right and left other islands came into view. Evidently we had approached a small archipelago. Before we reached Mahe the sun had set, and the short equatorial twilight was over. But the glorious greenness of the tropical vegetation on Praslin Island had...« less