horror of exile life in Sakhalin, as they overshadowed existence in the
Falkland Islands, when these were a penal colony of Spain and later of
Argentine.[912]

[Sidenote: Island prisons for political offenders.]

In the case of political offenders and incorrigibles, the island prison
is as remote and inaccessible as possible. The classic example is
Napoleon's consignment to Elba and subsequently to St. Helena, whence
escape was impossible. Spain has sent its rebellious subjects, even
university professors of independent views, to Fernando Po in the Gulf
of Guinea and Teneriffe in the Canaries.[913] Russian political
offenders of the most dangerous class are confined first in the
Schluesselberg prison, situated on a small island in Lake Ladoga near the
effluence of the Neva. There they languish in solitary confinement or
are transferred to far-off Sakhalin, whose very name is taboo in St.
Petersburg.[914] During our Civil War, one of the Dry Tortugas, lying a
hundred miles west of the southern point of Florida and at that time the
most isolated island belonging to the American government, was used as a
prison for dangerous Confederates; and here later three conspirators in
the assassination of President Lincoln were incarcerated.[915] Far away
to the southeast, off the coast of South America, are the Isles du
Salut, a French penal station for criminals of the worst class. The Isle
du Diable, ominous of name, lies farthest out to sea. This was for five
years the prison of Dreyfus. Its other inhabitants are lepers. Isles of
the cursed indeed!

[Sidenote: Islands as places of survival.]

What islands have they tend to hold, to segregate, secrete from meddling
hands, preserve untouched and unaltered. Owing to this power to protect,
islands show a large percentage of rare archaic forms of animal and
plant life. The insular fauna of Australia, Tasmania, New Guinea and
Madagascar display a succession of strange, ancestral forms going back
to the biological infancy of the world. The Canaries in the Atlantic and
Celebes In the Pacific are museums of living antiquities, some of them
dating probably from Miocene times.[916] Such survivals are found
elsewhere only in high mountains, whose inaccessible slopes also offer
protection against excessive competition. Hence some of the antiquated
species of insular Celebes, Formosa, Japan and Hainon occur again on the
Asiatic mainland only in the Himalayas.[917]

For man, too, island