safety of their harbor. The Germans lost four large
ships, while the British fleet lost none.

The German navy was revenged in November 3, when a fleet of warships met
and sunk three British cruisers off the Coronel. On December 9, however,
a British fleet, after a search of many days, came up with and sank
three German cruisers, and severely damaged two others in the Battle of
Falkland Islands.

THE FALKLAND SEA FIGHT

A. N. HILDITCH

Battle Sketches by A. N. Hilditch, Oxford University Press.

[Sidenote: The Falkland Islands.]

In 1592, John Davis, the arctic explorer, after whom the strait between
Greenland and the North American mainland is named, made an attempt, in
company with Thomas Cavendish, to find a new route to Asia by the
Straits of Magellan. Differences arose between the two leaders. One was
an explorer: the other had a tendency towards freebooting. They parted
off the coast of Patagonia. Davis, driven out of his course by stormy
weather, found himself among a cluster of unknown and uninhabited
islands, some three hundred miles east of the Straits of Magellan. This
group, after many changes and vicissitudes, passed finally into the
hands of Great Britain, and became known as the Falkland Islands.

[Sidenote: Climate surface, and vegetation.]

They consist of two large islands and of about one hundred islets,
rocks, and sandbanks. The fragments of many wrecks testify to the
dangers of navigation, though masses of giant seaweed act as buoys for
many of the rocks. So numerous are the penguins, thronging in battalions
the smaller islands and the inland lagoons, that the governor of the
colony is nicknamed King of the Penguins. As New Zealand is said to be
the most English of British possessions, the Falklands may perhaps be
appropriately termed the most Scottish. Their general appearance
resembles that of the Outer Hebrides. Of the population, a large
proportion are of Scottish extraction. The climate is not unlike that of
Scotland. The winters are misty and rainy, but not excessively cold. So
violent are the winds that it is said to be impossible to play tennis or
croquet, unless walls are erected as shelter, while cabbages grown in
the kitchen-gardens of the shepherds, the only cultivated ground, are at
times uprooted and scattered like straw. The surface, much of which is
bogland, is in some parts mountainous, and is generally wild and rugged.
Small streams and shallow freshwater tarns ab