Word Finder - islands

definition

A contiguous area of land, smaller than a continent, totally surrounded by water.

definition

An entity surrounded by other entities that are very different from itself.

example

an island of colors on a butterfly's wing

definition

A superstructure on an aircraft carrier's deck.

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A traffic island.

example

the island in the middle of a roundabout

definition

An unincorporated area wholly surrounded by one or more incorporated areas.

definition

(grammar) A phrase from which a wh-word cannot be extracted without yielding invalid grammar.

definition

To surround with water; make into an island.

definition

To set, dot (as if) with islands.

definition

To isolate.

Its bed is now broad, studded with islands and enclosed by high banks.

He devoted many years to carrying out a project for organizing the fur trade from the Great Lakes to the Pacific Ocean, and thence by way of the Hawaiian Islands to China and India.

There are a number of islands on the lake.

Other parties had previously colonized the islands but none had remained permanently.

Perhaps the best natural harbour of the republic is that of Bahia Blanca, a large bay of good depth, sheltered by islands, and 534 m.

All voyagers agree that for varied beauty of form and colour the Society Islands are unsurpassed in the Pacific. Innumerable rills gather in lovely streams, and, after heavy rains, torrents precipitate themselves in grand cascades from the mountain cliffs - a feature so striking as to have attracted the attention of all voyagers, from Wallis downwards.

Round most of the islands there is a luxuriant coral growth; but, as the reefs lie at no great distance, and follow the line of the coast, the inter-island channels are comparatively safe.

Maitea, which rises from the sea as an exceedingly abrupt cone, and Tapamanu, appear to be the only islands without almost completely encircling barrier-reefs.

In this respect the Society Islands have the advantage of many Polynesian islands.

The Hauraki Gulf, a great square inlet opening northward, is studded with islands of considerable elevation; Rangitoto, which protects the harbour, is a volcanic cone reaching nearly l000 ft.

There is communication both south and north by rail, and regular steamers serve the ports of the colony, the principal Pacific Islands, Australia, &c. From 1853 to 1876 Auckland was the seat of the provincial government, and until 1865 that of the central government, which was then transferred to Wellington.

Later writers, Posidonius, Diodorus, Strabo and others, call them smallish islands off (Strabo says, some way off) the north-west coast of Spain, which contained tin mines, or, as Strabo says, tin and lead mines - though a passage in Diodorus derives the name rather from their nearness to the tin districts of north-west Spain.

While geographical knowledge of the west was still scanty and the secrets of the tin-trade were still successfully guarded by the seamen of Gades and others who dealt in the metal, the Greeks knew only that tin came to them by sea from the far west, and the idea of tin-producing islands easily arose.

Neither of these could be called "small islands" or described as off the north-west coast of Spain, and so the Cassiterides were not identified with either by the Greek and Roman geographers.

Small islands off the coast of north-west Spain, the headlands of that same coast, the Scillies, Cornwall, the British Isles as a whole, have all in turn been suggested.

Neither Britain nor Spain can be called "small islands off the north-west of Spain."

The Ismdo-Malayan sub-region includes the Indian and Malayan peninsulas, Cochin-China and southern China, the Malayan archipelago, and Philippines, with New Guinea and Polynesia, excluding the Sandwich Islands.

The flora of the Hawaiian Islands has complicated relations.

To Carmania belonged also the coast, with the islands and harbours of Hormuz and Bander Abbasi.

At the least there should be some consideration of four separate systems of discovery - the Eastern, in which Chinese and Japanese explorers acquired knowledge of the geography of Asia, and felt their way towards Europe and America; the Western, in which the dominant races of the Mexican and South American plateaus extended their knowledge of the American continent before Columbus; the Polynesian, in which the conquering races of the Pacific Islands found their way from group to group; and the Mediterranean.

The emperor Justinian (483-565), in whose reign the greatness of the Eastern empire culminated, sent two Nestorian monks to China, who returned with eggs of the silkworm concealed in a hollow cane, and thus silk manufactures were established in the Peloponnesus and the Greek islands.

Among these was Benjamin of Tudela, who set out from Spain in i 160, travelled by land to Constantinople, and having visited India and some of the eastern islands, returned to Europe by way of Egypt after an absence of thirteen years.

The great westward projection of the coast of Africa, and the islands to the north-west of that continent, were the principal scene of the work of the mariners sent out at his expense; but his object was to push onward and reach India from the Atlantic. The progress of discovery received a check on his death, but only for a time.

In the following year the Portuguese Ferdinando Magalhaes, familiarly known as Magellan, laid before Charles V., at Valladolid, a scheme for reaching the Spice Islands by sailing westward.

It was the 6th of March 1521 when he reached the Ladrone Islands.

In Further India and the Malay Archipelago the Portuguese acquired predominating influence at sea, establishing factories on the Malabar coast, in the Persian Gulf, at Malacca, and in the Spice Islands, and extending their commercial enterprises from the Red sea to China.

From Cape San Lucas Cavendish steered across the Pacific, seeing no land until he reached the Ladrone Islands.

After a voyage of eighty days across the Pacific, Mendana discovered the Solomon Islands; and the expedition returned in safety to Callao.

In June 1595 Mendana sailed from the coast of Peru in command of a second expedition to colonize the Solomon Islands.

They sailed from Callao in December 1605, and discovered several islands of the New Hebrides group. They anchored in a bay of a large island which Quiros named " Australia del Espiritu Santo."

He then reached Tongatabu, one of the Friendly Islands of Cook; and returned by the north coast of New Guinea to Batavia.

Carteret discovered the Charlotte and Gloucester Islands, and Pitcairn Island on the 2nd of July 1767; revisited the Santa Cruz group, which was discovered by Mendafia and Quiros; and discovered the strait separating New Britain from New Ireland.

Bougainville had first, to perform the unpleasant task of delivering up the Falkland Islands, where he had encouraged the formation of a French settlement, to the Spaniards.

During the second voyage Cook visited Easter Island, discovered several islands of the New Hebrides and New Caledonia; and on his way home by Cape Horn, in March 1774, he discovered the Sandwich Island group and described South Georgia.

Thence he went to the Kurile Islands and Kamchatka, and sailed from the far north down the meridian to the Navigator and Friendly Islands.

He visited the New Hebrides, Santa Cruz, New Caledonia and Solomon Islands, and made careful though rough surveys of the Louisiade Archipelago, islands north of New Britain and part of New Guinea.

During the remarkable voyage he then made to Timor, Bligh passed amongst the northern islands of the New Hebrides, which he named the Banks Group, and made several running surveys.

The " Pandora," under Captain Edwards, was sent out in search of the " Bounty," and discovered the islands of Cherry and Mitre, east of the Santa Cruz group, but she was eventually lost on a reef in Torres Strait.

In 1796-1797 Captain Wilson, in the missionary ship " Duff," discovered the Gambier and other islands, and rediscovered the islands known to and seen by Quiros, but since called the Duff Group. Another result of Captain Cook's work was the colonization of Australia.

In June 1741 he named the magnificent peak on the coast of North America Mount St Elias and explored the Aleutian Islands.

Thus he reached the New Siberian or Liakhov Islands, and for years afterwards the seekers for fossil ivory resorted to them.

The increasing number of measurements of the height of land in all continents and islands, and the very detailed levellings in those countries which have been thoroughly surveyed, enable the average elevation of the land above sea-level to be fairly estimated, although many vast gaps in accurate knowledge remain, and the estimate is not an exact one.

Where the central oceanic buckle attains the water-line we have our oceanic islands, seen in our type ocean, as St Helena and the Azores.

After this there is a considerable gap before New Guinea, Borneo, Madagascar, Sumatra and the vast multitude of smaller islands descending in size by regular gradations to mere rocks.

Although the name of continent was not applied to large portions of land for any physical reasons, it so happens that there is a certain physical similarity or homology between them which is not shared by the smaller islands or peninsulas.

If the continuous, unbroken, horizontal extent of land in a continent is termed its trunk,' and the portions cut up by inlets or channels of the sea into islands and peninsulas the limbs, it is possible to compare the continents in an instructive manner.

Oceanic islands are divided according to their geological character into volcanic islands and those of organic origin, including coral islands.

The direct geographical elements are the arrangement of land and sea (continents and islands standing in sharp contrast) and the vertical relief of the globe, which interposes barriers of a less absolute kind between portions of the same land area or oceanic depression.

Oceanic islands have, as a rule, distinctive faunas and floras which resemble, but are not identical with, those of other islands in similar positions.

There is excellent yachting in the bay, which contains many beautiful islands, such as Peaks and Cushing's islands.