"The Kerguelens - isolated French islands in the southern Indian Ocean - were the site of the Arch of Kerguelen, a stone vault that stunned navigators for hundreds of years. The arch appeared as the entry to a crypt, leading to the forlorn world that is the Kerguelens. It is the arch, in part, that takes Jean-Paul Kauffmann to this wild, barren land called Desolation.".

"Jean-Paul Kauffmann went to Kerguelen to ponder the islands that were coined the "third world," islands that when first discovered in 1772 by Yves-Joseph de Kerguelen were deemed too depressing to bother going ashore. These lost islands captured the Enlightenment's imagination in the form of poems and paintings - their surging waters, basalt castles, fields of ruins, and the stony silence.".

"Rich in whaling history and now the base for French missions to the Kerguelens, Port aux Francais is the only populated site for a thousand miles around. This is the launching point for voyages elsewhere in the islands where much of the land has as yet been unexplored and where at Christmas Harbor legends of the great arch beckon."--BOOK JACKET.