Friday 15 August 2014
The Galapagos
Islands are an archipelago of volcanic
islands distributed on either side of the Equator in the Pacific Ocean,
926 km west of continental Ecuador,
of which they are a part. The then new Republic of Ecuador took the islands
from Spanish ownership in 1832, and subsequently gave the islands official
Spanish names. The older names remained in use in
English language publications, including Herman Melville's The Encantadas of 1854. Source
