阅读理解
Tristan da Cunha, a 38-square-mile island, is the farthest inhabited island in the world, according to the Guinness Book of Records. It is 1, 510 miles southwest of its nearest neighbor, St. Helena, and 1,950 miles west of Africa. Discovered by the Portuguese admiral(葡萄牙海军上将) of the same name in 1506, and settled in 1810, the island belongs to Great Britain and has a population of a few hundred.
Coming in a close second-and often wrongly mentioned as the most distant land is Easter Island, which lies 1,260 miles east of its nearest neighbor, Pitcairn Island, and 2,300 miles west of South America.
The mountainous 64 square mile island was settled around the 5th century, supposedly by people who were lost at sea. They had no connection with the outside world for more than a thousand years, giving them plenty of time to build more than 1,000 huge stone figures, called moai, for which the island is most famous.
On Easter Sunday, 1772, however, settlers from Holland moved in and gave the island its name. Today, 2,000 people live on the Chilean land. They share one street, a small airport, and a few hours of television per day.
