archipelago

[I]n his imagination he had settled his route, through Holland and France to Sicily, which he had long wished to see, and from thence to the Archipelago […] .

For many years past the whaleship has been the pioneer in ferreting out the remotest and least known parts of the earth. She has explored seas and archipelagoes which had no chart, where no Cook or Vancouver had ever sailed.

The Gulag Archipelago