SKETCH FIRST.
THE ISLES AT LARGE.
—“That may not be, said then the ferryman,
Least we unweeting hap to be fordonne;
For those same islands seeming now and than,
Are not firme land, nor any certein wonne,
But stragling plots which to and fro do ronne
In the wide waters; therefore are they hight
The Wandering Islands; therefore do them shonne;
For they have oft drawne many a wandring wight
Into most deadly daunger and distressed plight;
For whosoever once hath fastened
His foot thereon may never it secure
But wandreth evermore uncertein and unsure.”
“Darke, dolefull, dreary, like a greedy grave,
That still for carrion carcasses doth crave;
On top whereof ay dwelt the ghastly owl,
Shrieking his balefull note, which ever drave
Far from that haunt all other cheerful fowl,
And all about it wandring ghosts did wayle and howl.”
Take five-and-twenty heaps of cinders dumped here and there in an
outside city lot; imagine some of them magnified into mountains, and
the vacant lot the sea; and you will have a fit idea of the general
aspect of the Encantadas, or Enchanted Isles. A group rather of extinct
volcanoes than of isles; looking much as the world at large might,
after a penal conflagration.
It is to be doubted whether any spot of earth can, in desolateness,
furnish a parallel to this group. Abandoned cemeteries of long ago, old
cities by piecemeal tumbling to their ruin, these are melancholy
enough; but, like all else which has but once been associated with
humanity, they still awaken in us some thoughts of sympathy, however
sad. Hence, even the Dead Sea, along with whatever other emotions it
may at times inspire, does not fail to touch in the pilgrim some of his
less unpleasurable feelings.
And as for solitariness; the great forests of the north, the expanses
of unnavigated waters, the Greenland ice-fields, are the profoundest of
solitudes to a human observer; still the magic of their changeable
tides and seasons mitigates their terror; because, though unvisited by
men, those forests are visited by the May; the remotest seas reflect
familiar stars even as Lake Erie does; and in the clear air of a fine
Polar day, the irradiated, azure ice shows beautifully as malachite.
But the special curse, as one may call it, of the Encantadas, that
which exalts them in desolation above Idumea and the Pole, is, that to
them change never comes; neither the change of seasons nor of sorrows.
Cut by the Equator, they know not autumn, and they know not spring;
while already reduced to the lees of fire, ruin itself can work little
more upon them. The showers refresh the deserts; but in these isles,
rain never falls. Like split Syrian gourds left withering in the sun,
they are cracked by an everlasting drought beneath a torrid sky. “Have
mercy upon me,” the wailing spirit of the Encantadas seems to cry, “and
send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my
tongue, for I am tormented in this flame.”
Another feature in these isles is their emphatic uninhabitableness. It
is deemed a fit type of all-forsaken overthrow, that the jackal should
den in the wastes of weedy Babylon; but the Encantadas refuse to harbor
even the outcasts of the beasts. Man and wolf alike disown them. Little
but reptile life is here found: tortoises, lizards, immense spiders,
snakes, and that strangest anomaly of outlandish nature, the _aguano_.
No voice, no low, no howl is heard; the chief sound of life here is a
hiss.
On most of the isles where vegetation is found at all, it is more
ungrateful than the blankness of Aracama. Tangled thickets of wiry
bushes, without fruit and without a name, springing up among deep
fissures of calcined rock, and treacherously masking them; or a parched
growth of distorted cactus trees.
In many places the coast is rock-bound, or, more properly,
clinker-bound; tumbled masses of blackish or greenish stuff like the
dross of an iron-furnace, forming dark clefts and caves here and there,
into which a ceaseless sea pours a fury of foam; overhanging them with
a swirl of gray, haggard mist, amidst which sail screaming flights of
unearthly birds heightening the dismal din. However calm the sea
without, there is no rest for these swells and those rocks; they lash
and are lashed, even when the outer ocean is most at peace with,
itself. On the oppressive, clouded days, such as are peculiar to this
part of the watery Equator, the dark, vitrified masses, many of which
raise themselves among white whirlpools and breakers in detached and
perilous places off the shore, present a most Plutonian sight. In no
world but a fallen one could such lands exist.
Those parts of the strand free from the marks of fire, stretch away in
wide level beaches of multitudinous dead shells, with here and there
decayed bits of sugar-cane, bamboos, and cocoanuts, washed upon this
other and darker world from the charming palm isles to the westward and
southward; all the way from Paradise to Tartarus; while mixed with the
relics of distant beauty you will sometimes see fragments of charred
wood and mouldering ribs of wrecks. Neither will any one be surprised
at meeting these last, after observing the conflicting currents which
eddy throughout nearly all the wide channels of the entire group. The
capriciousness of the tides of air sympathizes with those of the sea.
Nowhere is the wind so light, baffling, and every way unreliable, and
so given to perplexing calms, as at the Encantadas. Nigh a month has
been spent by a ship going from one isle to another, though but ninety
miles between; for owing to the force of the current, the boats
employed to tow barely suffice to keep the craft from sweeping upon the
cliffs, but do nothing towards accelerating her voyage. Sometimes it is
impossible for a vessel from afar to fetch up with the group itself,
unless large allowances for prospective lee-way have been made ere its
coming in sight. And yet, at other times, there is a mysterious
indraft, which irresistibly draws a passing vessel among the isles,
though not bound to them.
True, at one period, as to some extent at the present day, large fleets
of whalemen cruised for spermaceti upon what some seamen call the
Enchanted Ground. But this, as in due place will be described, was off
the great outer isle of Albemarle, away from the intricacies of the
smaller isles, where there is plenty of sea-room; and hence, to that
vicinity, the above remarks do not altogether apply; though even there
the current runs at times with singular force, shifting, too, with as
singular a caprice.
Indeed, there are seasons when currents quite unaccountable prevail for
a great distance round about the total group, and are so strong and
irregular as to change a vessel’s course against the helm, though
sailing at the rate of four or five miles the hour. The difference in
the reckonings of navigators, produced by these causes, along with the
light and variable winds, long nourished a persuasion, that there
existed two distinct clusters of isles in the parallel of the
Encantadas, about a hundred leagues apart. Such was the idea of their
earlier visitors, the Buccaneers; and as late as 1750, the charts of
that part of the Pacific accorded with the strange delusion. And this
apparent fleetingness and unreality of the locality of the isles was
most probably one reason for the Spaniards calling them the Encantada,
or Enchanted Group.
But not uninfluenced by their character, as they now confessedly exist,
the modern voyager will be inclined to fancy that the bestowal of this
name might have in part originated in that air of spell-bound
desertness which so significantly invests the isles. Nothing can better
suggest the aspect of once living things malignly crumbled from
ruddiness into ashes. Apples of Sodom, after touching, seem these
isles.
However wavering their place may seem by reason of the currents, they
themselves, at least to one upon the shore, appear invariably the same:
fixed, cast, glued into the very body of cadaverous death.
Nor would the appellation, enchanted, seem misapplied in still another
sense. For concerning the peculiar reptile inhabitant of these
wilds—whose presence gives the group its second Spanish name,
Gallipagos—concerning the tortoises found here, most mariners have long
cherished a superstition, not more frightful than grotesque. They
earnestly believe that all wicked sea-officers, more especially
commodores and captains, are at death (and, in some cases, before
death) transformed into tortoises; thenceforth dwelling upon these hot
aridities, sole solitary lords of Asphaltum.
Doubtless, so quaintly dolorous a thought was originally inspired by
the woe-begone landscape itself; but more particularly, perhaps, by the
tortoises. For, apart from their strictly physical features, there is
something strangely self-condemned in the appearance of these
creatures. Lasting sorrow and penal hopelessness are in no animal form
so suppliantly expressed as in theirs; while the thought of their
wonderful longevity does not fail to enhance the impression.
Nor even at the risk of meriting the charge of absurdly believing in
enchantments, can I restrain the admission that sometimes, even now,
when leaving the crowded city to wander out July and August among the
Adirondack Mountains, far from the influences of towns and
proportionally nigh to the mysterious ones of nature; when at such
times I sit me down in the mossy head of some deep-wooded gorge,
surrounded by prostrate trunks of blasted pines and recall, as in a
dream, my other and far-distant rovings in the baked heart of the
charmed isles; and remember the sudden glimpses of dusky shells, and
long languid necks protruded from the leafless thickets; and again have
beheld the vitreous inland rocks worn down and grooved into deep ruts
by ages and ages of the slow draggings of tortoises in quest of pools
of scanty water; I can hardly resist the feeling that in my time I have
indeed slept upon evilly enchanted ground.
Nay, such is the vividness of my memory, or the magic of my fancy, that
I know not whether I am not the occasional victim of optical delusion
concerning the Gallipagos. For, often in scenes of social merriment,
and especially at revels held by candle-light in old-fashioned
mansions, so that shadows are thrown into the further recesses of an
angular and spacious room, making them put on a look of haunted
undergrowth of lonely woods, I have drawn the attention of my comrades
by my fixed gaze and sudden change of air, as I have seemed to see,
slowly emerging from those imagined solitudes, and heavily crawling
along the floor, the ghost of a gigantic tortoise, with “Memento * * *
* *” burning in live letters upon his back.
SKETCH SECOND.
TWO SIDES TO A TORTOISE.
“Most ugly shapes and horrible aspects,
Such as Dame Nature selfe mote feare to see,
Or shame, that ever should so fowle defects
From her most cunning hand escaped bee;
All dreadfull pourtraicts of deformitee.
No wonder if these do a man appall;
For all that here at home we dreadfull hold
Be but as bugs to fearen babes withall
Compared to the creatures in these isles’ entrall
“Fear naught, then said the palmer, well avized,
For these same monsters are not there indeed,
But are into these fearful shapes disguized.
“And lifting up his vertuous staffe on high,
Then all that dreadful armie fast gan flye
Into great Zethy’s bosom, where they hidden lye.”
In view of the description given, may one be gay upon the Encantadas?
Yes: that is, find one the gayety, and he will be gay. And, indeed,
sackcloth and ashes as they are, the isles are not perhaps unmitigated
gloom. For while no spectator can deny their claims to a most solemn
and superstitious consideration, no more than my firmest resolutions
can decline to behold the spectre-tortoise when emerging from its
shadowy recess; yet even the tortoise, dark and melancholy as it is
upon the back, still possesses a bright side; its calipee or
breast-plate being sometimes of a faint yellowish or golden tinge.
Moreover, every one knows that tortoises as well as turtle are of such
a make, that if you but put them on their backs you thereby expose
their bright sides without the possibility of their recovering
themselves, and turning into view the other. But after you have done
this, and because you have done this, you should not swear that the
tortoise has no dark side. Enjoy the bright, keep it turned up
perpetually if you can, but be honest, and don’t deny the black.
Neither should he, who cannot turn the tortoise from its natural
position so as to hide the darker and expose his livelier aspect, like
a great October pumpkin in the sun, for that cause declare the creature
to be one total inky blot. The tortoise is both black and bright. But
let us to particulars.
Some months before my first stepping ashore upon the group, my ship was
cruising in its close vicinity. One noon we found ourselves off the
South Head of Albemarle, and not very far from the land. Partly by way
of freak, and partly by way of spying out so strange a country, a
boat’s crew was sent ashore, with orders to see all they could, and
besides, bring back whatever tortoises they could conveniently
transport.
It was after sunset, when the adventurers returned. I looked down over
the ship’s high side as if looking down over the curb of a well, and
dimly saw the damp boat, deep in the sea with some unwonted weight.
Ropes were dropt over, and presently three huge antediluvian-looking
tortoises, after much straining, were landed on deck. They seemed
hardly of the seed of earth. We had been broad upon the waters for five
long months, a period amply sufficient to make all things of the land
wear a fabulous hue to the dreamy mind. Had three Spanish custom-house
officers boarded us then, it is not unlikely that I should have
curiously stared at them, felt of them, and stroked them much as
savages serve civilized guests. But instead of three custom-house
officers, behold these really wondrous tortoises—none of your schoolboy
mud-turtles—but black as widower’s weeds, heavy as chests of plate,
with vast shells medallioned and orbed like shields, and dented and
blistered like shields that have breasted a battle, shaggy, too, here
and there, with dark green moss, and slimy with the spray of the sea.
These mystic creatures, suddenly translated by night from unutterable
solitudes to our peopled deck, affected me in a manner not easy to
unfold. They seemed newly crawled forth from beneath the foundations of
the world. Yea, they seemed the identical tortoises whereon the Hindoo
plants this total sphere. With a lantern I inspected them more closely.
Such worshipful venerableness of aspect! Such furry greenness mantling
the rude peelings and healing the fissures of their shattered shells. I
no more saw three tortoises. They expanded—became transfigured. I
seemed to see three Roman Coliseums in magnificent decay.
Ye oldest inhabitants of this, or any other isle, said I, pray, give me
the freedom of your three-walled towns.
The great feeling inspired by these creatures was that of
age:—dateless, indefinite endurance. And in fact that any other
creature can live and breathe as long as the tortoise of the
Encantadas, I will not readily believe. Not to hint of their known
capacity of sustaining life, while going without food for an entire
year, consider that impregnable armor of their living mail. What other
bodily being possesses such a citadel wherein to resist the assaults of
Time?
As, lantern in hand, I scraped among the moss and beheld the ancient
scars of bruises received in many a sullen fall among the marly
mountains of the isle—scars strangely widened, swollen, half
obliterate, and yet distorted like those sometimes found in the bark of
very hoary trees, I seemed an antiquary of a geologist, studying the
bird-tracks and ciphers upon the exhumed slates trod by incredible
creatures whose very ghosts are now defunct.
As I lay in my hammock that night, overhead I heard the slow weary
draggings of the three ponderous strangers along the encumbered deck.
Their stupidity or their resolution was so great, that they never went
aside for any impediment. One ceased his movements altogether just
before the mid-watch. At sunrise I found him butted like a
battering-ram against the immovable foot of the foremast, and still
striving, tooth and nail, to force the impossible passage. That these
tortoises are the victims of a penal, or malignant, or perhaps a
downright diabolical enchanter, seems in nothing more likely than in
that strange infatuation of hopeless toil which so often possesses
them. I have known them in their journeyings ram themselves heroically
against rocks, and long abide there, nudging, wriggling, wedging, in
order to displace them, and so hold on their inflexible path. Their
crowning curse is their drudging impulse to straightforwardness in a
belittered world.
Meeting with no such hinderance as their companion did, the other
tortoises merely fell foul of small stumbling-blocks—buckets, blocks,
and coils of rigging—and at times in the act of crawling over them
would slip with an astounding rattle to the deck. Listening to these
draggings and concussions, I thought me of the haunt from which they
came; an isle full of metallic ravines and gulches, sunk bottomlessly
into the hearts of splintered mountains, and covered for many miles
with inextricable thickets. I then pictured these three
straight-forward monsters, century after century, writhing through the
shades, grim as blacksmiths; crawling so slowly and ponderously, that
not only did toad-stools and all fungus things grow beneath their feet,
but a sooty moss sprouted upon their backs. With them I lost myself in
volcanic mazes; brushed away endless boughs of rotting thickets; till
finally in a dream I found myself sitting crosslegged upon the
foremost, a Brahmin similarly mounted upon either side, forming a
tripod of foreheads which upheld the universal cope.
Such was the wild nightmare begot by my first impression of the
Encantadas tortoise. But next evening, strange to say, I sat down with
my shipmates, and made a merry repast from tortoise steaks, and
tortoise stews; and supper over, out knife, and helped convert the
three mighty concave shells into three fanciful soup-tureens, and
polished the three flat yellowish calipees into three gorgeous salvers.
SKETCH THIRD.
ROCK RODONDO.
“For they this tight the Rock of vile Reproach,
A dangerous and dreadful place,
To which nor fish nor fowl did once approach,
But yelling meaws with sea-gulls hoars and bace
And cormoyrants with birds of ravenous race,
Which still sit waiting on that dreadful clift.”
“With that the rolling sea resounding soft
In his big base them fitly answered,
And on the Rock, the waves breaking aloft,
A solemn ineane unto them measured.”
“Then he the boteman bad row easily,
And let him heare some part of that rare melody.”
“Suddeinly an innumerable flight
Of harmefull fowles about them fluttering cride,
And with their wicked wings them oft did smight
And sore annoyed, groping in that griesly night.”
“Even all the nation of unfortunate
And fatal birds about them flocked were.”
To go up into a high stone tower is not only a very fine thing in
itself, but the very best mode of gaining a comprehensive view of the
region round about. It is all the better if this tower stand solitary
and alone, like that mysterious Newport one, or else be sole survivor
of some perished castle.
Now, with reference to the Enchanted Isles, we are fortunately supplied
with just such a noble point of observation in a remarkable rock, from
its peculiar figure called of old by the Spaniards, Rock Rodondo, or
Round Rock. Some two hundred and fifty feet high, rising straight from
the sea ten miles from land, with the whole mountainous group to the
south and east. Rock Rodondo occupies, on a large scale, very much the
position which the famous Campanile or detached Bell Tower of St. Mark
does with respect to the tangled group of hoary edifices around it.
Ere ascending, however, to gaze abroad upon the Encantadas, this
sea-tower itself claims attention. It is visible at the distance of
thirty miles; and, fully participating in that enchantment which
pervades the group, when first seen afar invariably is mistaken for a
sail. Four leagues away, of a golden, hazy noon, it seems some Spanish
Admiral’s ship, stacked up with glittering canvas. Sail ho! Sail ho!
Sail ho! from all three masts. But coming nigh, the enchanted frigate
is transformed apace into a craggy keep.
My first visit to the spot was made in the gray of the morning. With a
view of fishing, we had lowered three boats and pulling some two miles
from our vessel, found ourselves just before dawn of day close under
the moon-shadow of Rodondo. Its aspect was heightened, and yet
softened, by the strange double twilight of the hour. The great full
moon burnt in the low west like a half-spent beacon, casting a soft
mellow tinge upon the sea like that cast by a waning fire of embers
upon a midnight hearth; while along the entire east the invisible sun
sent pallid intimations of his coming. The wind was light; the waves
languid; the stars twinkled with a faint effulgence; all nature seemed
supine with the long night watch, and half-suspended in jaded
expectation of the sun. This was the critical hour to catch Rodondo in
his perfect mood. The twilight was just enough to reveal every striking
point, without tearing away the dim investiture of wonder.
From a broken stair-like base, washed, as the steps of a water-palace,
by the waves, the tower rose in entablatures of strata to a shaven
summit. These uniform layers, which compose the mass, form its most
peculiar feature. For at their lines of junction they project flatly
into encircling shelves, from top to bottom, rising one above another
in graduated series. And as the eaves of any old barn or abbey are
alive with swallows, so were all these rocky ledges with unnumbered
sea-fowl. Eaves upon eaves, and nests upon nests. Here and there were
long birdlime streaks of a ghostly white staining the tower from sea to
air, readily accounting for its sail-like look afar. All would have
been bewitchingly quiescent, were it not for the demoniac din created
by the birds. Not only were the eaves rustling with them, but they flew
densely overhead, spreading themselves into a winged and continually
shifting canopy. The tower is the resort of aquatic birds for hundreds
of leagues around. To the north, to the east, to the west, stretches
nothing but eternal ocean; so that the man-of-war hawk coming from the
coasts of North America, Polynesia, or Peru, makes his first land at
Rodondo. And yet though Rodondo be terra-firma, no land-bird ever
lighted on it. Fancy a red-robin or a canary there! What a falling into
the hands of the Philistines, when the poor warbler should be
surrounded by such locust-flights of strong bandit birds, with long
bills cruel as daggers.
I know not where one can better study the Natural History of strange
sea-fowl than at Rodondo. It is the aviary of Ocean. Birds light here
which never touched mast or tree; hermit-birds, which ever fly alone;
cloud-birds, familiar with unpierced zones of air.
Let us first glance low down to the lowermost shelf of all, which is
the widest, too, and but a little space from high-water mark. What
outlandish beings are these? Erect as men, but hardly as symmetrical,
they stand all round the rock like sculptured caryatides, supporting
the next range of eaves above. Their bodies are grotesquely misshapen;
their bills short; their feet seemingly legless; while the members at
their sides are neither fin, wing, nor arm. And truly neither fish,
flesh, nor fowl is the penguin; as an edible, pertaining neither to
Carnival nor Lent; without exception the most ambiguous and least
lovely creature yet discovered by man. Though dabbling in all three
elements, and indeed possessing some rudimental claims to all, the
penguin is at home in none. On land it stumps; afloat it sculls; in the
air it flops. As if ashamed of her failure, Nature keeps this ungainly
child hidden away at the ends of the earth, in the Straits of Magellan,
and on the abased sea-story of Rodondo.
But look, what are yon wobegone regiments drawn up on the next shelf
above? what rank and file of large strange fowl? what sea Friars of
Orders Gray? Pelicans. Their elongated bills, and heavy leathern
pouches suspended thereto, give them the most lugubrious expression. A
pensive race, they stand for hours together without motion. Their dull,
ashy plumage imparts an aspect as if they had been powdered over with
cinders. A penitential bird, indeed, fitly haunting the shores of the
clinkered Encantadas, whereon tormented Job himself might have well sat
down and scraped himself with potsherds.
Higher up now we mark the gony, or gray albatross, anomalously so
called, an unsightly unpoetic bird, unlike its storied kinsman, which
is the snow-white ghost of the haunted Capes of Hope and Horn.
As we still ascend from shelf to shelf, we find the tenants of the
tower serially disposed in order of their magnitude:—gannets, black and
speckled haglets, jays, sea-hens, sperm-whale-birds, gulls of all
varieties:—thrones, princedoms, powers, dominating one above another in
senatorial array; while, sprinkled over all, like an ever-repeated fly
in a great piece of broidery, the stormy petrel or Mother Cary’s
chicken sounds his continual challenge and alarm. That this mysterious
hummingbird of ocean—which, had it but brilliancy of hue, might, from
its evanescent liveliness, be almost called its butterfly, yet whose
chirrup under the stern is ominous to mariners as to the peasant the
death-tick sounding from behind the chimney jamb—should have its
special haunt at the Encantadas, contributes, in the seaman’s mind, not
a little to their dreary spell.
As day advances the dissonant din augments. With ear-splitting cries
the wild birds celebrate their matins. Each moment, flights push from
the tower, and join the aerial choir hovering overhead, while their
places below are supplied by darting myriads. But down through all this
discord of commotion, I hear clear, silver, bugle-like notes unbrokenly
falling, like oblique lines of swift-slanting rain in a cascading
shower. I gaze far up, and behold a snow-white angelic thing, with one
long, lance-like feather thrust out behind. It is the bright,
inspiriting chanticleer of ocean, the beauteous bird, from its
bestirring whistle of musical invocation, fitly styled the “Boatswain’s
Mate.”
The winged, life-clouding Rodondo had its full counterpart in the finny
hosts which peopled the waters at its base. Below the water-line, the
rock seemed one honey-comb of grottoes, affording labyrinthine
lurking-places for swarms of fairy fish. All were strange; many
exceedingly beautiful; and would have well graced the costliest glass
globes in which gold-fish are kept for a show. Nothing was more
striking than the complete novelty of many individuals of this
multitude. Here hues were seen as yet unpainted, and figures which are
unengraved.
To show the multitude, avidity, and nameless fearlessness and tameness
of these fish, let me say, that often, marking through clear spaces of
water—temporarily made so by the concentric dartings of the fish above
the surface—certain larger and less unwary wights, which swam slow and
deep; our anglers would cautiously essay to drop their lines down to
these last. But in vain; there was no passing the uppermost zone. No
sooner did the hook touch the sea, than a hundred infatuates contended
for the honor of capture. Poor fish of Rodondo! in your victimized
confidence, you are of the number of those who inconsiderately trust,
while they do not understand, human nature.
But the dawn is now fairly day. Band after band, the sea-fowl sail away
to forage the deep for their food. The tower is left solitary save the
fish-caves at its base. Its birdlime gleams in the golden rays like the
whitewash of a tall light-house, or the lofty sails of a cruiser. This
moment, doubtless, while we know it to be a dead desert rock other
voyagers are taking oaths it is a glad populous ship.
But ropes now, and let us ascend. Yet soft, this is not so easy.
SKETCH FOURTH.
A PISGAH VIEW FROM THE ROCK.
—“That done, he leads him to the highest mount,
From whence, far off he unto him did show:”—
If you seek to ascend Rock Rodondo, take the following prescription. Go
three voyages round the world as a main-royal-man of the tallest
frigate that floats; then serve a year or two apprenticeship to the
guides who conduct strangers up the Peak of Teneriffe; and as many more
respectively to a rope-dancer, an Indian juggler, and a chamois. This
done, come and be rewarded by the view from our tower. How we get
there, we alone know. If we sought to tell others, what the wiser were
they? Suffice it, that here at the summit you and I stand. Does any
balloonist, does the outlooking man in the moon, take a broader view of
space? Much thus, one fancies, looks the universe from Milton’s
celestial battlements. A boundless watery Kentucky. Here Daniel Boone
would have dwelt content.
Never heed for the present yonder Burnt District of the Enchanted
Isles. Look edgeways, as it were, past them, to the south. You see
nothing; but permit me to point out the direction, if not the place, of
certain interesting objects in the vast sea, which, kissing this
tower’s base, we behold unscrolling itself towards the Antarctic Pole.
We stand now ten miles from the Equator. Yonder, to the East, some six
hundred miles, lies the continent; this Rock being just about on the
parallel of Quito.
Observe another thing here. We are at one of three uninhabited
clusters, which, at pretty nearly uniform distances from the main,
sentinel, at long intervals from each other, the entire coast of South
America. In a peculiar manner, also, they terminate the South American
character of country. Of the unnumbered Polynesian chains to the
westward, not one partakes of the qualities of the Encantadas or
Gallipagos, the isles of St. Felix and St. Ambrose, the isles
Juan-Fernandez and Massafuero. Of the first, it needs not here to
speak. The second lie a little above the Southern Tropic; lofty,
inhospitable, and uninhabitable rocks, one of which, presenting two
round hummocks connected by a low reef, exactly resembles a huge
double-headed shot. The last lie in the latitude of 33°; high, wild and
cloven. Juan Fernandez is sufficiently famous without further
description. Massafuero is a Spanish name, expressive of the fact, that
the isle so called lies _more without_, that is, further off the main
than its neighbor Juan. This isle Massafuero has a very imposing aspect
at a distance of eight or ten miles. Approached in one direction, in
cloudy weather, its great overhanging height and rugged contour, and
more especially a peculiar slope of its broad summits, give it much the
air of a vast iceberg drifting in tremendous poise. Its sides are split
with dark cavernous recesses, as an old cathedral with its gloomy
lateral chapels. Drawing nigh one of these gorges from sea, after a
long voyage, and beholding some tatterdemalion outlaw, staff in hand,
descending its steep rocks toward you, conveys a very queer emotion to
a lover of the picturesque.
On fishing parties from ships, at various times, I have chanced to
visit each of these groups. The impression they give to the stranger
pulling close up in his boat under their grim cliffs is, that surely he
must be their first discoverer, such, for the most part, is the
unimpaired ... silence and solitude. And here, by the way, the mode in
which these isles were really first lighted upon by Europeans is not
unworthy of mention, especially as what is about to be said, likewise
applies to the original discovery of our Encantadas.
Prior to the year 1563, the voyages made by Spanish ships from Peru to
Chili, were full of difficulty. Along this coast, the winds from the
South most generally prevail; and it had been an invariable custom to
keep close in with the land, from a superstitious conceit on the part
of the Spaniards, that were they to lose sight of it, the eternal
trade-wind would waft them into unending waters, from whence would be
no return. Here, involved among tortuous capes and headlands, shoals
and reefs, beating, too, against a continual head wind, often light,
and sometimes for days and weeks sunk into utter calm, the provincial
vessels, in many cases, suffered the extremest hardships, in passages,
which at the present day seem to have been incredibly protracted. There
is on record in some collections of nautical disasters, an account of
one of these ships, which, starting on a voyage whose duration was
estimated at ten days, spent four months at sea, and indeed never again
entered harbor, for in the end she was cast away. Singular to tell,
this craft never encountered a gale, but was the vexed sport of
malicious calms and currents. Thrice, out of provisions, she put back
to an intermediate port, and started afresh, but only yet again to
return. Frequent fogs enveloped her; so that no observation could be
had of her place, and once, when all hands were joyously anticipating
sight of their destination, lo! the vapors lifted and disclosed the
mountains from which they had taken their first departure. In the like
deceptive vapors she at last struck upon a reef, whence ensued a long
series of calamities too sad to detail.
It was the famous pilot, Juan Fernandez, immortalized by the island
named after him, who put an end to these coasting tribulations, by
boldly venturing the experiment—as De Gama did before him with respect
to Europe—of standing broad out from land. Here he found the winds
favorable for getting to the South, and by running westward till beyond
the influences of the trades, he regained the coast without difficulty;
making the passage which, though in a high degree circuitous, proved
far more expeditious than the nominally direct one. Now it was upon
these new tracks, and about the year 1670, or thereabouts, that the
Enchanted Isles, and the rest of the sentinel groups, as they may be
called, were discovered. Though I know of no account as to whether any
of them were found inhabited or no, it may be reasonably concluded that
they have been immemorial solitudes. But let us return to Redondo.
Southwest from our tower lies all Polynesia, hundreds of leagues away;
but straight west, on the precise line of his parallel, no land rises
till your keel is beached upon the Kingsmills, a nice little sail of,
say 5000 miles.
Having thus by such distant references—with Rodondo the only possible
ones—settled our relative place on the sea, let us consider objects not
quite so remote. Behold the grim and charred Enchanted Isles. This
nearest crater-shaped headland is part of Albemarle, the largest of the
group, being some sixty miles or more long, and fifteen broad. Did you
ever lay eye on the real genuine Equator? Have you ever, in the largest
sense, toed the Line? Well, that identical crater-shaped headland
there, all yellow lava, is cut by the Equator exactly as a knife cuts
straight through the centre of a pumpkin pie. If you could only see so
far, just to one side of that same headland, across yon low dikey
ground, you would catch sight of the isle of Narborough, the loftiest
land of the cluster; no soil whatever; one seamed clinker from top to
bottom; abounding in black caves like smithies; its metallic shore
ringing under foot like plates of iron; its central volcanoes standing
grouped like a gigantic chimney-stack.
Narborough and Albemarle are neighbors after a quite curious fashion. A
familiar diagram will illustrate this strange neighborhood:
[Illustration]
Cut a channel at the above letter joint, and the middle transverse limb
is Narborough, and all the rest is Albemarle. Volcanic Narborough lies
in the black jaws of Albemarle like a wolf’s red tongue in his open
month.
If now you desire the population of Albemarle, I will give you, in
round numbers, the statistics, according to the most reliable estimates
made upon the spot:
Men, none. Ant-eaters, unknown. Man-haters, unknown.
Lizards, 500,000. Snakes, 500,000. Spiders, 10,000,000.
Salamanders, unknown. Devils, do. Making a clean total
of 11,000,000,
exclusive of an incomputable host of fiends, ant-eaters, man-haters,
and salamanders.
Albemarle opens his mouth towards the setting sun. His distended jaws
form a great bay, which Narborough, his tongue, divides into halves,
one whereof is called Weather Bay, the other Lee Bay; while the
volcanic promontories, terminating his coasts, are styled South Head
and North Head. I note this, because these bays are famous in the
annals of the Sperm Whale Fishery. The whales come here at certain
seasons to calve. When ships first cruised hereabouts, I am told, they
used to blockade the entrance of Lee Bay, when their boats going round
by Weather Bay, passed through Narborough channel, and so had the
Leviathans very neatly in a pen.
The day after we took fish at the base of this Round Tower, we had a
fine wind, and shooting round the north headland, suddenly descried a
fleet of full thirty sail, all beating to windward like a squadron in
line. A brave sight as ever man saw. A most harmonious concord of
rushing keels. Their thirty kelsons hummed like thirty harp-strings,
and looked as straight whilst they left their parallel traces on the
sea. But there proved too many hunters for the game. The fleet broke
up, and went their separate ways out of sight, leaving my own ship and
two trim gentlemen of London. These last, finding no luck either,
likewise vanished; and Lee Bay, with all its appurtenances, and without
a rival, devolved to us.
The way of cruising here is this. You keep hovering about the entrance
of the bay, in one beat and out the next. But at times—not always, as
in other parts of the group—a racehorse of a current sweeps right
across its mouth. So, with all sails set, you carefully ply your tacks.
How often, standing at the foremast head at sunrise, with our patient
prow pointed in between these isles, did I gaze upon that land, not of
cakes, but of clinkers, not of streams of sparkling water, but arrested
torrents of tormented lava.
As the ship runs in from the open sea, Narborough presents its side in
one dark craggy mass, soaring up some five or six thousand feet, at
which point it hoods itself in heavy clouds, whose lowest level fold is
as clearly defined against the rocks as the snow-line against the
Andes. There is dire mischief going on in that upper dark. There toil
the demons of fire, who, at intervals, irradiate the nights with a
strange spectral illumination for miles and miles around, but
unaccompanied by any further demonstration; or else, suddenly announce
themselves by terrific concussions, and the full drama of a volcanic
eruption. The blacker that cloud by day, the more may you look for
light by night. Often whalemen have found themselves cruising nigh that
burning mountain when all aglow with a ball-room blaze. Or, rather,
glass-works, you may call this same vitreous isle of Narborough, with
its tall chimney-stacks.
Where we still stand, here on Rodondo, we cannot see all the other
isles, but it is a good place from which to point out where they lie.
Yonder, though, to the E.N.E., I mark a distant dusky ridge. It is
Abington Isle, one of the most northerly of the group; so solitary,
remote, and blank, it looks like No-Man’s Land seen off our northern
shore. I doubt whether two human beings ever touched upon that spot. So
far as yon Abington Isle is concerned, Adam and his billions of
posterity remain uncreated.
Ranging south of Abington, and quite out of sight behind the long spine
of Albemarle, lies James’s Isle, so called by the early Buccaneers
after the luckless Stuart, Duke of York. Observe here, by the way,
that, excepting the isles particularized in comparatively recent times,
and which mostly received the names of famous Admirals, the Encantadas
were first christened by the Spaniards; but these Spanish names were
generally effaced on English charts by the subsequent christenings of
the Buccaneers, who, in the middle of the seventeenth century, called
them after English noblemen and kings. Of these loyal freebooters and
the things which associate their name with the Encantadas, we shall
hear anon. Nay, for one little item, immediately; for between James’s
Isle and Albemarle, lies a fantastic islet, strangely known as
“Cowley’s Enchanted Isle.” But, as all the group is deemed enchanted,
the reason must be given for the spell within a spell involved by this
particular designation. The name was bestowed by that excellent
Buccaneer himself, on his first visit here. Speaking in his published
voyages of this spot, he says—“My fancy led me to call it Cowley’s
Enchanted Isle, for, we having had a sight of it upon several points of
the compass, it appeared always in so many different forms; sometimes
like a ruined fortification; upon another point like a great city,”
etc. No wonder though, that among the Encantadas all sorts of ocular
deceptions and mirages should be met.
That Cowley linked his name with this self-transforming and bemocking
isle, suggests the possibility that it conveyed to him some meditative
image of himself. At least, as is not impossible, if he were any
relative of the mildly-thoughtful and self-upbraiding poet Cowley, who
lived about his time, the conceit might seem unwarranted; for that sort
of thing evinced in the naming of this isle runs in the blood, and may
be seen in pirates as in poets.
Still south of James’s Isle lie Jervis Isle, Duncan Isle, Grossman’s
Isle, Brattle Isle, Wood’s Isle, Chatham Isle, and various lesser
isles, for the most part an archipelago of aridities, without
inhabitant, history, or hope of either in all time to come. But not far
from these are rather notable isles—Barrington, Charles’s, Norfolk, and
Hood’s. Succeeding chapters will reveal some ground for their
notability.
SKETCH FIFTH.
THE FRIGATE, AND SHIP FLYAWAY.
“Looking far forth into the ocean wide,
A goodly ship with banners bravely dight,
And flag in her top-gallant I espide,
Through the main sea making her merry flight.”
Ere quitting Rodondo, it must not be omitted that here, in 1813, the
U.S. frigate Essex, Captain David Porter, came near leaving her bones.
Lying becalmed one morning with a strong current setting her rapidly
towards the rock, a strange sail was descried, which—not out of keeping
with alleged enchantments of the neighborhood—seemed to be staggering
under a violent wind, while the frigate lay lifeless as if spell-bound.
But a light air springing up, all sail was made by the frigate in chase
of the enemy, as supposed—he being deemed an English whale-ship—but the
rapidity of the current was so great, that soon all sight was lost of
him; and, at meridian, the Essex, spite of her drags, was driven so
close under the foam-lashed cliffs of Rodondo that, for a time, all
hands gave her up. A smart breeze, however, at last helped her off,
though the escape was so critical as to seem almost miraculous.
Thus saved from destruction herself, she now made use of that salvation
to destroy the other vessel, if possible. Renewing the chase in the
direction in which the stranger had disappeared, sight was caught of
him the following morning. Upon being descried he hoisted American
colors and stood away from the Essex. A calm ensued; when, still
confident that the stranger was an Englishman, Porter dispatched a
cutter, not to board the enemy, but drive back his boats engaged in
towing him. The cutter succeeded. Cutters were subsequently sent to
capture him; the stranger now showing English colors in place of
American. But, when the frigate’s boats were within a short distance of
their hoped-for prize, another sudden breeze sprang up; the stranger,
under all sail, bore off to the westward, and, ere night, was hull down
ahead of the Essex, which, all this time, lay perfectly becalmed.
This enigmatic craft—American in the morning, and English in the
evening—her sails full of wind in a calm—was never again beheld. An
enchanted ship no doubt. So, at least, the sailors swore.
This cruise of the Essex in the Pacific during the war of 1812, is,
perhaps, the strangest and most stirring to be found in the history of
the American navy. She captured the furthest wandering vessels; visited
the remotest seas and isles; long hovered in the charmed vicinity of
the enchanted group; and, finally, valiantly gave up the ghost fighting
two English frigates in the harbor of Valparaiso. Mention is made of
her here for the same reason that the Buccaneers will likewise receive
record; because, like them, by long cruising among the isles,
tortoise-hunting upon their shores, and generally exploring them; for
these and other reasons, the Essex is peculiarly associated with the
Encantadas.
Here be it said that you have but three, eye-witness authorities worth
mentioning touching the Enchanted Isles:—Cowley, the Buccaneer (1684);
Colnet the whaling-ground explorer (1798); Porter, the post captain
(1813). Other than these you have but barren, bootless allusions from
some few passing voyagers or compilers.
SKETCH SIXTH.
BARRINGTON ISLE AND THE BUCCANEERS.
“Let us all servile base subjection scorn,
And as we be sons of the earth so wide,
Let us our father’s heritage divide,
And challenge to ourselves our portions dew
Of all the patrimony, which a few
hold on hugger-mugger in their hand.”
“Lords of the world, and so will wander free,
Whereso us listeth, uncontroll’d of any.”
“How bravely now we live, how jocund, how near the
first inheritance, without fear, how free from little troubles!”
Near two centuries ago Barrington Isle was the resort of that famous
wing of the West Indian Buccaneers, which, upon their repulse from the
Cuban waters, crossing the Isthmus of Darien, ravaged the Pacific side
of the Spanish colonies, and, with the regularity and timing of a
modern mail, waylaid the royal treasure-ships plying between Manilla
and Acapulco. After the toils of piratic war, here they came to say
their prayers, enjoy their free-and-easies, count their crackers from
the cask, their doubloons from the keg, and measure their silks of Asia
with long Toledos for their yard-sticks.
As a secure retreat, an undiscoverable hiding-place, no spot in those
days could have been better fitted. In the centre of a vast and silent
sea, but very little traversed—surrounded by islands, whose
inhospitable aspect might well drive away the chance navigator—and yet
within a few days’ sail of the opulent countries which they made their
prey—the unmolested Buccaneers found here that tranquillity which they
fiercely denied to every civilized harbor in that part of the world.
Here, after stress of weather, or a temporary drubbing at the hands of
their vindictive foes, or in swift flight with golden booty, those old
marauders came, and lay snugly out of all harm’s reach. But not only
was the place a harbor of safety, and a bower of ease, but for utility
in other things it was most admirable.
Barrington Isle is, in many respects, singularly adapted to careening,
refitting, refreshing, and other seamen’s purposes. Not only has it
good water, and good anchorage, well sheltered from all winds by the
high land of Albemarle, but it is the least unproductive isle of the
group. Tortoises good for food, trees good for fuel, and long grass
good for bedding, abound here, and there are pretty natural walks, and
several landscapes to be seen. Indeed, though in its locality belonging
to the Enchanted group, Barrington Isle is so unlike most of its
neighbors, that it would hardly seem of kin to them.
“I once landed on its western side,” says a sentimental voyager long
ago, “where it faces the black buttress of Albemarle. I walked beneath
groves of trees—not very lofty, and not palm trees, or orange trees, or
peach trees, to be sure—but, for all that, after long sea-faring, very
beautiful to walk under, even though they supplied no fruit. And here,
in calm spaces at the heads of glades, and on the shaded tops of slopes
commanding the most quiet scenery—what do you think I saw? Seats which
might have served Brahmins and presidents of peace societies. Fine old
ruins of what had once been symmetric lounges of stone and turf, they
bore every mark both of artificialness and age, and were, undoubtedly,
made by the Buccaneers. One had been a long sofa, with back and arms,
just such a sofa as the poet Gray might have loved to throw himself
upon, his Crebillon in hand.
“Though they sometimes tarried here for months at a time, and used the
spot for a storing-place for spare spars, sails, and casks; yet it is
highly improbable that the Buccaneers ever erected dwelling-houses upon
the isle. They never were here except their ships remained, and they
would most likely have slept on board. I mention this, because I cannot
avoid the thought, that it is hard to impute the construction of these
romantic seats to any other motive than one of pure peacefulness and
kindly fellowship with nature. That the Buccaneers perpetrated the
greatest outrages is very true—that some of them were mere cutthroats
is not to be denied; but we know that here and there among their host
was a Dampier, a Wafer, and a Cowley, and likewise other men, whose
worst reproach was their desperate fortunes—whom persecution, or
adversity, or secret and unavengeable wrongs, had driven from Christian
society to seek the melancholy solitude or the guilty adventures of the
sea. At any rate, long as those ruins of seats on Barrington remain,
the most singular monuments are furnished to the fact, that all of the
Buccaneers were not unmitigated monsters.
“But during my ramble on the isle I was not long in discovering other
tokens, of things quite in accordance with those wild traits,
popularly, and no doubt truly enough, imputed to the freebooters at
large. Had I picked up old sails and rusty hoops I would only have
thought of the ship’s carpenter and cooper. But I found old cutlasses
and daggers reduced to mere threads of rust, which, doubtless, had
stuck between Spanish ribs ere now. These were signs of the murderer
and robber; the reveler likewise had left his trace. Mixed with shells,
fragments of broken jars were lying here and there, high up upon the
beach. They were precisely like the jars now used upon the Spanish
coast for the wine and Pisco spirits of that country.
“With a rusty dagger-fragment in one hand, and a bit of a wine-jar in
another, I sat me down on the ruinous green sofa I have spoken of, and
bethought me long and deeply of these same Buccaneers. Could it be
possible, that they robbed and murdered one day, reveled the next, and
rested themselves by turning meditative philosophers, rural poets, and
seat-builders on the third? Not very improbable, after all. For
consider the vacillations of a man. Still, strange as it may seem, I
must also abide by the more charitable thought; namely, that among
these adventurers were some gentlemanly, companionable souls, capable
of genuine tranquillity and virtue.”
SKETCH SEVENTH.
CHARLES’S ISLE AND THE DOG-KING.
—So with outragious cry,
A thousand villeins round about him swarmed
Out of the rocks and caves adjoining nye;
Vile caitive wretches, ragged, rude, deformed;
All threatning death, all in straunge manner armed;
Some with unweldy clubs, some with long speares.
Some rusty knives, some staves in fier warmd.
We will not be of any occupation,
Let such vile vassals, born to base vocation,
Drudge in the world, and for their living droyle,
Which have no wit to live withouten toyle.
Southwest of Barrington lies Charles’s Isle. And hereby hangs a history
which I gathered long ago from a shipmate learned in all the lore of
outlandish life.
During the successful revolt of the Spanish provinces from Old Spain,
there fought on behalf of Peru a certain Creole adventurer from Cuba,
who, by his bravery and good fortune, at length advanced himself to
high rank in the patriot army. The war being ended, Peru found itself
like many valorous gentlemen, free and independent enough, but with few
shot in the locker. In other words, Peru had not wherewithal to pay off
its troops. But the Creole—I forget his name—volunteered to take his
pay in lands. So they told him he might have his pick of the Enchanted
Isles, which were then, as they still remain, the nominal appanage of
Peru. The soldier straightway embarks thither, explores the group,
returns to Callao, and says he will take a deed of Charles’s Isle.
Moreover, this deed must stipulate that thenceforth Charles’s Isle is
not only the sole property of the Creole, but is forever free of Peru,
even as Peru of Spain. To be short, this adventurer procures himself to
be made in effect Supreme Lord of the Island, one of the princes of the
powers of the earth.[1]
[1] The American Spaniards have long been in the habit of making
presents of islands to deserving individuals. The pilot Juan Fernandez
procured a deed of the isle named after him, and for some years
resided there before Selkirk came. It is supposed, however, that he
eventually contracted the blues upon his princely property, for after
a time he returned to the main, and as report goes, became a very
garrulous barber in the city of Lima.
He now sends forth a proclamation inviting subjects to his as yet
unpopulated kingdom. Some eighty souls, men and women, respond; and
being provided by their leader with necessaries, and tools of various
sorts, together with a few cattle and goats, take ship for the promised
land; the last arrival on board, prior to sailing, being the Creole
himself, accompanied, strange to say, by a disciplined cavalry company
of large grim dogs. These, it was observed on the passage, refusing to
consort with the emigrants, remained aristocratically grouped around
their master on the elevated quarter-deck, casting disdainful glances
forward upon the inferior rabble there; much as, from the ramparts, the
soldiers of a garrison, thrown into a conquered town, eye the
inglorious citizen-mob over which they are set to watch.
Now Charles’s Isle not only resembles Barrington Isle in being much
more inhabitable than other parts of the group, but it is double the
size of Barrington, say forty or fifty miles in circuit.
Safely debarked at last, the company, under direction of their lord and
patron, forthwith proceeded to build their capital city. They make
considerable advance in the way of walls of clinkers, and lava floors,
nicely sanded with cinders. On the least barren hills they pasture
their cattle, while the goats, adventurers by nature, explore the far
inland solitudes for a scanty livelihood of lofty herbage. Meantime,
abundance of fish and tortoises supply their other wants.
The disorders incident to settling all primitive regions, in the
present case were heightened by the peculiarly untoward character of
many of the pilgrims. His Majesty was forced at last to proclaim
martial law, and actually hunted and shot with his own hand several of
his rebellious subjects, who, with most questionable intentions, had
clandestinely encamped in the interior, whence they stole by night, to
prowl barefooted on tiptoe round the precincts of the lava-palace. It
is to be remarked, however, that prior to such stern proceedings, the
more reliable men had been judiciously picked out for an infantry
body-guard, subordinate to the cavalry body-guard of dogs. But the
state of politics in this unhappy nation may be somewhat imagined, from
the circumstance that all who were not of the body-guard were downright
plotters and malignant traitors. At length the death penalty was
tacitly abolished, owing to the timely thought, that were strict
sportsman’s justice to be dispensed among such subjects, ere long the
Nimrod King would have little or no remaining game to shoot. The human
part of the life-guard was now disbanded, and set to work cultivating
the soil, and raising potatoes; the regular army now solely consisting
of the dog-regiment. These, as I have heard, were of a singularly
ferocious character, though by severe training rendered docile to their
master. Armed to the teeth, the Creole now goes in state, surrounded by
his canine janizaries, whose terrific bayings prove quite as
serviceable as bayonets in keeping down the surgings of revolt.
But the census of the isle, sadly lessened by the dispensation of
justice, and not materially recruited by matrimony, began to fill his
mind with sad mistrust. Some way the population must be increased. Now,
from its possessing a little water, and its comparative pleasantness of
aspect, Charles’s Isle at this period was occasionally visited by
foreign whalers. These His Majesty had always levied upon for port
charges, thereby contributing to his revenue. But now he had additional
designs. By insidious arts he, from time to time, cajoles certain
sailors to desert their ships, and enlist beneath his banner. Soon as
missed, their captains crave permission to go and hunt them up.
Whereupon His Majesty first hides them very carefully away, and then
freely permits the search. In consequence, the delinquents are never
found, and the ships retire without them.
Thus, by a two-edged policy of this crafty monarch, foreign nations
were crippled in the number of their subjects, and his own were greatly
multiplied. He particularly petted these renegado strangers. But alas
for the deep-laid schemes of ambitious princes, and alas for the vanity
of glory. As the foreign-born Pretorians, unwisely introduced into the
Roman state, and still more unwisely made favorites of the Emperors, at
last insulted and overturned the throne, even so these lawless
mariners, with all the rest of the body-guard and all the populace,
broke out into a terrible mutiny, and defied their master. He marched
against them with all his dogs. A deadly battle ensued upon the beach.
It raged for three hours, the dogs fighting with determined valor, and
the sailors reckless of everything but victory. Three men and thirteen
dogs were left dead upon the field, many on both sides were wounded,
and the king was forced to fly with the remainder of his canine
regiment. The enemy pursued, stoning the dogs with their master into
the wilderness of the interior. Discontinuing the pursuit, the victors
returned to the village on the shore, stove the spirit casks, and
proclaimed a Republic. The dead men were interred with the honors of
war, and the dead dogs ignominiously thrown into the sea. At last,
forced by stress of suffering, the fugitive Creole came down from the
hills and offered to treat for peace. But the rebels refused it on any
other terms than his unconditional banishment. Accordingly, the next
ship that arrived carried away the ex-king to Peru.
The history of the king of Charles’s Island furnishes another
illustration of the difficulty of colonizing barren islands with
unprincipled pilgrims.
Doubtless for a long time the exiled monarch, pensively ruralizing in
Peru, which afforded him a safe asylum in his calamity, watched every
arrival from the Encantadas, to hear news of the failure of the
Republic, the consequent penitence of the rebels, and his own recall to
royalty. Doubtless he deemed the Republic but a miserable experiment
which would soon explode. But no, the insurgents had confederated
themselves into a democracy neither Grecian, Roman, nor American. Nay,
it was no democracy at all, but a permanent _Riotocracy_, which gloried
in having no law but lawlessness. Great inducements being offered to
deserters, their ranks were swelled by accessions of scamps from every
ship which touched their shores. Charles’s Island was proclaimed the
asylum of the oppressed of all navies. Each runaway tar was hailed as a
martyr in the cause of freedom, and became immediately installed a
ragged citizen of this universal nation. In vain the captains of
absconding seamen strove to regain them. Their new compatriots were
ready to give any number of ornamental eyes in their behalf. They had
few cannon, but their fists were not to be trifled with. So at last it
came to pass that no vessels acquainted with the character of that
country durst touch there, however sorely in want of refreshment. It
became Anathema—a sea Alsatia—the unassailed lurking-place of all sorts
of desperadoes, who in the name of liberty did just what they pleased.
They continually fluctuated in their numbers. Sailors, deserting ships
at other islands, or in boats at sea anywhere in that vicinity, steered
for Charles’s Isle, as to their sure home of refuge; while, sated with
the life of the isle, numbers from time to time crossed the water to
the neighboring ones, and there presenting themselves to strange
captains as shipwrecked seamen, often succeeded in getting on board
vessels bound to the Spanish coast, and having a compassionate purse
made up for them on landing there.
One warm night during my first visit to the group, our ship was
floating along in languid stillness, when some one on the forecastle
shouted “Light ho!” We looked and saw a beacon burning on some obscure
land off the beam. Our third mate was not intimate with this part of
the world. Going to the captain he said, “Sir, shall I put off in a
boat? These must be shipwrecked men.”
The captain laughed rather grimly, as, shaking his fist towards the
beacon, he rapped out an oath, and said—“No, no, you precious rascals,
you don’t juggle one of my boats ashore this blessed night. You do
well, you thieves—you do benevolently to hoist a light yonder as on a
dangerous shoal. It tempts no wise man to pull off and see what’s the
matter, but bids him steer small and keep off shore—that is Charles’s
Island; brace up, Mr. Mate, and keep the light astern.”
SKETCH EIGHTH.
NORFOLK ISLE AND THE CHOLA WIDOW.
“At last they in an island did espy
A seemly woman sitting by the shore,
That with great sorrow and sad agony
Seemed some great misfortune to deplore;
And loud to them for succor called evermore.”
“Black his eye as the midnight sky.
White his neck as the driven snow,
Red his cheek as the morning light;—
Cold he lies in the ground below.
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed, ys
All under the cactus tree.”
“Each lonely scene shall thee restore,
For thee the tear be duly shed;
Belov’d till life can charm no more,
And mourned till Pity’s self be dead.”
Far to the northeast of Charles’s Isle, sequestered from the rest, lies
Norfolk Isle; and, however insignificant to most voyagers, to me,
through sympathy, that lone island has become a spot made sacred by the
strangest trials of humanity.
It was my first visit to the Encantadas. Two days had been spent ashore
in hunting tortoises. There was not time to capture many; so on the
third afternoon we loosed our sails. We were just in the act of getting
under way, the uprooted anchor yet suspended and invisibly swaying
beneath the wave, as the good ship gradually turned her heel to leave
the isle behind, when the seaman who heaved with me at the windlass
paused suddenly, and directed my attention to something moving on the
land, not along the beach, but somewhat back, fluttering from a height.
In view of the sequel of this little story, be it here narrated how it
came to pass, that an object which partly from its being so small was
quite lost to every other man on board, still caught the eye of my
handspike companion. The rest of the crew, myself included, merely
stood up to our spikes in heaving, whereas, unwontedly exhilarated, at
every turn of the ponderous windlass, my belted comrade leaped atop of
it, with might and main giving a downward, thewey, perpendicular heave,
his raised eye bent in cheery animation upon the slowly receding shore.
Being high lifted above all others was the reason he perceived the
object, otherwise unperceivable; and this elevation of his eye was
owing to the elevation of his spirits; and this again—for truth must
out—to a dram of Peruvian pisco, in guerdon for some kindness done,
secretly administered to him that morning by our mulatto steward. Now,
certainly, pisco does a deal of mischief in the world; yet seeing that,
in the present case, it was the means, though indirect, of rescuing a
human being from the most dreadful fate, must we not also needs admit
that sometimes pisco does a deal of good?
Glancing across the water in the direction pointed out, I saw some
white thing hanging from an inland rock, perhaps half a mile from the
sea.
“It is a bird; a white-winged bird; perhaps a—no; it is—it is a
handkerchief!”
“Ay, a handkerchief!” echoed my comrade, and with a louder shout
apprised the captain.
Quickly now—like the running out and training of a great gun—the long
cabin spy-glass was thrust through the mizzen rigging from the high
platform of the poop; whereupon a human figure was plainly seen upon
the inland rock, eagerly waving towards us what seemed to be the
handkerchief.
Our captain was a prompt, good fellow. Dropping the glass, he lustily
ran forward, ordering the anchor to be dropped again; hands to stand by
a boat, and lower away.
In a half-hour’s time the swift boat returned. It went with six and
came with seven; and the seventh was a woman.
It is not artistic heartlessness, but I wish I could but draw in
crayons; for this woman was a most touching sight; and crayons, tracing
softly melancholy lines, would best depict the mournful image of the
dark-damasked Chola widow.
Her story was soon told, and though given in her own strange language
was as quickly understood; for our captain, from long trading on the
Chilian coast, was well versed in the Spanish. A Cholo, or half-breed
Indian woman of Payta in Peru, three years gone by, with her young
new-wedded husband Felipe, of pure Castilian blood, and her one only
Indian brother, Truxill, Hunilla had taken passage on the main in a
French whaler, commanded by a joyous man; which vessel, bound to the
cruising grounds beyond the Enchanted Isles, proposed passing close by
their vicinity. The object of the little party was to procure tortoise
oil, a fluid which for its great purity and delicacy is held in high
estimation wherever known; and it is well known all along this part of
the Pacific coast. With a chest of clothes, tools, cooking utensils, a
rude apparatus for trying out the oil, some casks of biscuit, and other
things, not omitting two favorite dogs, of which faithful animal all
the Cholos are very fond, Hunilla and her companions were safely landed
at their chosen place; the Frenchman, according to the contract made
ere sailing, engaged to take them off upon returning from a four
months’ cruise in the westward seas; which interval the three
adventurers deemed quite sufficient for their purposes.
On the isle’s lone beach they paid him in silver for their passage out,
the stranger having declined to carry them at all except upon that
condition; though willing to take every means to insure the due
fulfillment of his promise. Felipe had striven hard to have this
payment put off to the period of the ship’s return. But in vain. Still
they thought they had, in another way, ample pledge of the good faith
of the Frenchman. It was arranged that the expenses of the passage home
should not be payable in silver, but in tortoises; one hundred
tortoises ready captured to the returning captain’s hand. These the
Cholos meant to secure after their own work was done, against the
probable time of the Frenchman’s coming back; and no doubt in prospect
already felt, that in those hundred tortoises—now somewhere ranging the
isle’s interior—they possessed one hundred hostages. Enough: the vessel
sailed; the gazing three on shore answered the loud glee of the singing
crew; and ere evening, the French craft was hull down in the distant
sea, its masts three faintest lines which quickly faded from Hunilla’s
eye.
The stranger had given a blithesome promise, and anchored it with
oaths; but oaths and anchors equally will drag; naught else abides on
fickle earth but unkept promises of joy. Contrary winds from out
unstable skies, or contrary moods of his more varying mind, or
shipwreck and sudden death in solitary waves; whatever was the cause,
the blithe stranger never was seen again.
Yet, however dire a calamity was here in store, misgivings of it ere
due time never disturbed the Cholos’ busy mind, now all intent upon the
toilsome matter which had brought them hither. Nay, by swift doom
coming like the thief at night, ere seven weeks went by, two of the
little party were removed from all anxieties of land or sea. No more
they sought to gaze with feverish fear, or still more feverish hope,
beyond the present’s horizon line; but into the furthest future their
own silent spirits sailed. By persevering labor beneath that burning
sun, Felipe and Truxill had brought down to their hut many scores of
tortoises, and tried out the oil, when, elated with their good success,
and to reward themselves for such hard work, they, too hastily, made a
catamaran, or Indian raft, much used on the Spanish main, and merrily
started on a fishing trip, just without a long reef with many jagged
gaps, running parallel with the shore, about half a mile from it. By
some bad tide or hap, or natural negligence of joyfulness (for though
they could not be heard, yet by their gestures they seemed singing at
the time) forced in deep water against that iron bar, the ill-made
catamaran was overset, and came all to pieces; when dashed by
broad-chested swells between their broken logs and the sharp teeth of
the reef, both adventurers perished before Hunilla’s eyes.
Before Hunilla’s eyes they sank. The real woe of this event passed
before her sight as some sham tragedy on the stage. She was seated on a
rude bower among the withered thickets, crowning a lofty cliff, a
little back from the beach. The thickets were so disposed, that in
looking upon the sea at large she peered out from among the branches as
from the lattice of a high balcony. But upon the day we speak of here,
the better to watch the adventure of those two hearts she loved,
Hunilla had withdrawn the branches to one side, and held them so. They
formed an oval frame, through which the bluely boundless sea rolled
like a painted one. And there, the invisible painter painted to her
view the wave-tossed and disjointed raft, its once level logs
slantingly upheaved, as raking masts, and the four struggling arms
indistinguishable among them; and then all subsided into smooth-flowing
creamy waters, slowly drifting the splintered wreck; while first and
last, no sound of any sort was heard. Death in a silent picture; a
dream of the eye; such vanishing shapes as the mirage shows.
So instant was the scene, so trance-like its mild pictorial effect, so
distant from her blasted bower and her common sense of things, that
Hunilla gazed and gazed, nor raised a finger or a wail. But as good to
sit thus dumb, in stupor staring on that dumb show, for all that
otherwise might be done. With half a mile of sea between, how could her
two enchanted arms aid those four fated ones? The distance long, the
time one sand. After the lightning is beheld, what fool shall stay the
thunder-bolt? Felipe’s body was washed ashore, but Truxill’s never
came; only his gay, braided hat of golden straw—that same sunflower
thing he waved to her, pushing from the strand—and now, to the last
gallant, it still saluted her. But Felipe’s body floated to the marge,
with one arm encirclingly outstretched. Lock-jawed in grim death, the
lover-husband softly clasped his bride, true to her even in death’s
dream. Ah, heaven, when man thus keeps his faith, wilt thou be
faithless who created the faithful one? But they cannot break faith who
never plighted it.
It needs not to be said what nameless misery now wrapped the lonely
widow. In telling her own story she passed this almost entirely over,
simply recounting the event. Construe the comment of her features as
you might, from her mere words little would you have weened that
Hunilla was herself the heroine of her tale. But not thus did she
defraud us of our tears. All hearts bled that grief could be so brave.
She but showed us her soul’s lid, and the strange ciphers thereon
engraved; all within, with pride’s timidity, was withheld. Yet was
there one exception. Holding out her small olive hand before her
captain, she said in mild and slowest Spanish, “Señor, I buried him;”
then paused, struggled as against the writhed coilings of a snake, and
cringing suddenly, leaped up, repeating in impassioned pain, “I buried
him, my life, my soul!”
Doubtless, it was by half-unconscious, automatic motions of her hands,
that this heavy-hearted one performed the final office for Felipe, and
planted a rude cross of withered sticks—no green ones might be had—at
the head of that lonely grave, where rested now in lasting un-complaint
and quiet haven he whom untranquil seas had overthrown.
But some dull sense of another body that should be interred, of another
cross that should hallow another grave—unmade as yet—some dull anxiety
and pain touching her undiscovered brother, now haunted the oppressed
Hunilla. Her hands fresh from the burial earth, she slowly went back to
the beach, with unshaped purposes wandering there, her spell-bound eye
bent upon the incessant waves. But they bore nothing to her but a
dirge, which maddened her to think that murderers should mourn. As time
went by, and these things came less dreamingly to her mind, the strong
persuasions of her Romish faith, which sets peculiar store by
consecrated urns, prompted her to resume in waking earnest that pious
search which had but been begun as in somnambulism. Day after day, week
after week, she trod the cindery beach, till at length a double motive
edged every eager glance. With equal longing she now looked for the
living and the dead; the brother and the captain; alike vanished, never
to return. Little accurate note of time had Hunilla taken under such
emotions as were hers, and little, outside herself, served for calendar
or dial. As to poor Crusoe in the self-same sea, no saint’s bell pealed
forth the lapse of week or month; each day went by unchallenged; no
chanticleer announced those sultry dawns, no lowing herds those
poisonous nights. All wonted and steadily recurring sounds, human, or
humanized by sweet fellowship with man, but one stirred that torrid
trance—the cry of dogs; save which naught but the rolling sea invaded
it, an all-pervading monotone; and to the widow that was the least
loved voice she could have heard.
No wonder, that as her thoughts now wandered to the unreturning ship,
and were beaten back again, the hope against hope so struggled in her
soul, that at length she desperately said, “Not yet, not yet; my
foolish heart runs on too fast.” So she forced patience for some
further weeks. But to those whom earth’s sure indraft draws, patience
or impatience is still the same.
Hunilla now sought to settle precisely in her mind, to an hour, how
long it was since the ship had sailed; and then, with the same
precision, how long a space remained to pass. But this proved
impossible. What present day or month it was she could not say. Time
was her labyrinth, in which Hunilla was entirely lost.