University of Virginia Library

2. SKETCH SECOND.

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 straightforward
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.