University of Virginia Library

THE ENCANTADAS;
OR,
ENCHANTED ISLES.

1. SKETCH FIRST.

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 searoom;
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 Adriondack 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.

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.

3. SKETCH THIRD.

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 Rotondo 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 moonshadow
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 lower-most
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 matms. 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.

4. SKETCH FOURTH.

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 ropedancer,
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 edge-ways,
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 Rodondo.

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 familar diagram
will illustrate this strange neighborhood:

E

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 mouth.

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,	unknown.
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, Crossman'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.

5. SKETCH FIFTH.

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.

6. SKETCH SIXTH.

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 hidingplace,
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 adventures were
some gentlemanly, companionable souls, capable
of genuine tranquillity and virtue.”

7. SKETCH SEVENTH.

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]

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.”

8. SKETCH EIGHTH.

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 undistinguishable
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 trace-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 heavyhearted
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 uncomplaint
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.

And now follows—

Against my own purposes a pause descends
upon me here. One knows not whether nature
doth not impose some secrecy upon him who
has been privy to certain things. At least, it
is to be doubted whether it be good to blazon
such. If some books are deemed most baneful
and their sale forbid, how, then, with deadlier
facts, not dreams of doting men? Those whom
books will hurt will not be proof against events.
Events, not books, should be forbid. But in all
things man sows upon the wind, which bloweth
just there whither it listeth; for ill or good, man
cannot know. Often ill comes from the good,
as good from ill.

When Hunilla—

Dire sight it is to see some silken beast long
dally with a golden lizard ere she devour. More
terrible, to see how feline Fate will sometimes
dally with a human soul, and by a nameless
magic make it repulse a sane despair with a
hope which is but mad. Unwittingly I imp
this cat-like thing, sporting with the heart of
him who reads; for if he feel not he reads in
vain.

—“The ship sails this day, to-day,” at last
said Hunilla to herself; “this gives me certain
time to stand on; without certainty I go mad.
In loose ignorance I have hoped and hoped;
now in firm knowledge I will but wait. Now I
live and no longer perish in bewilderings. Holy
Virgin, aid me! Thou wilt waft back the ship.
Oh, past length of weary weeks—all to be dragged
over—to buy the certainty of to-day, I freely
give ye, though I tear ye from me!”

As mariners, tost in tempest on some desolate
ledge, patch them a boat out of the remnants of
their vessel's wreck, and launch it in the self-same
waves, see here Hunilla, this lone shipwrecked
soul, out of treachery invoking trust.
Humanity, thou strong thing, I worship thee,

not in the laureled victor, but in this vanquished
one.

Truly Hunilla leaned upon a reed, a real one;
no metaphor; a real Eastern reed. A piece of
hollow cane, drifted from unknown isles, and
found upon the beach, its once jagged ends
rubbed smoothly even as by sand-paper; its
golden glazing gone. Long ground between
the sea and land, upper and nether stone, the
unvarnished substance was filed bare, and wore
another polish now, one with itself, the polish
of its agony. Circular lines at intervals cut all
round this surface, divided it into six panels of
unequal length. In the first were scored the
days, each tenth one marked by a longer and
deeper notch; the second was scored for the
number of sea-fowl eggs for sustenance, picked
out from the rocky nests; the third, how many
fish had been caught from the shore; the fourth,
how many small tortoises found inland; the
fifth, how many days of sun; the sixth, of clouds;
which last, of the two, was the greater one.
Long night of busy numbering, misery's mathematics,
to weary her too-wakeful soul to sleep;
yet sleep for that was none.

The panel of the days was deeply worn—the
long tenth notches half effaced, as alphabets of
the blind. Ten thousand times the longing
widow had traced her finger over the bamboo—
dull flute, which played, on, gave no sound—as
if counting birds flown by in air would hasten
tortoises creeping through the woods.

After the one hundred and eightieth day no
further mark was seen; that last one was the
faintest, as the first the deepest.

“There were more days,” said our Captain;
“many, many more; why did you not go on
and notch them, too, Hunilla?”

“Señor, ask me not.”

“And meantime, did no other vessel pass
the isle?”

“Nay, Señor;—but—”

“You do not speak; but what, Hunilla?”

“Ask me not, Señor.”

“You saw ships pass, far away; you waved
to them; they passed on;—was that it, Hunilla?”

“Señor, be it as you say.”

Braced against her woe, Hunilla would not,
durst not trust the weakness of her tongue.

Then when our Captain asked whether any
whale-boats had —

But no, I will not file this thing complete
for scoffing souls to quote, and call it firm
proof upon their side. The half shall here
remain untold. Those two unnamed events
which befell Hunilla on this isle, let them
abide between her and her God. In nature, as
in law, it may be libelous to speak some truths.

Still, how it was that, although our vessel
had lain three days anchored nigh the isle, its
one human tenant should not have discovered
us till just upon the point of sailing, never to
revisit so lone and far a spot, this needs explaining
ere the sequel come.

The place where the French captain had
landed the little party was on the further and
opposite end of the isle. There, too, it was
that they had afterwards built their hut. Nor
did the widow in her solitude desert the spot
where her loved ones had dwelt with her, and
where the dearest of the twain now slept his
last long sleep, and all her plaints awaked him
not, and he of husbands the most faithful during
life.

Now, high broken land rises between the
opposite extremities of the isle. A ship anchored
at one side is invisible from the other.
Neither is the isle so small, but a considerable
company might wander for days through the
wilderness of one side, and never be seen, or
their halloos heard, by any stranger holding
aloof on the other. Hence Hunilla, who naturally
associated the possible coming of ships
with her own part of the isle, might to the end
have remained quite ignorant of the presence
of our vessel, were it not for a mysterious
presentiment, borne to her, so our mariners
averred, by this isle's enchanted air. Nor did
the widow's answer undo the thought.

“How did you come to cross the isle this
morning, then, Hunilla?” said our Captain.

“Señor, something came flitting by me. It
touched my cheek, my heart, Señor.”

“What do you say, Hunilla?”

“I have said, Señor, something came through
the air.”

It was a narrow chance. For when in crossing
the isle Hunilla gained the high land in the
centre, she must then for the first have perceived

our masts, and also marked that their
sails were being loosed, perhaps even heard
the echoing chorus of the windlass song. The
strange ship was about to sail, and she behind.
With all haste she now descends the height on
the hither side, but soon loses sight of the ship
among the sunken jungles at the mountain's
base. She struggles on through the withered
branches, which seek at every step to bar her
path, till she comes to the isolated rock, still
some way from the water. This she climbs,
to reassure herself. The ship is still in plainest
sight. But now, worn out with over tension,
Hunilla all but faints; she fears to step
down from her giddy perch; she is fain to
pause, there where she is, and as a last resort
catches the turban from her head, unfurls and
waves it over the jungles towards us.

During the telling of her story the mariners
formed a voiceless circle round Hunilla and the
Captain; and when at length the word was
given to man the fastest boat, and pull round
to the isle's thither side, to bring away Hunilla's
chest and the tortoise-oil, such alacrity of
both cheery and sad obedience seldom before

was seen. Little ado was made. Already the
anchor had been recommitted to the bottom,
and the ship swung calmly to it.

But Hunilla insisted upon accompanying the
boat as indispensable pilot to her hidden hut.
So being refreshed with the best the steward
could supply, she started with us. Nor did
ever any wife of the most famous admiral, in
her husband's barge, receive more silent reverence
of respect than poor Hunilla from this
boat's crew.

Rounding many a vitreous cape and bluff, in
two hours' time we shot inside the fatal reef;
wound into a secret cove, looked up along a
green many-gabled lava wall, and saw the
island's solitary dwelling.

It hung upon an impending cliff, sheltered
on two sides by tangled thickets, and half-screened
from view in front by juttings of the
rude stairway, which climbed the precipice
from the sea. Built of canes, it was thatched
with long, mildewed grass. It seemed an
abandoned hay-rick, whose haymakers were
now no more. The roof inclined but one way;
the eaves coming to within two feet of the

ground. And here was a simple apparatus to
collect the dews, or rather doubly-distilled and
finest winnowed rains, which, in mercy or in
mockery, the night-skies sometimes drop upon
these blighted Encantadas. All along beneath
the eaves, a spotted sheet, quite weather-stained,
was spread, pinned to short, upright
stakes, set in the shallow sand. A small clinker,
thrown into the cloth, weighed its middle
down, thereby straining all moisture into a calabash
placed below. This vessel supplied each
drop of water ever drunk upon the isle by the
Cholos. Hunilla told us the calabash would
sometimes, but not often, be half filled overnight.
It held six quarts, perhaps. “But,”
said she, “we were used to thirst. At sandy
Payta, where I live, no shower from heaven
ever fell; all the water there is brought on
mules from the inland vales.”

Tied among the thickets were some twenty
moaning tortoises, supplying Hunilla's lonely
larder; while hundreds of vast tableted black
bucklers, like displaced, shattered tomb-stones
of dark slate, were also scattered round. These
were the skeleton backs of those great tortoises

from which Felipe and Truxill had made their
precious oil. Several large calabashes and two
goodly kegs were filled with it. In a pot near
by were the caked crusts of a quantity which
had been permitted to evaporate. “They
meant to have strained it off next day,” said
Hunilla, as she turned aside.

I forgot to mention the most singular sight
of all, though the first that greeted us after
landing.

Some ten small, soft-haired, ringleted dogs,
of a beautiful breed, peculiar to Peru, set up a
concert of glad welcomings when we gained
the beach, which was responded to by Hunilla.
Some of these dogs had, since her widowhood,
been born upon the isle, the progeny of the
two brought from Payta. Owing to the jagged
steeps and pitfalls, tortuous thickets, sunken
clefts and perilous intricacies of all sorts in the
interior, Hunilla, admonished by the loss of
one favorite among them, never allowed these
delicate creatures to follow her in her occasional
birds'-nests climbs and other wanderings;
so that, through long habituation, they offered
not to follow, when that morning she crossed

the land, and her own soul was then too full
of other things to heed their lingering behind.
Yet, all along she had so clung to them, that,
besides what moisture they lapped up at early
daybreak from the small scoop-holes among
the adjacent rocks, she had shared the dew of
her calabash among them; never laying by any
considerable store against those prolonged and
utter droughts which, in some disastrous seasons,
warp these isles.

Having pointed out, at our desire, what few
things she would like transported to the ship
—her chest, the oil, not omitting the live tortoises
which she intended for a grateful present
to our Captain—we immediately set to work,
carrying them to the boat down the long, sloping
stair of deeply-shadowed rock. While my
comrades were thus employed, I looked and
Hunilla had disappeared.

It was not curiosity alone, but, it seems to
me, something different mingled with it, which
prompted me to drop my tortoise, and once
more gaze slowly around. I remembered the
husband buried by Hunilla's hands. A narrow
pathway led into a dense part of the thickets.

Following it through many mazes, I came out
upon a small, round, open space, deeply chambered
there.

The mound rose in the middle; a bare heap
of finest sand, like that unverdured heap found
at the bottom of an hour-glass run out. At its
head stood the cross of withered sticks; the
dry, peeled bark still fraying from it; its transverse
limb tied up with rope, and forlornly
adroop in the silent air.

Hunilla was partly prostrate upon the grave;
her dark head bowed, and lost in her long,
loosened Indian hair; her hands extended to
the cross-foot, with a little brass crucifix
clasped between; a crucifix worn featureless,
like an ancient graven knocker long plied in
vain. She did not see me, and I made no
noise, but slid aside, and left the spot.

A few moments ere all was ready for our
going, she reappeared among us. I looked
into her eyes, but saw no tear. There was
something which seemed strangely haughty in
her air, and yet it was the air of woe. A
Spanish and an Indian grief, which would not
visibly lament. Pride's height in vain abased

to proneness on the rack; nature's pride subduing
nature's torture.

Like pages the small and silken dogs surrounded
her, as she slowly descended towards
the beach. She caught the two most eager
creatures in her arms:—“Mia Teeta! Mia Tomoteeta!”
and fondling them, inquired how
many could we take on board.

The mate commanded the boat's crew; not
a hard-hearted man, but his way of life had
been such that in most things, even in the
smallest, simple utility was his leading motive.

“We cannot take them all, Hunilla; our
supplies are short; the winds are unreliable;
we may be a good many days going to Tombez.
So take those you have, Hunilla; but no
more.”

She was in the boat; the oarsmen, too, were
seated; all save one, who stood ready to push
off and then spring himself. With the sagacity
of their race, the dogs now seemed aware that
they were in the very instant of being deserted
upon a barren strand. The gunwales of the
boat were high; its prow—presented inland—

was lifted; so owing to the water, which they
seemed instinctively to shun, the dogs could
not well leap into the little craft. But their
busy paws hard scraped the prow, as it had
been some farmer's door shutting them out from
shelter in a winter storm. A clamorous agony
of alarm. They did not howl, or whine; they
all but spoke.

“Push off! Give way!” cried the mate. The
boat gave one heavy drag and lurch, and next
moment shot swiftly from the beach, turned on
her heel, and sped. The dogs ran howling
along the water's marge; now pausing to gaze
at the flying boat, then motioning as if to leap
in chase, but mysteriously withheld themselves;
and again ran howling along the beach.
Had they been human beings, hardly would
they have more vividly inspired the sense of
desolation. The oars were plied as confederate
feathers of two wings. No one spoke. I
looked back upon the beach, and then upon
Hunilla, but her face was set in a stern dusky
calm. The dogs crouching in her lap vainly
licked her rigid hands. She never looked behind
her; but sat motionless, till we turned a

promontory of the coast and lost all sights and
sounds astern. She seemed as one who, having
experienced the sharpest of mortal pangs, was
henceforth content to have all lesser heartstrings
riven, one by one. To Hunilla, pain
seemed so necessary, that pain in other beings,
though by love and sympathy made her own,
was unrepiningly to be borne. A heart of
yearning in a frame of steel. A heart of earthly
yearning, frozen by the frost which falleth from
the sky.

The sequel is soon told. After a long passage,
vexed by calms and baffling winds, we
made the little port of Tombez in Peru, there
to recruit the ship. Payta was not very distant.
Our captain sold the tortoise oil to a Tombez
merchant; and adding to the silver a contribution
from all hands, gave it to our silent passenger,
who knew not what the mariners had
done.

The last seen of lone Hunilla she was passing
into Payta town, riding upon a small gray
ass; and before her on the ass's shoulders, she
eyed the jointed workings of the beast's armorial
cross.

9. SKETCH NINTH.

Southeast of Crossman's Isle lies Hood's
Isle, or McCain's Beclouded Isle; and upon
its south side is a vitreous cove with a wide
strand of dark pounded black lava, called Black
Beach, or Oberlus's Landing. It might fitly
have been styled Charon's.

It received its name from a wild white creature
who spent many years here; in the person
of a European bringing into this savage region
qualities more diabolical than are to be found
among any of the surrounding cannibals.

About half a century ago, Oberlus deserted

at the above-named island, then, as now, a solitude.
He built himself a den of lava and
clinkers, about a mile from the Landing, subsequently
called after him, in a vale, or expanded
gulch, containing here and there among
the rocks about two acres of soil capable of
rude cultivation; the only place on the isle
not too blasted for that purpose. Here he succeeded
in raising a sort of degenerate potatoes
and pumpkins, which from time to time he exchanged
with needy whalemen passing, for
spirits or dollars.

His appearance, from all accounts, was that
of the victim of some malignant sorceress; he
seemed to have drunk of Circe's cup; beast-like;
rags insufficient to hide his nakedness;
his befreckled skin blistered by continual exposure
to the sun; nose flat; countenance
contorted, heavy, earthy; hair and beard unshorn,
profuse, and of fiery red. He struck
strangers much as if he were a volcanic creature
thrown up by the same convulsion which
exploded into sight the isle. All bepatched
and coiled asleep in his lonely lava den among
the mountains, he looked, they say, as a heaped

drift of withered leaves, torn from autumn
trees, and so left in some hidden nook by the
whirling halt for an instant of a fierce nightwind,
which then ruthlessly sweeps on, somewhere
else to repeat the capricious act. It is
also reported to have been the strangest sight,
this same Oberlus, of a sultry, cloudy morning,
hidden under his shocking old black tarpaulin
hat, hoeing potatoes among the lava. So
warped and crooked was his strange nature,
that the very handle of his hoe seemed gradually
to have shrunk and twisted in his grasp,
being a wretched bent stick, elbowed more
like a savage's war-sickle than a civilized hoehandle.
It was his mysterious custom upon a
first encounter with a stranger ever to present
his back; possibly, because that was his better
side, since it revealed the least. If the encounter
chanced in his garden, as it sometimes
did—the new-landed strangers going from the
sea-side straight through the gorge, to hunt
up the queer green-grocer reported doing business
here—Oberlus for a time hoed on, unmindful
of all greeting, jovial or bland; as the
curious stranger would turn to face him, the
recluse, hoe in hand, as diligently would avert
himself; bowed over, and sullenly revolving
round his murphy hill. Thus far for hoeing.
When planting, his whole aspect and all his
gestures were so malevolently and uselessly
sinister and secret, that he seemed rather in act
of dropping poison into wells than potatoes
into soil. But among his lesser and more harmless
marvels was an idea he ever had, that his
visitors came equally as well led by longings
to behold the mighty hermit Oberlus in his
royal state of solitude, as simply to obtain
potatoes, or find whatever company might be
upon a barren isle. It seems incredible that
such a being should possess such vanity; a
misanthrope be conceited; but he really had
his notion; and upon the strength of it, often
gave himself amusing airs to captains. But
after all, this is somewhat of a piece with the
well-known eccentricity of some convicts, proud
of that very hatefulness which makes them
notorious. At other times, another unaccountable
whim would seize him, and he would long
dodge advancing strangers round the clinkered
corners of his hut; sometimes like a stealthy
bear, he would slink through the withered thickets
up the mountains, and refuse to see the
human face.

Except his occasional visitors from the sea,
for a long period, the only companions of Oberlus
were the crawling tortoises; and he seemed
more than degraded to their level, having no
desires for a time beyond theirs, unless it were
for the stupor brought on by drunkenness. But
sufficiently debased as he appeared, there yet
lurked in him, only awaiting occasion for discovery,
a still further proneness. Indeed, the
sole superiority of Oberlus over the tortoises
was his possession of a larger capacity of degradation;
and along with that, something like
an intelligent will to it. Moreover, what is
about to be revealed, perhaps will show, that
selfish ambition, or the love of rule for its own
sake, far from being the peculiar infirmity of
noble minds, is shared by beings which have no
mind at all. No creatures are so selfishly
tyrannical as some brutes; as any one who has
observed the tenants of the pasture must occasionally
have observed.

“This island's mine by Sycorax my mother,”

said Oberlus to himself, glaring round upon his
haggard solitude. By some means, barter or
theft—for in those days ships at intervals still
kept touching at his Landing—he obtained an
old musket, with a few charges of powder and
ball. Possessed of arms, he was stimulated to
enterprise, as a tiger that first feels the coming
of its claws. The long habit of sole dominion
over every object round him, his almost unbroken
solitude, his never encountering humanity
except on terms of misanthropic independence,
or mercantile craftiness, and even such
encounters being comparatively but rare; all
this must have gradually nourished in him a
vast idea of his own importance, together with
a pure animal sort of scorn for all the rest
of the universe.

The unfortunate Creole, who enjoyed his
brief term of royalty at Charles's Isle was perhaps
in some degree influenced by not unworthy
motives; such as prompt other adventurous
spirits to lead colonists into distant regions
and assume political preëminence over them.
His summary execution of many of his Peruvians
is quite pardonable, considering the desperate

characters he had to deal with; while his
offering canine battle to the banded rebels
seems under the circumstances altogether just.
But for this King Oberlus and what shortly
follows, no shade of palliation can be given.
He acted out of mere delight in tyranny and
cruelty, by virtue of a quality in him inherited
from Sycorax his mother. Armed now with
that shocking blunderbuss, strong in the thought
of being master of that horrid isle, he panted
for a chance to prove his potency upon the
first specimen of humanity which should fall
unbefriended into his hands.

Nor was he long without it. One day he
spied a boat upon the beach, with one man, a
negro, standing by it. Some distance off was
a ship, and Oberlus immediately knew how
matters stood. The vessel had put in for wood,
and the boat's crew had gone into the thickets
for it. From a convenient spot he kept watch
of the boat, till presently a straggling company
appeared loaded with billets. Throwing these
on the beach, they again went into the thickets,
while the negro proceeded to load the boat.

Oberlus now makes all haste and accosts the

negro, who, aghast at seeing any living being
inhabiting such a solitude, and especially so
horrific a one, immediately falls into a panic,
not at all lessened by the ursine suavity of
Oberlus, who begs the favor of assisting him in
his labors. The negro stands with several
billets on his shoulder, in act of shouldering
others; and Oberlus, with a short cord concealed
in his bosom, kindly proceeds to lift
those other billets to their place. In so doing,
he persists in keeping behind the negro, who,
rightly suspicious of this, in vain dodges about
to gain the front of Oberlus; but Oberlus
dodges also; till at last, weary of this bootless
attempt at treachery, or fearful of being surprised
by the remainder of the party, Oberlus
runs off a little space to a bush, and fetching
his blunderbuss, savagely commands the negro
to desist work and follow him. He refuses.
Whereupon, presenting his piece, Oberlus
snaps at him. Luckily the blunderbuss misses
fire; but by this time, frightened out of his
wits, the negro, upon a second intrepid summons,
drops his billets, surrenders at discretion,
and follows on. By a narrow defile familiar to
him, Oberlus speedily removes out of sight of
the water.

On their way up the mountains, he exultingly
informs the negro, that henceforth he is to
work for him, and be his slave, and that his
treatment would entirely depend on his future
conduct. But Oberlus, deceived by the first
impulsive cowardice of the black, in an evil
moment slackens his vigilance. Passing through
a narrow way, and perceiving his leader quite
off his guard, the negro, a powerful fellow,
suddenly grasps him in his arms, throws him
down, wrests his musketoon from him, ties his
hands with the monster's own cord, shoulders
him, and returns with him down to the boat.
When the rest of the party arrive, Oberlus is
carried on board the ship. This proved an
Englishman, and a smuggler; a sort of craft
not apt to be over-charitable. Oberlus is severely
whipped, then handcuffed, taken ashore,
and compelled to make known his habitation
and produce his property. His potatoes, pumpkins,
and tortoises, with a pile of dollars he had
hoarded from his mercantile operations were
secured on the spot. But while the too vindictive

smugglers were busy destroying his hut
and garden, Oberlus makes his escape into the
mountains, and conceals himself there in impenetrable
recesses, only known to himself,
till the ship sails, when he ventures back, and
by means of an old file which he sticks into a
tree, contrives to free himself from his handcuffs.

Brooding among the ruins of his hut, and the
desolate clinkers and extinct volcanoes of this
outcast isle, the insulted misanthrope now
meditates a signal revenge upon humanity, but
conceals his purposes. Vessels still touch the
Landing at times; and by-and-by Oberlus is
enabled to supply them with some vegetables.

Warned by his former failure in kidnapping
strangers, he now pursues a quite different plan.
When seamen come ashore, he makes up to
them like a free-and-easy comrade, invites them
to his hut, and with whatever affability his redhaired
grimness may assume, entreats them to
drink his liquor and be merry. But his guests
need little pressing; and so, soon as rendered
insensible, are tied hand and foot, and pitched
among the clinkers, are there concealed till the

ship departs, when, finding themselves entirely
dependent upon Oberlus, alarmed at his
changed demeanor, his savage threats, and
above all, that shocking blunderbuss, they
willingly enlist under him, becoming his humble
slaves, and Oberlus the most incredible of
tyrants. So much so, that two or three perish
beneath his initiating process. He sets the
remainder—four of them—to breaking the
caked soil; transporting upon their backs
loads of loamy earth, scooped up in moist
clefts among the mountains; keeps them on
the roughest fare; presents his piece at the
slightest hint of insurrection; and in all respects
converts them into reptiles at his feet—
plebeian garter-snakes to this Lord Anaconda.

At last, Oberlus contrives to stock his arsenal
with four rusty cutlasses, and an added
supply of powder and ball intended for his
blunderbuss. Remitting in good part the labor
of his slaves, he now approves himself a man,
or rather devil, of great abilities in the way of
cajoling or coercing others into acquiescence
with his own ulterior designs, however at first
abhorrent to them. But indeed, prepared for

almost any eventual evil by their previous lawless
life, as a sort of ranging Cow-Boys of the
sea, which had dissolved within them the
whole moral man, so that they were ready to
concrete in the first offered mould of baseness
now; rotted down from manhood by their
hopeless misery on the isle; wonted to cringe
in all things to their lord, himself the worst
of slaves; these wretches were now become
wholly corrupted to his hands. He used them
as creatures of an inferior race; in short, he
gaffles his four animals, and makes murderers
of them; out of cowards fitly manufacturing
bravos.

Now, sword or dagger, human arms are but
artificial claws and fangs, tied on like false
spurs to the fighting cock. So, we repeat,
Oberlus, czar of the isle, gaffles his four subjects;
that is, with intent of glory, puts four
rusty cutlasses into their hands. Like any
other autocrat, he had a noble army now.

It might be thought a servile war would
hereupon ensue. Arms in the hands of trodden
slaves? how indiscreet of Emperor Oberlus!
Nay, they had but cutlasses—sad old scythes

enough—he a blunderbuss, which by its blind
scatterings of all sorts of boulders, clinkers, and
other scoria would annihilate all four mutineers,
like four pigeons at one shot. Besides, at first
he did not sleep in his accustomed hut; every
lurid sunset, for a time, he might have been
seen wending his way among the riven mountains,
there to secrete himself till dawn in some
sulphurous pitfall, undiscoverable to his gang;
but finding this at last too troublesome, he now
each evening tied his slaves hand and foot, hid
the cutlasses, and thrusting them into his barracks,
shut to the door, and lying down before
it, beneath a rude shed lately added, slept out
the night, blunderbuss in hand.

It is supposed that not content with daily
parading over a cindery solitude at the head of
his fine army, Oberlus now meditated the most
active mischief; his probable object being to
surprise some passing ship touching at his
dominions, massacre the crew, and run away
with her to parts unknown. While these plans
were simmering in his head, two ships touch
in company at the isle, on the opposite side to
his; when his designs undergo a sudden change.

The ships are in want of vegetables, which
Oberlus promises in great abundance, provided
they send their boats round to his landing, so
that the crews may bring the vegetables from
his garden; informing the two captains, at the
same time, that his rascals—slaves and soldiers
—had become so abominably lazy and good-for-nothing
of late, that he could not make
them work by ordinary inducements, and did
not have the heart to be severe with them.

The arrangement was agreed to, and the
boats were sent and hauled upon the beach.
The crews went to the lava hut; but to their
surprise nobody was there. After waiting till
their patience was exhausted, they returned to
the shore, when lo, some stranger—not the
Good Samaritan either—seems to have very
recently passed that way. Three of the boats
were broken in a thousand pieces, and the
fourth was missing. By hard toil over the
mountains and through the clinkers, some of
the strangers succeeded in returning to that
side of the isle where the ships lay, when fresh
boats are sent to the relief of the rest of the
hapless party.

However amazed at the treachery of Oberlus,
the two captains, afraid of new and still more
mysterious atrocities—and indeed, half imputing
such strange events to the enchantments
associated with these isles—perceive no security
but in instant flight; leaving Oberlus and
his army in quiet possession of the stolen
boat.

On the eve of sailing they put a letter in a
keg, giving the Pacific Ocean intelligence of
the affair, and moored the keg in the bay.
Some time subsequent, the keg was opened by
another captain chancing to anchor there, but
not until after he had dispatched a boat round
to Oberlus's Landing. As may be readily surmised,
he felt no little inquietude till the boat's
return; when another letter was handed him,
giving Oberlus's version of the affair. This precious
document had been found pinned half-mildewed
to the clinker wall of the sulphurous
and deserted hut. It ran as follows: showing
that Oberlus was at least an accomplished
writer, and no mere boor; and what is more,
was capable of the most tristful eloquence.

The fowl proved a starveling rooster, reduced
to a sitting posture by sheer debility.

Oberlus declares that he was bound to the
Feejee Isles; but this was only to throw pursuers
on a false scent. For, after a long time,
he arrived, alone in his open boat, at Guayaquil.
As his miscreants were never again beheld
on Hood's Isle, it is supposed, either that
they perished for want of water on the passage
to Guayaquil, or, what is quite as probable,
were thrown overboard by Oberlus, when he
found the water growing scarce.

From Guayaquil Oberlus proceeded to Payta;
and there, with that nameless witchery
peculiar to some of the ugliest animals, wound
himself into the affections of a tawny damsel;
prevailing upon her to accompany him back to
his Enchanted Isle; which doubtless he painted
as a Paradise of flowers, not a Tartarus of
clinkers.

But unfortunately for the colonization of
Hood's Isle with a choice variety of animated
nature, the extraordinary and devilish aspect
of Oberlus made him to be regarded in Payta
as a highly suspicious character. So that

being found concealed one night, with matches
in his pocket, under the hull of a small vessel
just ready to be launched, he was seized and
thrown into jail.

The jails in most South American towns are
generally of the least wholesome sort. Built
of huge cakes of sun-burnt brick, and containing
but one room, without windows or yard,
and but one door heavily grated with wooden
bars, they present both within and without the
grimmest aspect. As public edifices they conspicuously
stand upon the hot and dusty Plaza,
offering to view, through the gratings, their
villainous and hopeless inmates, burrowing in
all sorts of tragic squalor. And here, for a
long time, Oberlus was seen; the central figure
of a mongrel and assassin band; a creature
whom it is religion to detest, since it is philanthropy
to hate a misanthrope.

Note.—They who may be disposed to question the possibility
of the character above depicted, are referred to the
2d vol. of Porter's Voyage into the Pacific, where they will
recognize many sentences, for expedition's sake derived verbatim
from thence, and incorporated here; the main difference—save
a few passing reflections—between the two
accounts being, that the present writer has added to Porter's
facts accessory ones picked up in the Pacific from

reliable sources; and where facts conflict, has naturally preferred
his own authorities to Porter's. As, for instance, his
authorities place Oberlus on Hood's Isle: Porter's, on
Charles's Isle. The letter found in the hut is also somewhat
different; for while at the Encantadas he was informed
that, not only did it evince a certain clerkliness, but was full
of the strangest satiric effrontery which does not adequately
appear in Porter's version. I accordingly altered it to suit
the general character of its author.

10. SKETCH TENTH.

Some relics of the hut of Oberlus partially
remain to this day at the head of the clinkered
valley. Nor does the stranger, wandering among
other of the Enchanted Isles, fail to stumble
upon still other solitary abodes, long abandoned
to the tortoise and the lizard. Probably
few parts of earth have, in modern times, sheltered
so many solitaries. The reason is, that
these isles are situated in a distant sea, and the
vessels which occasionally visit them are mostly
all whalers, or ships bound on dreary and protracted
voyages, exempting them in a good
degree from both the oversight and the memory
of human law. Such is the character of
some commanders and some seamen, that under
these untoward circumstances, it is quite impossible
but that scenes of unpleasantness and
discord should occur between them. A sullen

hatred of the tyrannic ship will seize the sailor,
and he gladly exchanges it for isles, which,
though blighted as by a continual sirocco and
burning breeze, still offer him, in their labyrinthine
interior, a retreat beyond the possibility
of capture. To flee the ship in any Peruvian
or Chilian port, even the smallest and most
rustical, is not unattended with great risk of
apprehension, not to speak of jaguars. A reward
of five pesos sends fifty dastardly Spaniards
into the wood, who, with long knives,
scour them day and night in eager hopes of
securing their prey. Neither is it, in general,
much easier to escape pursuit at the isles of
Polynesia. Those of them which have felt a
civilizing influence present the same difficulty
to the runaway with the Peruvian ports, the
advanced natives being quite as mercenary and
keen of knife and scent as the retrograde
Spaniards; while, owing to the bad odor in
which all Europeans lie, in the minds of aboriginal
savages who have chanced to hear aught
of them, to desert the ship among primitive
Polynesians, is, in most cases, a hope not unforlorn.
Hence the Enchanted Isles become
the voluntary tarrying places of all sorts of
refugees; some of whom too sadly experience
the fact, that flight from tyranny does not of
itself insure a safe asylum, far less a happy
home.

Moreover, it has not seldom happened that
hermits have been made upon the isles by the
accidents incident to tortoise-hunting. The interior
of most of them is tangled and difficult of
passage beyond description; the air is sultry
and stifling; an intolerable thirst is provoked,
for which no running stream offers its kind relief.
In a few hours, under an equatorial sun,
reduced by these causes to entire exhaustion,
woe betide the straggler at the Enchanted Isles!
Their extent is such as to forbid an adequate
search, unless weeks are devoted to it. The
impatient ship waits a day or two; when, the
missing man remaining undiscovered, up goes a
stake on the beach, with a letter of regret, and
a keg of crackers and another of water tied to
it, and away sails the craft.

Nor have there been wanting instances where
the inhumanity of some captains has led them
to wreak a secure revenge upon seamen who

have given their caprice or pride some singular
offense. Thrust ashore upon the scorching marl,
such mariners are abandoned to perish outright,
unless by solitary labors they succeed in discovering
some precious dribblets of moisture
oozing from a rock or stagnant in a mountain
pool.

I was well acquainted with a man, who, lost
upon the Isle of Narborough, was brought to
such extremes by thirst, that at last he only
saved his life by taking that of another being.
A large hair-seal came upon the beach. He
rushed upon it, stabbed it in the neck, and then
throwing himself upon the panting body quaffed
at the living wound; the palpitations of the
creature's dying heart injected life into the
drinker.

Another seaman, thrust ashore in a boat upon
an isle at which no ship ever touched, owing to
its peculiar sterility and the shoals about it,
and from which all other parts of the group
were hidden—this man, feeling that it was sure
death to remain there, and that nothing worse
than death menaced him in quitting it, killed
two seals, and inflating their skins, made a float,

upon which he transported himself to Charles's
Island, and joined the republic there.

But men, not endowed with courage equal to
such desperate attempts, find their only resource
in forthwith seeking some watering-place,
however precarious or scanty; building
a hut; catching tortoises and birds; and in all
respects preparing for a hermit life, till tide
or time, or a passing ship arrives to float them
off.

At the foot of precipices on many of the isles,
small rude basins in the rocks are found, partly
filled with rotted rubbish or vegetable decay,
or overgrown with thickets, and sometimes a
little moist; which, upon examination, reveal
plain tokens of artificial instruments employed
in hollowing them out, by some poor castaway
or still more miserable runaway. These basins
are made in places where it was supposed some
scanty drops of dew might exude into them
from the upper crevices.

The relics of hermitages and stone basins are
not the only signs of vanishing humanity to be
found upon the isles. And, curious to say, that
spot which of all others in settled communities

is most animated, at the Enchanted Isles presents
the most dreary of aspects. And though it
may seem very strange to talk of post-offices in
this barren region, yet post-offices are occasionally
to be found there. They consist of a stake
and a bottle. The letters being not only sealed,
but corked. They are generally deposited by
captains of Nantucketers for the benefit of passing
fishermen, and contain statements as to
what luck they had in whaling or tortoise-hunting.
Frequently, however, long months and
months, whole years glide by and no applicant
appears. The stake rots and falls, presenting
no very exhilarating object.

If now it be added that grave-stones, or rather
grave-boards, are also discovered upon some of
the isles, the picture will be complete.

Upon the beach of James's Isle, for many
years, was to be seen a rude finger-post, pointing
inland. And, perhaps, taking it for some
signal of possible hospitality in this otherwise
desolate spot—some good hermit living there
with his maple dish—the stranger would follow
on in the path thus indicated, till at last he
would come out in a noiseless nook, and find

his only welcome, a dead man—his sole greeting
the inscription over a grave. Here, in 1813,
fell, in a daybreak duel, a lieutenant of the U.S.
frigate Essex, aged twenty-one: attaining his
majority in death.

It is but fit that, like those old monastic institutions
of Europe, whose inmates go not out of
their own walls to be inurned, but are entombed
there where they die, the Encantadas, too, should
bury their own dead, even as the great general
monastery of earth does hers.

It is known that burial in the ocean is a pure
necessity of sea-faring life, and that it is only
done when land is far astern, and not clearly
visible from the bow. Hence, to vessels cruising
in the vicinity of the Enchanted Isles, they
afford a convenient Potter's Field. The interment
over, some good-natured forecastle poet
and artist seizes his paint-brush, and inscribes
a doggerel epitaph. When, after a long lapse
of time, other good-natured seamen chance to
come upon the spot, they usually make a table
of the mound, and quaff a friendly can to the
poor soul's repose.

As a specimen of these epitaphs, take the

following, found in a bleak gorge of Chatham
Isle:—