University of Virginia Library

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:—