TRAVEL TALKS

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume XXIV, 12 January 1926, Page 7

TRAVEL TALKS

THE "ENCHANTED” ISLE. HOME OF MANY CONVICTS. TALES OF HIDDEN TREASURE. (By Captain Francis MjCullagh.) On the voyage across the the An ’ Pr ’ C^' h ..^ et J Spanish voyagers' Ga'anagos. wh ch o a I £ n . them last and find a depth of fathoms The only P<™™* e^ seventeenth cen lan9;He o n ac”±s2. d.X «■«"« o< U» ”t“ T i”SA ”fcev are certainly off the beaten track. Gituaid on the Equator about 600 0 : les from Ecuador, they belong to that X Which does not. however, take much interest in them so far b development is concerned, for the oj communication between rv -i a kv sailin £ schooner on- o Guayaquil is by sainns a .month There are principal, islands. nine small isles, and many islets scarce to be distinguished from rocks’ The islands are all of volcanic formation, and are entirely composed of lava or sandstone, except some meeted fragments of granite curiously glazed by the heat. The higher islands have generally one or more principal craters towards the centre, with «ma 1er craters on their flanks. There ar -iid to be 2000 craters in the group.

tnd from what I have myself seen. I should consider this to be a moderate estimate. _ , Chatham Island is the most easterlv of the group, and contains the largest village, namely, the settlement of Progreso, reached by a track from Wreck Bay, five miles distant. Progreso contains between six hundred and seven hundred people, most o I them convicts. The English name of Wreck Bay was given on account of a Peruvian steamer having been wrecked on the Schiavoni Reef, outside the harbor. Fresh water is brought to Wreck Bay by a pipe-line which originates in a crater high up in the mountain, and terminates at the end of the pier which is 150 feet long, and situated an the south side of the bay. Near this pier is a storehouse and a few huts inhabited by people who find it profitable to live where the track to Progreso begins. Among them is an old Englishman, who introduced himself to the last visitor, Mr Beebe, of the New York Zoological Society, with the words, “I’m Johnson, of London.” Johnson, of London, has been fifty years on Chatham Island, is 80 years old, nearly deaf, and married to an Ecuadorian wife. Naturally, he has nearly forgotten his English. He mo out originally to build a road on -’■n Ecuadorian Govern-e-t • ,i i -'.v liipi 1000 dol- «>; . ::i 400, acid he

.'■‘iniy tl . ■ , I' 1 tr a>> : reon the islands, and perhaps he ua* raison to think so; but at his age be cannot act in this matter without an assistant —and the only assistants available are convicts or gaolers, who are, perhaps, worse than the convicts. When Johson of London reaches this point in his narrative he looks round at the choice collection of gaol-birds among whom his lines are cast, shakes his head lugubriously, draws his hand across his throat—and changes the -.abject.

Possibly Johnson of London is right .bout the existence of treasure. Captain Woodes Rogers is said to have buried in one of the islands an enormous quantity of booty which he had taken from the Viceroy of Peru, and there is no record of it ever having been removed. Captain Rogers was an English privateer, who commanded the Duke and Duchess, two vessels fitted out by the good merchants of Bristol. Morgan’s buccaneers may also have secreted in the Galapagos some of the gold captured by them in the sack of Panama; but, owing to the highly volcanic nature of the islands, treasure secreted there one year might be covered over next year by an impenetrable crust of lava half a mile thick. Mr Beebe tells us. however, in his standard work on the Galapagos Group, that twice in modern times has hidden treasure been found in the islands. In one case -the finder drank himself to death. In the other he bought un hotel in Guayaquil. Johnson, of London, is also right, I should think, in his surmise that if he discovered treasure his throat would be obi before he «mH get esraj with

i?it, for the history of the Galapagos lsnllands is one long history of crime. Home Jlislands convert into holy termite the wrecked on them, but it is the contrary with tJhe Islas Encantadas. (Everybody there is either a murderer or else the son of a murdered man. The fathers of the present officials met terrible deaths during mutinies of the convicts ;and on every isle hang memories of prisoners who met deaths still more terrible at the hands of brutal gaolers, . being left to go mad of solitude among the giant iguanas on lonely and awful, gislets. 3 Ch-rina nr flanta Maria, Island, the four American cruisers visit-S'-d. wno first colonised bv 80 soldiers, who hnfl boon condemned to death in -ircundor This attemnt nt colonisation failed. Then o Cte-nernl Menn tried to found mi agricultural colonv in it nhont. 4,,. ,-nifidlo o fffie last centnrv. hut in iic.T? Brionoc. n -nirate. murdered him

.cd mined the colonv. Tn 1870 a third ntternnt was made, this time hv an ’Hnriculturist Valdirian. ft was •successful nt first, but then the Governjment mad" Charles Island a penal settlement: the prisoners revolted and murdered manv of the warders; and though eventunlte the mutineers were overcome hv the other n-iocnerw. the colonv faded and was abandoned. Tn tflOO another attempt was made in the same island by one, Antonio Gil. who afterwards moved his colony to a place he called Santa Tomas, on the sonth coast of Albemarle Island. In 1905 there were almost 200 people there, but |an eruption which took place 12 years ! ago seems to have scared them away, for the Memphis at all events found no itrace of human life on Albemarle. I The islands are extremely interesting to zoologists, in view of the peculiari-

ties of their fauna, and of the bearing which these peculiarities have on the theory of evolution as applied to animals. It was observation of those peculiarities that led Darwin to hie subsequent speculations. To an unscientific layman the islands seem to be still in the reptile stage, as, excluding the birds, most of the life is reptile life. For hundreds of years the Galapagos were noted for their giant tortoises, but the number of those animals is now greatly reduced. There were also giant iguanas, sometimes over 4ft long, and

indescribably ugly. I did not see any, but I saw all kinds of small iguanas, including asmi-marine iguanas which go fishing in herds, and might almost be regarded as a small species of alligator, just as the oat is a small species of tiger. Of the land iguana an old traveller says: “Its color is like that of burned rooks or cinder, and its skin

looks almost as course and rough.” The small iguanas are of a sooty black, and against a background of black lava they are almost impossible to distinguish. On the other hand, the crabs are a brilliant red!. Generally speaking, the fauna resembles that of South America, but it ia remarkable that the islands have almost no species in common with the continent, and the greatest paucity of all forms of life except birds. Apparently an immense period of time has elapsed since the islands were colonised by animals, and that colonisation must have gone on very slowly and accidentally, except in the case of most birds. There waa little inter-commu-nication between the various islands, so that the archipelago illustrates the effect ef isolation on animal life. The flora is scanty, and more than half of ite species are found nowhere else. The land shells and the insects (mainly beetles) are few and peculiar. The reptiles are represented by the famous giant tortoise. There are two species of snake and four lizards being

of genera confined to the isiana. James Island is of some historical importance. Darwin spent a whole week ashore there, and wrote on that occasion some of his most interesting notes. Earlier still. James Island had been a favorite resort of buccaneers, who named it after James the First of England. Captain Porter, the American privateer, who came here in 1813, found various mementoes of the buoaneers —broken wine-jars of Ecuadorian make, old daggers, and benches of earth and stone. We found no such mementoes, and saw no donkeys, Out some of our people discovered a brackish lagoon and saw flamingoes.

Like nearly all the other islands, James Island has its tales of horror and mystery. In 1834 there was found on it the skull of a whaler captain who had been murdered by his crew; and in 1813 two American naval officers fought a duel on shore. One of them was killed, and the following inscription was placed over his grave on the beach: —“Sacred to the memory of Lieutenant John S. Cowan of the U.S. Frigate Essex, who died here anno 1813. Aged 21 years.” This memorial has probably fallen to pieces or been removed, for we could find no trace of it. The scrub was full of birds, very tame and as much interested in us as we were in them. Pelicans were common, while giant tortoises and seals disported themselves in the sea. We found an inscription to the effect that i. party of Ecuadorians on the look-out for tortoise oil had visited the island some years ago. Fish are fabulously plentiful, and wWMoitoaaggML BgMiMgMbsa

the Memphis caught enough in a few hours to supply everybody aboard the ship for several days; and moat of these fish were delicious; they included bonito and Spanish mackerel. The Galapagos would be a paradise for the deep sea fisher. Nowhere else have I seen such large, tasty, innocent fish. They can be caught with strips of white canvas as bait or with anything that is bright-colored. They can even be caught with lumps of dough. There is a queue of them waiting for the hook; but very often a hooked fish is gobbled by a shark before vou can land it. Let almost any sort of fish betray by its agitated manner the fact that it has just swallowed a fish-hook, and immediately its best friend will turn up and rend it. The fish about Jamee Bav are so full of “pep” that they sometime# jump high out of the water, scores of them at a time; and they continue this vigorous exercise for hours on end. But it is mostly schools of porpoises which indulge in this form of athletics.