Abrolhos Islands

“ The Abrolhos, it may be mentioned, stretch for nearly fifty miles along the coast of Western Australia — a dreaded line of low islands and sharp-toothed coral reefs, among which a vessel fares ill. They fall naturally into three groups — the Wallabi and then the Pelsarto group in the south; a group in the north, then the Eastern group. As Mr. Saville-Kent shows in his recent work “The Naturalist in Australia”, these islands give a unique opportunity for scientific research. ”

“ The Abrolhos extend in a North-North-West direction forty-eight miles, diminishing in breadth towards the north; the greatest width of Easter and Pelsart Groups being twelve miles in a West-South-West direction. In Easter Group the outer reefs are most distant from the islands, being there four miles from the nearest, which is Rat Island. In the Northern Group the islands are more detached than in the others, and North Island is separated from them by a distance of ten miles. ”

“ Offering to lead an expedition of his countrymen to the Indies, he conducted his ships in the closing years of the sixteenth century to Java and other islands. On one tour he sighted a cluster of rocky islets in Australian waters, and named them after his brother, “Frederick Houtman’s Abrolhos”, the latter term being a contraction of the Portuguese “abri vossos olhos” - “Keep your eyes open”. The history of the islands and of the wrecks on them suggests that their christener put into their name a Cassandra warning. In 1616 came Dirk Hartog, who found the island which still bears his name. ”

“ This eastern water, of the Australian province, heated by passing over the Australian plateau, is the water into which the captain of the Innsbruck threw his bottle. Thus, while the climate [Pg 39] of Geraldton is tempered by the cool waters of the northern current from the Antarctic Ocean, the Abrolhos have an undue share of warmth transmitted to them by the heated waters of the Pacific as they enter the Indian Ocean. It is this undue share of heat which places these islands in the unique position of being the most southerly coral formations of the world. ”

“ Houses have been built on the larger islands, Rat, Pelsart, and Gun Islands, with quarters and laboratories. Jetties and tramways have been constructed, and the group has undergone a marked transformation since its islands were untenanted, except by the sea-fowl, who seem to go to the Abrolhos from far and near as their breeding-ground. The noddy terns are specially numerous. Hair seals were visitors to the islands till the arrival of regular inhabitants scared them away. There are many rabbits on Pelsart Island. ”

“ The fogs, or rather the Scotch mists, of the calm nights are heavy, and as we are upon the beaten track of ships, our steam-whistle is not silent. At times the water is smooth as oil, a Pacific, not a moaning and misty Atlantic. The half-knot current sets at present to the south-west, the direction by which it doubles the Horn, but a southerly gale will drive it two knots per hour to the north. About
86 FROM RIO DE JANEIRO TO MONTE VIDEO.
the Abrolhos Islands, infames scopulos, soundings even of fifty fathoms cannot be told by the colour. ”

“ ABROLHOS ISLETS, lat. 18° S. off the coast of Brazil.—Although not strictly in place, I do not know where I can more conveniently describe this little group of small islands. The lowest bed is a sandstone with ferruginous veins; it weathers into an extraordinary honeycombed mass; above it there is a dark-coloured argillaceous shale; above this a coarser sandstone—making a total thickness of about sixty feet; and lastly, above these sedimentary beds, there is a fine conformable mass of greenstone, in some parts having a columnar structure. ”

“ In some of the islands forming Houtman's Abrolhos which we subsequently examined, I found similar signs of the presence of this manure, which I think worthy of being made the subject of enquiry.
On the south part of the island I found a block of scoria measuring three feet by two; which, though not appearing to possess the power of floating, must have been brought by the current from the volcanic island of St. Paul's. We saw a few hair-seals on the beach when we landed, and a rich kind of rock oyster was found at low-water. ”

“ At this stage the Sardam with Pelsart on board, sighted the Abrolhos, and the anxious captain was highly pleased when he saw smoke curling to the skies, showing that some, at least, of his people survived. He stood as close in to the islands as he could, and lowering a skiff stocked it with provisions of bread and wine, but he had barely left the ship when four men came alongside in a boat. ”

“ The reef against which the vessel struck, is surrounded by a very high and heavy surf, and runs in the shape of a half moon. On the inner side lie many small islands, called Frederick Houtman’s Ambrollossen (Abrolhos) , which we gained on the eighteenth of June, and upon which we remained from that day, until we had fetched from the wreck everything that seemed to us necessary for the preservation of our life, spars, ropes, timber and provisions. ”

“ We do not know how long this bottle was on the beach before it was discovered, but we may be pretty certain that the longest portion of its period afloat would be after it arrived at the Abrolhos, in battling with the local counter currents which the islands themselves would produce. During the six months which elapsed from the time it left the Innsbruck, it had travelled through 8 degrees of latitude southward and 1-11 of longitude westward—a distance of about 600 miles—in nautical phrase, about south by quarter west. ”

“ On the 26th of April a letter1 unexpectedly came to hand by the patchialang De Veerman, from the late skipper and under-merchant of the Zeeland ship Zeewyk, Jan Steyns and Jan Nibbens, written from the Straits of Sunda, but without date communicating the fact that this vessel, after leaving the Cape of Good Hope on the 21st. of April, had been wrecked, on the 9th of June, on the reef lying before the islands Frederick Houtman's Abrolhos, situated near the Southland, in S. lat. 29°, and otherwise called the Tortelduyff's Islands. ”

“ The savages were naked, and were the first ever seen on Australian soil by white men. The sailors dug holes, trying to find fresh water, but could find very little, and returned to the ship disconsolate. The commodore then, knowing that by returning to the islands he could do no good for his fellow sufferers, determined to return to Batavia for assistance. On arrival there he obtained speedy help from the Government, and provided with all necessaries and a good crew, at once set out again for the Abrolhos to succour the shipwrecked people. ”

“ In the afternoon the wind changed to west, then to north, so that they could sail west. Towards evening they saw the wreck of their ship Batavia, and the Commodore was seen from the high island, though the mates said it was not one of the islands. At two o’clock in the night they anchored in a clear, sandy bottom at 27 fathoms depth. ”

“ There are some twenty islands in the Pelsart or southern group, all of coral formation, and many coral reefs. They form a rude triangle of which the apex points south. The western side is a long reef over which the great ocean rollers constantly break in a heavy surf on the east lies the largest island of the group, now named Pelsart Island, but formerly termed Batavia’s Churchyard; and between the reef and the island and to the north lie the balance of smaller islands and reefs. ”

“ The group lies between the south end of New Ireland and the north end of the great Bougainville Island in the Solomon Archipelago, and consists of six low, well-wooded and fertile islands, enclosed within a barrier reef, forming a noble atoll, almost circular in shape. All the islands are thickly populated at the present day by natives, who are peaceable enough, and engage in bêche-de-mer and pearl-shell fishing. ”

“ The Isles of Shoals are a remarkable formation—rugged ledges of rock out in the ocean bearing scarcely any vegetation; and on some of them not a blade of grass is seen. Four islands stretching in a line make the outside of the strange group—bare reefs, with water-worn, flinty surfaces, against which the sea beats. Not a tree grew anywhere until a little one was planted on Appledore, in front of the hotel, and another dwarf was coaxed to grow in the little old graveyard on Star Island. ”

“ That the same name should be carried farther afield and applied to a remote island of the Atlantic Ocean is quite in accordance with the natural course of things and the general experience of mankind. No doubt the name Man might be derived from other sources, but the chances are in this instance that the Irish people whose navigators found Brazil Island (or imagined it, if you please) did the same favor for the crescent-shaped “Man,” quite overriding for a hundred years any preceding or competing titles. ”

“ During the unnumbered years of their occupation, the land has set a stamp upon its people—so long on Ahu Ahu that they have forgotten whence they came. Hardy, hospitable, and turbulent, they are true children of the islands, and yet a family apart—ruder and less languid than the people of Samoa or Tahiti, and speaking a harsher tongue. And, more than any other island folk, they live in the past, for ghosts walk on Ahu Ahu, and the living commune nightly with the old dead who lie in the marae. ”

“ Albatross Island, for so it was named, is near two miles in length, and sufficiently high to be seen five or six leagues from a ship's deck: its shores are mostly steep cliffs.
The north-west cape of Van Diemen's Land, or island as it might now be termed, is a steep black head, which, from its appearance, I call Cape Grim. It lies nearly due south, four miles from the centre of Trefoil, in latitude 40° 44 ́; the longtitude will be 144° 43 ́ East, according to the position of Albatross Island made in the Investigator. There are two rocks close to Cape Grim, of the same description with itself. ”

“ They are about to go there, and also, on their way, to examine the Abrolhos. It is astonishing how much persons may be deceived as to the nature of the country, or rather how little they may know about it, by a mere examination or view from a ship. It happens very singularly that the very part of the coast which I have returned from seeing—the flat-topped range which first Capt. Grey spoke of as an extensive grassy or fertile country is marked in my old map thus: "The shore here is steep and very barren;" ”

“ I believe I should have landed upon this Island to have known its produce, as it did not appear to be very small, had not the wind blown too fresh for such an undertaking, and at the time we passed the Island we had only 10 fathoms Water, a rocky bottom; I was therefore afraid of running down to leeward for fear of meeting with Shoal Water and foul ground. These Islands have no place on the Charts, unless they are the Arrow Isles, which, if they are, they are laid down much too far from New Guinea. ”

“ Bligh Island, the next visited, plainly revealed itself as the cone of an enormous submerged volcano, the water forming a beautiful and extensive bay where numbers of people could be seen. There was a landing and a little trading for yams, and then, after the like intercourse with some of the inhabitants of the cluster of small islets named after Torres, the vessel steered for Espiritu Santo, but wind and time forbade a return to the part previously visited, nor was there time to do more than touch at Aurora, and exchange some fish-hooks for some bows. ”

“ Brandan’s Island far west of the Cape Verde group and emphasizes it by showing Antillia independently in a more northern latitude and less western longitude and also of quite insignificant size and form. ”

“ There is no good reason for discrediting so many of the old maps. Their makers sometimes went wrong; but they tried to be accurate and would hardly, through a century or two, persist in making the northern island the greater one unless it was at first really so. Of course the most natural solution of the difficulty is that Corvo’s border has sunk or the sea has risen over it, completely drowning the territory which made the lobes or curved outline of the island form in the medieval maps and leaving only above water its rocky backbone, with the crater for a nucleus. ”

“ After much disturbance of mariners’ and cartographers’ minds not only the phantom island but its legacy, the supposed line of breakers and dangers, vanished altogether from the records. There is no “Buss” to be found on maps after about the middle of the nineteenth century, though the preceding hundred years had been prolific in them. Probably we must suppose a later date for the cessation of current mention of the sunken land of that name, in recognition of what, according to belief, once had been but existed (above water) no longer. ”

“ Between it and the south end of the Abrolhos Group the water deepened to 35 fathoms. In approaching the nearest island we passed close round the south-east end of a reef, running out about a mile from the south point, and then trending away round in a North-west by N. direction, so as to form one side of a lagoon, whilst the island I have mentioned—a long narrow strip trending North-east by N.-forms the other. ”

“ Many leagues before us lay Les Isles Dangereux, the Low Archipelago, first stopping-point on our journey to the far cannibal islands yet another thousand miles away across the empty seas. Before we saw the green banners of Tahiti's cocoanut palms again we would travel not only forward over leagues of tossing water but backward across centuries of time. For in those islands isolated from the world for eons there remains a living fragment of the childhood of our Caucasian race. ”