Chatham Islands

“ Kermadec Islands, North Island, Chatham Islands: Abundant, chiefly in lowland situations not far from the sea. South Island: Marlborough and Nelson to Banks Peninsula and Westland, but very rare and local. ”

“ The Moriori traditions are very precise in many respects. They say that they arrived at the Chatham Islands (Re-kohu) from Hawaiki; but as they have retained the common name of New Zealand, Aotea-roa, in their traditions, besides another old name of the North Island, Huku-rangi, and moreover knew the old name of the north end of the South Island, Aropaoa, there seems little doubt that they went to the Chathams from New Zealand, the more so, as we now know that this country was also called Hawaiki, i.e., Hawaiki-tautau. ”

“ This is especially the case on the windward sides of the islands, which first receive and condense the moisture from the atmosphere.
In the morning (17th) we landed on Chatham Island, which, like the others, rises with a tame and rounded outline, broken here and there by scattered hillocks, the remains of former craters. Nothing could be less inviting than the first appearance. A broken field of black basaltic lava, thrown into the most rugged waves, and crossed by great fissures, is every where covered by stunted, sun-burnt brushwood, which shows little signs of life. ”

“ Captain Cécille had learned at the Bay of Islands that the pahs of Chatham Island were placed beyond the reach of the guns of a vessel at the anchorage; he made his dispositions accordingly, and landed a large force the day after his arrival. The party met with no resistance: all the pahs were abandoned; they saw a few of the New Zealanders, who fled into the woods, where it was neither prudent nor possible to follow them. ”

“ The larger bell-bird (Anthornis melanocephala) has become quite scarce; the magnificent fruit-pigeon (Carpophaga chathamensis) , and the two endemic rails (Nesolimnas dieffenbachii and Cabalus modestus) , the one of which was confined to Whairikauri and the other to Mangare Island, are extinct. ”

“ Twenty miles west of Cape Leeuwin the depth was 47 fathoms.
Passing along the south coast we found the white-topped rocks near Cape Chatham to be in longitude 0 degrees 29 minutes 30 seconds East of Swan River. They are not only remarkable in themselves, but like the Eclipse Islands, are admirably situated for showing a ship's position when in with the coast. ”

“ On the 18th, we discovered an island of more considerable extent than any island that has hitherto been discovered in the south; and as there were many collateral circumstances which might hereafter promise it to be a discovery of national importance, in honour of the first lord of the admiralty, it was called Chatham's Island. It is beautifully diversified with hills and dales, of twice the extent of Otaheite, and a hardy warlike race of people. The natives described a large river to us, which disembogued itself into a spacious bay, that promises excellent anchorage. ”

“ Chatham Island is called Wairi Kaori (large mountain) by its New Zealand inhabitants. It is very fertile, and the potatoes grown there are of a very superior quality. Corn has not succeeded, in consequence of the great number of parroquets which destroy it before it is ripe. An Englishman of the name of Coffee, who had lived five years on the island, had never seen any ice there, but remembers the occurrence of a single fall of snow.
The Héroine had been again sent to these seas for the protection of French whaling vessels, and to prevent a fraud which they had extensively practised. ”

“ An island, about a mile in length, lies across the entrance in a north-westerly direction, which so thoroughly protects the inner waters of the inlet from westerly storms, that I have called it Protection Island.* There is a canoe passage between it and a point of rocks projecting from the southern shore of the inlet, and a small island close to its south-west side. Three streams flow into the inlet—one at its head, called Athlow river, and two on its south side, the largest, from forty to fifty feet in width, rising in Sook Lake. ”

“ There are, however, several islets scattered around, whose productions show that they belong to the same sub-region;—the principal being, Norfolk Island, Lord Howe's Island, and the Kermadec Isles, on the north; Chatham Island on the east; the Auckland and Macquarie Isles on the south;—and if these were once joined to New Zealand, there would have been formed an island-continent not much inferior in extent to Australia itself. ”

“ He next made for Dusky Bay, New Zealand (which he was the first properly to explore) , and thence sailing north-east, discovered Oparo Islet (27° 36' S.; 144° 12' W.) , and on the 30th of December reached Tahiti, where he was again joined by Broughton, who meanwhile had discovered Chatham Island. ”

“ Savage Island is a high-low island; that is, it is a coral atoll with a soil, raised more or less unevenly, some two hundred feet above the sea-level. It produces copra, bananas, cotton, breadfruit, bêche-de-mer, and fungus, and is governed by a king with the assistance of four chiefs and four sub-chiefs. Food trees and plants are carefully cultivated, and the people have the reputation of being industrious and willing to work. Captain [17] Henry wished to take a little girl home to his wife, but was not allowed, it being against the law that a female should leave the island. ”

“ To the south the bare peaks of Desolation Island, beginning from Cape Pilar, rose with terrific boldness, unscaleable shafts and towers of rock that recalled the shapes of the Coolin hills in Skye or the still loftier summits of the Lofoten Isles in Norway. To the north a mysterious fringe of islands and foam-girt reefs, grey and dim among their mists, hid the entrance to Smyth's Channel and the labyrinth of almost unexplored sounds and inlets along the Chilean coast beyond. ”

“ But with its imposing groves of oak, its golden wealth of orange-trees, its odorous lanes of oleander.
its broad grazing-meadows yellow-starred with wild camomile, Grande Isle remains the prettiest island of the Gulf; and its loveliness is exceptional. For the bleakness of Grand Terre is reiterated by most of the other islands,—Caillou, Cassetete, Calumet, Wine Island, the twin Timbaliers, Gull Island, and the many islets haunted by the gray pelican,—all of which are little more than sand-bars covered with wiry grasses, prairie-cane, and scrub-timber. ”

“ Markland need not be conceived as of equal size, for in truth it represents at most only the wild and wooded interval between the hopelessly void and barren north and the great habitable, comfortable, and fruitful region stretching far below; but so much of parallelism holds as will forbid us to anchor the name to any one locality on the Newfoundland shore. Doubtless the long sea front of the great island as a whole is entitled to the name. ”

“ The soft air is full of sunshine, tempered by the ocean haze, and in it groves of karaka-trees, with their large polished leaves and gleaming fruit, flourish as they flourish nowhere else. Neither too hot nor cold, neither large nor impossibly small—they are about two and a half times the size of the Isle of Wight,—the Chathams, one would think, should have nothing in their story but pleasantness and peace. And, as far as we know, the lot of their old inhabitants, the Moriori, was for centuries marked neither by bloodshed nor dire disaster. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Newfoundland dominates the Gulf, and none of us can afford to be separated from her. Lord Chatham said he would as soon abandon Plymouth as Newfoundland to a foreign power, and he is thought to have understood how to govern men. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick are Siamese twins, held together by that ligature of land between Baie Verte and Cumberland Basin, and the fate of the one must follow the fate of the other. Prince Edward Island is only a little bit broken off by the Northumberland Strait from those two bigger brethren, and Upper and Lower Canada are essential to each other's prosperity. ”

“ You feel as if no one but yourself had ever landed there; and yet, perhaps, even there, looking straight downward, you see below you in some crevice of the rock a mast or spar of some wrecked vessel, encrusted with all manner of shells and uncouth vegetable growth. No matter how distant the island or how peacefully it seems to lie upon the water, there may be perplexing currents that ever foam and swirl about it —currents which are, at all tides and in the calmest weather, as dangerous as any tempest, and which make compass untrustworthy and helm powerless. ”

“ If you open the map of the world and rule a transverse line, passing through the Sandwich Islands in the North Pacific and the Friendly Isles in the South, you will perceive that the groups lying to the east are the Navigators, Fiji, the Hervey Isles, Tahiti, the Paumotu, the Marquesan, the Austral Isles, and New Zealand, every one of which is peopled by comparatively fair-skinned races, with hair which by nature is straight and black, although in many of the isles, as in Samoa, custom requires that it should be dyed or bleached, cut short and stiffened, so as to produce the effect of a wig. ”

“ Perhaps Nicolay and Zaltieri were right in thinking that Mayda was America, or at least was on the side of the Atlantic toward America. The latitude generally chosen by the maps would then call for Avalon Peninsula, Newfoundland, often supposed to be insular in early days; or perhaps for Cape Breton Island, the next salient land feature. But that is an uncertain reliance, for the observations of pre-Columbian navigators would surely be rather haphazard, and they might naturally judge by similarity of climate. ”

“ The eastern third of the island is composed of crystalline rocks, and rises to an irregular ice-clad tableland some 3,000 feet in altitude. The rise to the interior is somewhat abrupt, and the landscape, seen from the sea, shows an interior ice-cap in the distance, with bare rocky hills rising irregularly above the slopes of the glaciers flowing down the valleys to the sea. The western part of the island is formed of limestone, and is a flat tableland cut by deep narrow fiords that extend inland many miles from the coast, and are continued beyond the salt water as the valleys of small rivers. ”

“ The Jean Bart arrived at Chatham Island early in May, and before she gained the anchorage several canoes belonging to the two tribes of New Zealanders who had possessed themselves of the island went alongside. It was about 2 p.m. when the ship anchored in the small bay of Wai-Tangui, upon the shores of which the tribe of Eitouna were established. The captain, frightened at seeing so many savages on board, desired the chiefs to send them on shore. ”

“ Kwajalein is the largest atoll in the world, 60 miles long and 20 miles wide, a semi-enclosed series of 80 reefs and islets around a huge lagoon of some 800 square miles. Located 620 miles northwest of Tarawa and 2,415 miles southwest of Pearl Harbor, its capture would have far-reaching strategic significance in that it would break the outer ring of Japanese Pacific defense lines. Within the atoll itself there were two objectives: Roi and Namur, a pair of connected islands shaped like weights on a four-mile barbell in the north end, and crescent-shaped Kwajalein Island at the south end. ”

“ It is about twenty miles from North Island to the entrance of Virago Sound. The coast and back-lying country for ten or fifteen miles, is low and thickly wooded; the shores being generally rocky with sharp points and many outlying rocks, surrounded with kelp, though there are occasional short beaches of gravel and sand. There are several exposed bays but no harbors, except for small boats, after leaving
BRUIN BAY, opening into the south-eastern entrance to Parry Passage. Here vessels sometimes anchor, though exposed to strong eddies. ”

“ Resolution island lies on the north side of the eastern entrance to Hudson strait. It is nearly forty miles long, and averages twenty-five miles in breadth. The general elevation of the interior is under five hundred feet, and the land appears to rise quickly from the shores. The island is fringed by many rocky islets, and a number of good harbours are said to occur on all sides of it, but owing to the strong currents about the coast it has been rarely visited, except by ships caught in the ice. ”

“ From this time on there is never more than one island for St. Brendan, but it indulges in wide wanderings. Especially as the attention of men was attracted to the more northern and western waters, the map-makers shifted the island thither. Thus the map of 1544, purporting to be the work of Sebastian Cabot and probably prepared more or less under his influence,69 places the island San Brandan not far from the scene of his father’s explorations and his own. It lies well out to sea in about the latitude of the Straits of Belle Isle. ”

“ Well, it were Jack Harris, our third mate last voyage, as many and many a time telled us all about it. You see he were becalmed off Chatham Island (that's in the Great Pacific, and a warm enough latitude for mermaids, and sharks, and such like perils) . So some of the men took the long-boat, and pulled for the island to see what it were like; and when they got near, they heard a puffing, like a creature come up to take breath; you've never heard a diver? No! Well; you've heard folks in th' asthma, and it were for all the world like that. ”