Fortunate Isles

“ But the object of the colonists was not to admire these magnificent vegetables. They knew already that, in this respect, their island merited a first place in the Canaries, called, formerly, the Fortunate Isles. But, alas! their island no longer belonged to them alone; others had taken possession, wretches whom it was necessary to destroy to the last man.
On the west coast they found no further traces of any kind.
“This does not astonish me,” said Smith. “The convicts landed near Jetsam Point, and, after having crossed Tadorn’s Fens, they buried themselves in the forests of the Far West. ”

“ They are distant from Cadiz about three hundred leagues; for, according to the masters of the art of navigation, each marine league is equal to four thousand paces. [3] In ancient times these islands were called Fortunate, because of the mild temperature they enjoyed. The islanders suffered neither from the heat of summer nor the rigours of winter: some authors consider that the real Fortunate Isles correspond to the archipelago which the Portuguese have named Cape Verde. If they are at present called the Canaries, it is because they are inhabited by men who are naked and have no religion. ”

“ So, although the flower-farmers have now to work for their increase, the results are not discouraging, and the Scillies still remain, and increasingly become, the Fortunate Isles. The climate is mild and equable, there are no poor; "penal" Budgets raise no alarms, for the isles are free from income-tax ”

“ By the most manifold and various ways the will and intelligence of man achieve their object. The attraction of long [Pg 383] voyages must often enough have been the hope of finding riches and favoured lands, but deeper still lay the imperious desire of getting to know our own earth. To riches men have seldom attained, to the Fortunate Isles never ”

“ Every mystery is dissipated. The planet is familiar as the trodden pathway running between towns. We no longer gaze wistfully to the west, dreaming of the Fortunate Isles. We seek our wonders now on the ebbed sea-shore; we discover our new worlds with the microscope. Yet, for all that time has brought and taken away, I am glad to know that the vagabond sleeps in our blood, and awakes now and then. Overlay human nature as you please, here and there some bit of rock, or mound of aboriginal soil, will crop out with the wild-flowers growing upon it, sweetening the air. ”

“ The Regenerator is too conversant with universal history not to know that his book, in crossing the Tweed northwards, approaches a people more familiar with its fundamental principles than any other inhabitants of these Fortunate Isles. ”

“ The advantage of drawing the prime meridian through the ocean has always been understood, and it was precisely for this reason that Marinus of Tyre, during the first century, placed it at the Fortunate Isles, west of the African Continent. It is idle to urge the difficulty of fixing such a meridian as an objection. Astronomy is so far advanced in our day as to enable us to make this calculation with all desirable accuracy. ”

“ Such are the Happy Isles, whereunto few have come, save but as roaming shadows in the night, and for only a little while.
'But longer than is needed to make me strong and fierce again I may not stay, and at set of sun, when my arms are strong again, and when I feel in my legs that I can plant them fair and bent upon the floor of ocean, then I go back to take a new grip upon the waters of the Straits, and to guard the Further Seas again for a hundred years. Because the gods are jealous, lest too many men shall pass to the Happy Isles and find content. ”

“ In the first place, it is useless to think of leaving this island, until we have a sufficient stock, of provisions and water to put in a canoe, to last us until we can get back to Ternate. Did we put into any island on the way, our position might be ten times as bad as it now is. Here at least we are well treated and honored and, did we choose, could no doubt live here in a sort of heathen comfort, for the rest of our lives; just as many white sailors on the western isles have turned natives, and given up all thought of ever returning to their own country. ”

“ The atoll, like the ship, is soon taken for granted; and the islanders, like the ship’s crew, become soon the centre of attention. The isles are populous, independent, seats of kinglets, recently civilised, little visited. In the last decade many changes have crept in: women no longer go unclothed till marriage; the widow no longer sleeps at night and goes abroad by day with the skull of her dead husband; and, fire-arms being introduced, the spear and the shark-tooth sword are sold for curiosities. ”

“ These Precipices are natural; for the Rocks seem too hard to work on; nor is there any sign that Art hath been employed about them. On Bashee Island there is one such, and built upon, with its back next the Sea. Grafton and Monmouth Isles are very thick set with these Hills and Towns; and the Natives, whether for fear of Pirates, or Foreign Enemies, or Factions among their own Clans, care not for Building but in these Fastnesses; which I take to be the Reason that Orange Isle, though the largest, and as Fertile as any, yet being Level, and exposed, hath no Inhabitants. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the opposite side, six leagues out at sea, there was a small cluster of low islands, and some rocks and breakers at a less distance: these were called Neptune's Isles, for they seemed to be inaccessible to men. In the opening between Thistle's Island and the main are several small isles; and the two southernmost so much contract the entrance of the passage, that one mile and a half of its breadth, between the main land and western isle, was alone safe for ships: I gave to this the name of Thorny Passage. ”

“ Paul's Church, having had to give up his living in England owing to throat trouble. He advised me to make an expedition to the Island of St. Honorat, one of the Isles de Lerins, some six miles distant, where I had a most interesting time.
One of these Islands is the place where the man with the iron mask was confined; the other famous for its monastery, founded by Honoratus in 410 A.D. It is a little gem of beauty in the blue Mediterranean; "Beata ilia Insula" was its old title; that Isle of Happiness. ”

“ We should also expect to find that after the partition of the Isles the Northern Islands would become comparatively deserted by the lower class of the population, the actual occupiers of the soil; and the condition of these islands at this time may be gathered from the Chronicle of Man, where it tells us that the Norwegian king Reginald ‘gave his brother Olave the island which is called Leodhus or Lewis, which though larger than any of the other isles is mountainous, rocky, and almost entirely inaccessible. ”

“ Lying nearly forty miles west of Grande Isle, it was nevertheless far more populated a generation ago: it was not only the most celebrated island of the group, but also the most fashionable watering-place of the aristocratic South;—to-day it is visited by fishermen only, at long intervals. Its admirable beach in many respects resembled that of Grande Isle to-day; the accommodations also were much similar, although finer: a charming village of cottages facing the Gulf near the western end. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the eyes of those to whom the past furnishes a perspective more fascinating even than the promise of the future, the little isle adjacent, which is itself a finely marked basaltic cone, rising over a thousand feet high and well called “Holy Island,” is even more worthy of the visits of the reflecting scholar. It holds an attraction even greater, in human interest, at least, than the wonders of geology, or the numerous witnesses to antiquity in the form of upreared stones. ”

“ It is a mile and a half long, with a small islet off the north, and another off its south end. These I called Taylor's Isles, in memory of the young gentleman who was in the cutter with Mr. Thistle. They lie near two miles from the main, and the depth between is from 7 to 10 fathoms, on a sandy bottom. A ship might anchor and sheltered here, off a small beach at the north end of the largest island ”

“ The day after leaving the Clyde, we were coasting along the not very attractive-looking island of Islay, inhabited by the Macdonalds. It was often the scene of forays, which one clan was wont to make on another, in the good old days, as people delight to call them, when the ancestors of the present race were scarcely more civilised than the South Sea islanders. Though rock-girt, Islay is fertile, and a large portion has been brought under a state of cultivation. ”

“ It was noised about from Maine to California that there was an immense opportunity to make money in the now well-known Wonder Island. Every return trip of the Wonder from the nearest South American port, brought Americans, with funds to invest in plantations and in setting out coffee trees and banana groves. ”

“ The island is nearly three miles long, north-west and south-east, and is moderately high and cliffy at the ends; the middle part is a sandy isthmus, not more than half a mile broad, but the breadth of the higher ends is from one-and-half to two miles. This island is the central one of a group; for besides the four small isles to the north-east, there are two close to the west end, and two others, something larger, lying off to the southward. I call these the ISLES OF ST. FRANCIS; in the persuasion that the central one is that named St. Francis by Nuyts. ”

“ Under the north-west end of King's Island, near the New Year's Isles. Of this anchorage I know only, besides what is given in the chart, that the brig Harrington there rode out a gale from south-west, the heavy sea being broken off by the New Year's Isles; and the shelter from eastern winds must certainly be much more complete.
2nd. Port Phillip; anchoring just within the entrance, on the south side. When a fair wind comes, a ship can get out of the port by means of the strong tides. ”

“ The settlers in Lincoln Island were no longer the miserable castaways thrown on the islet. They asked for nothing more—they gave thanks. The next day, the 5th of June, in rather uncertain weather, they set out for the islet. They had to profit by the low tide to cross the Channel, and it was agreed that they would construct, for this purpose, as well as they could, a boat which would render communication so much easier, and would also permit them to ascend the Mercy, at the time of their grand exploration of the southwest of the island, which was put off till the first fine days. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The great ahu which have so far been described are only a part, although the most imposing portion, of the stone remains of the island. It is fortunate for the student that when civilisation appeared the natives were gathered into one settlement, for they left behind them, sprinkled over the island, various erections connected with their original domestic life. ”

“ We passed by "Ellen's Isle," as it is called, the most exquisite little island ever formed, a perfect oval, and all covered with the purple heather, the golden gorse, and all sorts of flowers and exquisitely beautiful trees. O, what a little paradise it is! A number of little row-boats, with fine-looking Highland rowers and gay companies of ladies and gentlemen, were visiting the island as we passed. They show the oak tree to which they say Ellen fastened her boat. ”

“ Another island in the harbor is called Ellis Island, where most of the emigrants who have left their homes in other countries, land when they reach the United States. Irish and Poles, Italians and Russians, men with children clinging to their sides, and women with arms clasped around tiny babies, all dressed in the fashion of their old homes, step from the big ships and take their first breath of the free air of America almost under the shadow of the Statue of Liberty. ”

“ Last Island has gone! How it went I first heard from the lips of a veteran pilot, while we sat one evening together on the trunk of a drifted cypress which some high tide had pressed deeply into the Grande Isle beach. The day had been tropically warm; we had sought the shore for a breath of living air. Sunset came, and with it the ponderous heat lifted,—a sudden breeze blew,—lightnings flickered in the darkening horizon,—wind and water began to strive together,—and soon all the low coast boomed. Then my companion began his story; perhaps the coming of the storm inspired him to speak! ”