Green Island

“ As we steam closer, the island becomes all verdant from flood to sky; the great dead crater shows its immense wreath of perennial green. On the lower slopes little settlements are sprinkled in white, red, and brown: houses, windmills, sugar-factories, high chimneys are distinguishable;—cane-plantations unfold gold-green surfaces.
We pass away. The island does not seem to sink behind us, but to become a ghost. All its outlines grow shadowy. For a little while it continues green;—but it is a hazy, spectral green, as of colored vapor. ”

“ The roads which thread the island like a net are constantly cared for. Winding in and out and ever upward to dizzy heights, they lead through impenetrable jungle, thickets of bamboo and giant tree ferns, affording from occasional open spaces glimpses of shadowy ravines and bounding torrents hemmed in by farther peaks in serried ranks that beggar description, descending again toward the western side through mile upon mile of soft gray-green waving cane, till one comes at last to the blue Atlantic beating itself into froth upon the sands at Trinité. ”

“ In leaving the Burnside for the broad Vernon River, as the canoe approached the sea, one of the sudden tempests which frequently vex these coast-waters arose, and drove me to a hammock in the marshes of Green Island, on the left bank and opposite the mouth of the Little Ogeechee River. Green Island has been well cultivated in the past, but is now only the summer home of Mr. Styles, its owner. Two or three families of negroes inhabited the cabins and looked after the property of the absent proprietor. ”

“ Beyond all this coast-front long undulations of misty pale green are visible,—far slopes of low hill and plain; the highest curving line, the ridge of the island, bears a row of cocoa-palms. They are so far that their stems diminish almost to invisibility: only the crests are clearly distinguishable,—like spiders hanging between land and sky. But there are no forests: the land is a naked unshadowed green far as the eye can reach beyond the coast-line. ”

“ The Catalan map of about 1480 shows Greenland also as a great northwestern land mass beyond Iceland, identifying it by name as Illa Verde (Green Island) . But just south, or west of south, of this Greenland at a slight interval and southwest of Iceland is drawn and named a large Brazil of the conventional circular disc form. Its position is that of Labrador, or perhaps Newfoundland, as it would naturally have been understood and reported by the Norse explorers. It can be nothing but one or both of these regions of America with perhaps neighboring lands. ”

“ Perhaps in most of such northern cases a conception like Coppo’s of Greenland as an oceanic island is at the root of the derivation; but successive copyings, modifications, and shiftings may have altered the area, form, and location, while the clue was gradually lost and only the name remained—hardly as a reminder, for it is of too general descriptive application.
Various “Green Islands:” Shrinkage of the Name
There is, indeed, one instance of a Green Island with which Greenland can have had nothing whatever to do. ”

“ After receiving a few waddies and some shell necklaces from the natives, and making them presents in return, we took leave of them, and went back to the cutter, at Green Island, where we went on shore. This island, like most, if not all others in this part of the straits, is of granite, and like the majority of them, it is low. Its circumference may be about three miles, and most of its surface is covered with thick grass, which is knee-deep, and with nettles, sow-thistles, and tree-mallows, breast high, or with spreading barilla-bushes of three feet. ”

“ Sailing down the river, group after group of big and little green islands are passed, the winding route and tortuous channels marked by diminutive lighthouses and beacons, while nearly every island has its cottages and often ornate and elaborate villas. Everywhere the shores appear to be granite rocks, bright green foliage varying with the darker evergreens surmounting them. ”

“ Brandan’s Island is a neighbor on his map. Ortelius, in 1570184 (Fig. 10) and Mercator, in 1587,185100 represent Y Verde west of Vlaenderen in the region north of the Azores. In the eighteenth century it still held its ground west of France in the eastern Atlantic as Isla Verde, Isla Verte, Ile Verte, Ilha Verde, and Green Island. By the early part of the nineteenth century it had, after its kind, dwindled to Green Rock—Brazil Island similarly becoming Brazil Rock—as dubious rocks became easier to believe in than dubious islands. ”

“ Behind us the mountains still float back. Their shining green has changed to a less vivid hue; they are taking bluish tones here and there; but their outlines are still sharp, and along their high soft slopes there are white specklings, which are villages and towns. These white specks diminish swiftly,—dwindle to the dimensions of salt-grains,—finally vanish. Then the island grows uniformly bluish; it becomes cloudy, vague as a dream of mountains;—it turns at last gray as smoke, and then melts into the horizon-light like a mirage. ”

“ The entrance to the harbour is between Enderby Island on the north side, on which was once a pilot station, and Green Island, or Ewing Island of Sir James Ross, their distance apart being little above a mile. Ocean Island is three-quarters of a mile west of Green Island, and is connected by shoal water to the S.E. point of the harbour. Rose Island, which forms a continuation of the north side of the entrance, lies to the N.W. of Ocean Island, and from between these the harbour runs 21⁄2 miles to the S.W., having a depth of ten to twenty fathoms over it, and the shores bold-to. ”

“ Dunmanway from the Bridge on the Cork Road, 1848
The "Green Little Island," is surpassingly romantic. The old ruin of a monastery, God knows how old, gigantic forest trees, bowing their aged limbs into the clear water, the shadows of the frowning mountain thrown fantastically on the bosom of the lake, form a tout ensemble of lonely loveliness rarely equalled. ”

“ Green Island, nearby and lushly overgrown with forests of ebony and cactus, lures birds that ride the winds for hundreds, or even thousands of miles; flamingos from Bermuda, yellow-billed tropic birds from the Antilles come to visit. Most frequent visitors are great black-winged fliers known as frigate birds. These pirates (who are too lazy to hunt their own food) , force, with buffeting wings, the gulls to disgorge fish in their craws, seizing the prey while still airborne. ”

“ Valleys and mornes, peaks and ravines,—succeeding each other swiftly as surge succeeds surge in a storm,—a weirdly tossed world, but beautiful as it is weird: all green the foreground, with all tints of green, shadowing off to billowy distances of purest blue. The sea-line remains invisible as ever: you know where it is only by the zone of pale light ringing the double sphericity of sky and ocean. And in this double blue void the island seems to hang suspended: far peaks seem to come up from nowhere, to rest on nothing—like forms of mirage. ”

“ Obliging as people sometimes are when the fancy strikes them, a youth took us over to the other island in his canoe, and was even skilful enough to keep us from capsizing. Narrow paths, bordered with impenetrable bush, led us from the beach across coral boulders up to the plantations on top of the tableland. Under some cocoa-nut palms our guide stopped, climbed nimbly up a slim trunk, as if mounting a ladder, and three green nuts dropped to the ground at our feet. ”

“ It is called Green Hill: its name being taken from the faintest tinge of that colour, which at this time of the year is barely perceptible from the anchorage. To complete the desolate scene, the black rocks on the coast are lashed by a wild and turbulent sea.
The settlement is near the beach; it consists of several houses and barracks placed irregularly, but well built of white freestone. The only inhabitants are marines, and some negroes liberated from slave-ships, who are paid and victualled by government. There is not a private person on the island. ”

“ They could then see the faint summer fogs in layers, woolly, level, and apparently no thicker than counterpanes, spread about the meadows in detached remnants of small extent. On the gray moisture of the grass were marks where the cows had lain through the night—dark-green islands of dry herbage the size of their carcasses, in the general sea of dew. From each island proceeded a serpentine trail, by which the cow had rambled away to feed after getting up, at the end of which trail they found her; ”

“ Thus Desceliers’ map of 1546163 (Fig. 9) , a museum of strangely-named sea islands, makes the latitude of “Maidas” 47° and the longitude that of St. Michaels, but not long afterward Nicolay (1560;164 Fig. 6) and Zaltieri (1566) 165 transferred the island to Newfoundland waters. Nicolay calls it “I man orbolunda,” and places it just south of the Strait of Belle Isle. It is accompanied by Green Island and by Brazil, a little farther out on the Grand Banks where the Virgin Rocks may still be found at low tide. Taken together these three islands look like parts of a disintegrated Newfoundland. ”

“ Red Island is small, rocky, and of no great elevation; its colour is a very dark red; the sides are precipitous, and in its centre is a clump of trees which cannot be seen until you have run by the island, as it falls gradually from the south-west to the north-east, so that the north-east side is the least elevated. We sounded when about seven miles to the north-west of it, and found bottom at twenty-five fathoms, of green sandy mud. ”

“ It is a very agreeable climb up Newport, and not difficult; but if the sun is out, one feels, after scrambling over the rocks and walking home by the dusty road, like taking a long pull at a cup of shandygaff. The mountain is a solid mass of granite, bare on top, and commands a noble view of islands and ocean, of the gorge separating it from Green Mountain, and of that respectable hill. For this reason, because it is some two or three hundred feet lower than Green Mountain, and includes that scarred eminence in its view, it is the most picturesque and pleasing elevation on the island. ”

“ Perhaps it owes some of its placidity to the fact that it flows the wrong way, and by no human agency can it ever be set right. Unlike the rest of the American rivers, it flows due north; the why and the wherefore is one of Nature’s mysteries. It is always spacious and majestic: here a tiny island with a crown of green foliage studs its surface; there tall reeds and rushes and wide-leaved grasses sway in the slow-flowing current, as though they have wandered from the land, and are trying to save themselves from drowning. ”

“ As we move away southwardly, the receding outlines of the island look more and more volcanic. A chain of hills and cones, all very green, and connected by strips of valley-land so low that the edge of the sea-circle on the other side of the island can be seen through the gaps. We steam past truncated hills, past heights that have the look of the stumps of peaks cut half down,—ancient fire-mouths choked by tropical verdure. ”

“ His strong belief that one did exist was at length justified. In the Green Mountain, at a great level from the sea, he found one at a depth of twenty-five feet which proved to be capable of supplying all the wants of the island. Large tanks were at once made and piping laid to the garrison.
Having now an abundance of water, the most vigorous efforts were put forth to bring some of the land under cultivation. The most promising parts of the Green Mountain were first planted; and sheltered spots in other parts of the island were chosen, and the ground broken up and irrigated. ”

“ The island contains about three acres of green sward, the remainder of the surface consisting of limestone rocks, which are deeply excavated. It serves during the sprat season as a place of resort for fishermen, who have extended their sprat-bangs from the island to the main land.
A narrow horse road forms the descent from the downs in the island to the level of the sea, and it is just where the road begins to quit the sward on the left hand side opposite the sea, that a narrow stratum of soft red sandstone appears. ”

“ National growth in isolated or semi-isolated lands like the English plain, Holland, Sweden, and the central Scottish lowland was also a feature, while the diverse outlooks of the diverse coasts of Ireland and the weakness of that country's interior made the Green Isle the tragic type of the island which is so generally disunited. ”

“ As I write these lines I lift my eyes and look seaward. I am on the beach of Waikiki on the island of Oahu. Far, in the azure sky, the trade-wind clouds drift low over the blue-green turquoise of the deep sea. Nearer, the sea is emerald and light olive-green. Then comes the reef, where the water is all slaty purple flecked with red. Still nearer are brighter greens and tans, lying in alternate stripes and showing where sandbeds lie between the living coral banks. Through and over and out of these wonderful colours tumbles and thunders a magnificent surf. ”

“ Frontenac Island used to be called Round Island, I guess because it wuz kinder square in shape. It is a handsome place with a immense hotel [A] settin’ back most a quarter of a mild, and jined by a long railed balcony with another, makin’ room enough, it seemed to me, for an army. The broad, handsome path leadin’ up to it wuz bordered with beautiful flowers and shrubs, lookin’ lovely against the vivid green of the lawn. ”