Isla

“ Campbell of Isla was just in time to save from [116] oblivion the Gaelic shape of far-travelled tales which even a generation ago the Gael felt half ashamed to repeat before unsympathetic strangers, and which now linger only in secluded glens and islands, told in the native tongue round peat fires by old folks too dim-eyed for newspapers. Superstition dies harder than romance ”

“ An archipelago of fifty-six islands lies scattered over the water, with only half of them inhabited, but not all the rest habitable; if, like Sancho Panza, you are looking for an island, you will not find the isle of heart's desire here. ”

“ Far away from any other land, in the midst of the South Pacific Ocean, there is a little island, a mere speck in the sea, for it is not six miles across at its widest point. A passing ship might leave this tiny island unnoticed, save for the lofty cliffs and precipices which guard its shores, running down to the white waves, ever curling and breaking at their feet. ”

“ The owner of such an island must have a peculiar sense of property and lordship; he must feel more like his own master and his own man than other people can. Other islands, perhaps high, precipitous, black bluffs, are crowned with a white light-house, whence, as evening comes on, twinkles a star across the melancholy deep,—seen by vessels coming on the coast, seen from the mainland, seen from island to island. Darkness descending, and looking down at the broad wake left by the wheels of the steamboat, we may see sparkles of sea-fire glittering through the gloom. ”

“ Graceful islands rise from the quiet waters,—Grape Island, Grass Island, Sharp Pine Island, and the rest, baptized with simple names by departed generations of farmers,—all wooded and bushy and trailing with festoonery of vines. ”

“ The islands are for ever arranging themselves into new forms, every one more and more beautiful; at least so they seem to be, perpetually occurring, yet always unexpected, and there is a pleasure even in such a series of slight surprises that enhances the delight of admiration. ”

“ Two English vessels are approaching the island. At first the crews do not see it, but as evening draws on, the look-out man in the larger ship gives the signal that he has caught sight of land. “Land ho, land!” passes from mouth to mouth among the sailors. What land can it be? No island, no rock even, is marked on the chart, and the officers gather on deck to look over the darkening sea toward that darker point where the new land lies. ”

“ For there are islands in the sea which have escaped the destroying deluge of peat-moss,—outcrops of firm and fertile land, which in the early Middle Age were so many natural parks, covered with richest grass and stateliest trees, swarming with deer and roe, goat and boar, as the streams around swarmed with otter and beaver, and with fowl of every feather, and fish of every scale.
Beautiful after their kind were those far isles in the eyes of the monks who were the first settlers in the wilderness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Whoever has read the history of those isles, will remember the wonders told of another island, still more beautiful, seen occasionally from their shores, stretching away in the clear bright west, with long shadowy promontories, and high, sun-gilt peaks. Numerous expeditions, both in ancient and modern days, have launched forth from the Canaries in quest of that island; but, on their approach, mountain and promontory have gradually faded away, until nothing has remained but the blue sky above, and the deep blue water below. ”

“ O it’s a nice little Island.
Now they all have the hip,
And at sea scarce a ship.
Let ’em go and build more upon dry land;
While our conquests increase,
Till the blessings of peace
Shall glad every heart in the Island.
O! it’s a nice little Island,
A right little, tight little Island.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There are more islands in my plays than any of you are aware of. I have the cunning to call them by other names. There is one thing I am really good at, and that is at slipping in an island. I dare say it is those islands that make you misunderstand me. I would feel as if I had left off clothing if I were to write without an island. ”

“ These are the islands whereto the souls of the sailors every night put in from all the world to rest from going up and down the seas, to behold again the vision of far-off intimate hills that lift their orchards high above the fields facing the sunlight, and for a while again to speak with the souls of old. ”

“ It is to be remembered also that an island not only appears and disappears upon the horizon in brighter or darker skies, but it varies its height and shape, doubles itself in mirage, or looks as if broken asunder, divided into two or three. ”

“ The sky was clear, so that the eye commanded a wide circle: the sea was neither still nor turbulent: the wind neither silent nor loud. We were never far from one coast or another, on which, if the weather had become violent, we could have found shelter, and therefore contemplated at ease the region through which we glided in the tranquillity of the night, and saw now a rock and now an island grow gradually conspicuous and gradually obscure. ”

“ Isla Grande is about nine leagues long, consisting of high land, as in the main, and all near the water is thickly covered with wood. The island abounds with monkeys and other wild beasts, and has plenty of good timber for various uses as well as fuel, with excellent water; and oranges, lemons, and guavas grow wild in the woods. From the town we procured rum, sugar, and tobacco, and the last is sold very dear, though not good for smoking, being too strong. We got also fowls and hogs, but the latter were scarce and dear ”

“ Were we some great mariner, and had discovered such an island, and had eaten of the bread-fruit of the hospitable native, and reclined under their peaceful trees, and seen their youths and maidens crowned with green boughs, sporting like fishes in their beautiful clear seas, no mermaid happier—we should know but of one way to prove our gratitude—to close our lips for ever on the discovery we had made. ”

“ In all it contains about a hundred thousand inhabitants. What Nature has done for this island in cutting out of its coast its four or five harbors, the most beautiful in the world, surpasses all that can be imagined. ”

“ We derived pleasure from everything, study or contemplation, fair weather or foul; a twilight ramble on the island by the magnificent northern lights, or a quiet sail on the solitary lake perfumed with the fragrance of the honeysuckle or of the blue hyacinths growing so profusely on Inishail and the Black Isles. ”

“ 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! ”

“ The land, as it recedes back from the sea, rises to a considerable height, and is dressed in the brightest green foliage; the sandy beach, washed by the never-ceasing rollers, with the neat white houses quietly reposing beneath the thick shade of the myriads of cocoanut, orange, and94 banana trees, renders it the most beautiful island we have ever beheld. As we stood viewing it from the ship, while drawing nearer and nearer, we could but imagine it to be some Eden of happiness, where yet the passion of man had not stepped in to mar and spoil its beauty. ”

“ A traveler in 1854, thus describes this interesting locality, "Everything on the island is a curiosity, the roads or streets that wind around the harbor or among the grove-like forests of the island, are naturally pebbled and macadamized, the buildings are of every style, from an Indian lodge to an English house, the island is covered with charming natural scenery, from the beautiful to the grand, and one may spend weeks constantly finding new objects of interest, and new scenes of beauty. ”

“ The suburbs to the south seem even more attractive than the city, with low, red-roofed houses, groups of palms, and ruined forts. Down the coast stretch the wind-blown sandhills,—the medanos,—yellow, flecked with green, with coral reefs tossing the foam above the blue water, and the Island of Sacrifices—Isla de los Sacrificios—lying low to the eastward.
Under the walls of the castle fortress, San Juan de Ulua, the steamer drops anchor, half a mile from the mole, where seems concentrated the life of the city. ”

“ It carries our thoughts far from home to fair isles in tropical seas—isles connected in our memories with tales of shipwrecked mariners and hair-breadth escapes, of dashing waves and peaceful lagoons, of breadfruit trees and waving palms, of perpetual sunshine and endless holidays, of Robinson Crusoe adventures and interesting islanders, of poisoned arrows and ferocious sharks. ”

“ In the morning, being within three miles of the shore, we discovered it to be a long low island, with a white beach, of a pleasant appearance, full of cocoa-nut and other trees, and surrounded with a rock of red coral. We stood along the north-east side of it, within half a mile of the shore; and the savages, as soon as they saw us, made great fires, as we supposed, to alarm the distant inhabitants of the island, and ran along the beach, abreast of the ship, in great numbers, armed in the same manner as the natives of the Islands of Disappointment. ”

“ It is plain enough that you have never been beyond your own island. If you were not lame, and if you had been out as I have in a fishing-boat, you would know that the sun does not set among the mountains of our island, but as it rises from the ocean every morning so it sets again in the sea every night. ”

“ And these purveyors returning on the evening of the same day, we then set fire to the bark and proa, hoisted in our boats and got under sail, steering away towards the south end of the island of Formosa, and taking our leaves, for the third and last time, of the island of Tinian: an island which, whether we consider the excellence of its productions, the beauty of its appearance, the elegance of its woods and lawns, the healthiness of its air, or the adventures it gave rise to, may in all these views be justly stiled romantic. ”

“ It is a genuine oasis, surrounded by a desert, which Philip II. chose in a day of good humour, almost as if to temper with the gay picture the gloomy melancholy of the Escorial, and in which one still breathes the atmosphere, so to speak, of the private life of the kings of Spain.’
The Jardines de la Reina are of minor importance, but the Jardines de la Isla, comprising the four divisions which are known as Parterre, La Estatuas, Isla, and Emparrado, are filled with natural and created beauties. ”

“ As the island grew, nuts drifted to its changing shores and took root, until, as more and more land appeared, those trees which at one time stood along the edge of the island would at length be situated in the interior. ”

“ From their long tales, their traits of character and unpremeditated landscape, there began to piece itself together in my head some image of the islands and the island life: precipitous shores, spired mountain tops, the deep shade of hanging forests, the unresting surf upon the reef, and the unending peace of the lagoon; sun, moon, and stars of an imperial brightness; man moving in these scenes scarce fallen, and woman lovelier than Eve ”

“ A beautiful island, with lofty trees and green smiling meadows, stretches itself along in the middle of the stream before the town, adding not a little to the picturesqueness of the scene, and, in all probability, destined to add something more to the future importance of the place. ”

“ This island, low at one part, is high and mountainous at another. It was late in the afternoon before we had a clear view of its lofty peaked mountain. The island was densely wooded, having a picturesque and verdant appearance. During the morning, which was showery, we slowly coasted along the island, at about four or five miles distant. As the weather cleared up about noon, the scenery gratified the eye with its varied tints, refreshed by the genial showers, and recalled to my memory those gems of the ocean distributed over the Polynesian Archipelago. ”

“ Indeed, every house and cottage in the island stood on the sea-shore, because the island was so long and narrow, that, from the top of the mountain range which divided it, you could see the sea on both sides. If in any place the coast widened, little creeks ran in among the hills, and made the sea accessible from all points. The island consisted entirely of this one mountain range towering to the clouds ”