Mount Desert Island

“ When the sun set, it set behind the prairie waves. I was oblivious of any changes during the night, and at rosy dawn an ocean of long green grass encircled us round. Still on—belts of timber diversify the prospect—we rush into a thick wood, and, emerging from it, arrive at Rock Island, an unfinished-looking settlement, which might bear the name of the Desert City, situated at the confluence of the Rock River and Mississippi. We stop at a little wharf, where waits a little steamer of uncouth construction ”

“ As to a house, we might sleep very comfortably, in such weather as this, under these Tournefortias, and never so much as think of taking cold; or we could soon build a serviceable hut, which would be proof against sun and rain, of the trunks and boughs of trees, with a thatch of palm-leaves for a roof. Then in regard to arms, of course, if it should be our fate to set up for desert islanders, we should be well supplied in that line. I never heard of any one, from Robinson Crusoe down, being cast away on a desert island, without a good store of guns, pistols, cutlasses, etcetera, etcetera. ”

“ The beginning of the desert was marked off by a wall, to call it so, for it was more of a long mound of stones. They say it reaches right across the island, but how they know it is another question, for I doubt if any one has made the journey in a hundred years, the natives sticking chiefly to the sea and their little colonies along the coast, and that part being mortal high and steep and full of cliffs. Up to the west side of the wall the ground has been cleared, and there are cocoa-palms and mummy-apples and guavas, and lots of sensitive. Just across, the bush begins outright ”

“ He holds it sacred unto those
Who bravely fell before their foes,
And rarely dares its desert wall.
Here breaks nor sound of strife or sign;
Rare times a red man comes this way,
Alone, and battle-scarred and gray,
And then he bends devout before
The maid who keeps the cabin door,
And deems her sacred and divine.
Within the island's heart, 'tis said,
Tall trees are bending down with bread,
And that a fountain pure as truth,
And deep and mossy bound and fair,
Is bubbling from the forest there,—
Perchance the fabled fount of youth! 202
An isle where never cares betide ”

“ When we recollect how many bare and rocky islands are inhabited and cultivated between the 17th and 26th degrees of latitude in the archipelago of the Lesser Antilles and Bahama islands, we are surprised to find those islands desert which are near to the coast of Cumana, Barcelona and Caracas. They would long have ceased to be so had they been under the dominion of any other government than that to which they belong. Nothing can engage men to circumscribe their industry within the narrow limits of a small island when a neighbouring continent offers them greater advantages. ”

“ For a desert-island is a child’s escape from real life and its many lessons. Ask yourself why you longed for a desert-island when you were young, and you will find the answer to be that you did what you liked there, ate what you liked, and carried through your own adventures. It is the “Family” which spoils The Swiss Family Robinson, just as it is the Seagrave family which nearly wrecks Masterman Ready. What is the good of imagining yourself (as every boy does) “Alone in the Pacific” if you are not going to be alone? Well, perhaps we do not wish to be quite alone ”

“ This is a large desert island, or rock, that is about four miles from the main. The passage between them is practicable by small craft only, whose planks are sewed together, and are not affected by a stroke upon hard ground for it is not for want of water that this navigation is dangerous. All the west coast is very bold, and has more depth of water than the east; but on this side there is no anchoring ground, nor shoals. It is a rocky shore, and there is depth of water every where, yet that part is full of sunken rocks ”

“ The island is really the edge of the desert where it makes down to the Mediterranean. It is, in effect, a farming oasis which has been reclaimed from the sands by its own people through the use of the underground waters. It is in a condition of varied cultivation throughout, but is more fertile in some parts than in others; for, if attention is relaxed, it reverts at once to the sterile, sandy state. A peculiar people inhabits it. ”

“ One of our contemporaries draws a fanciful picture of life on some gorgeous Southern Pacific isle, out of the track of steamers, and pictures the Nine Men living in a condition of Oriental splendour, an existence of dolce far niente. Such a supposition is, of course, on the face of it absurd. Such an island exists only in the fancy of the romantic writer. The uninhabited portions of the globe are few, and are, in the main, of the character of the Sahara desert. Wherever life can be sustained, wherever comfort and freedom from disease wait the newcomer, be sure the newcomer has already arrived. ”

“ Species extending to lower elevations are here depauperate from wind and cold, although elsewhere they may attain a sturdy stature, even tree-size. Few seedlings are seen; individuals whose life span has finished remain conspicuous in death. Neither trees nor mats of shrubs are seen, but mosses and lichens find this Alpine desert to their liking. Oddly enough, one looks in vain for brilliant blossoms, such as one has come to expect in the high Sierra and the Rockies. The summit is a biological island on an oceanic island which, geological evidence indicates, never was part of a continent. ”

“ There is generally but one entrance through the reef, and the difficulty of discovering it is well described by the Young Crusoes. Each one has its own peculiar beauty; but Ovolan exceeds all others; it is the highest, the most broken, and the most picturesque.
Having thus introduced our readers to the scene of these adventures, we proceed to give the narrative in the words of the journalist of the Young Castaways.
Chapter Two. The Tropical Island. A Cocoa-Palm—Views of Desert Island Life. ”

“ The island, which was settled by Europeans as early as 1629, embraces nearly a hundred square miles, forming an oasis in the desert of waters. It is sixteen miles long and about one half as wide, containing fourteen thousand inhabitants, more or less, who can hardly be designated as an enterprising community. On first landing, everything strikes the visitor as being peculiarly foreign,—almost unique. The town is situated on the northerly front of the island, extending along the shore for a couple of miles, and back to a crest of land which rises to nearly the height of a hundred feet. ”

“ He wrote with enthusiasm, and announced his intention of staying some weeks on the island to overcome the risks that I had "so generously suggested." The crew and the natives, before putting off, would build him a hut and leave provisions, for the demented fellow, thinking more of his monkeys than his health, had lit upon a desert island. ”

“ And lying, meine Gnädige, will do you no good in your present predicament. You must not take advantage of our good nature, o, nein! Do not forget that on a desert island man is apt to sink back into his primitive state... ”

“ When a traveler sees one of these fertile spots afar off, he feels as a tempest-tossed sailor does at sight of land. It is delightful to quit the hot, baking sun, sit in shadow under the trees, and rest the eyes, long wearied with dazzling sands, on the sweet green and the clear spring. Oases, these islands are called. Long distances divide them. It is often a race for life to get across from one to the other. Sometimes people do not get across! In 1805, a caravan of 2,000 persons died miserably of heat and thirst in the great desert, and the sand covered them up. ”

“ Within the memory of comparatively young men a third of the territory of the United States beyond the Mississippi bore the name of the "Great American Desert." It was a region vast beyond accurate human conception, in extent as great as half of Europe, midribbed with the stupendous, shaggy bulk of the Rocky Mountains, from which it descended in both directions in illimitable rolling plains and rugged mesas, rising here to the height of snow-crowned mountains, and falling there to the ancient salty beds of lost seas, lower than the level of the ocean. ”

“ It has several small sandy islets scattered about it, and at low water the greater part is dry. There is doubtless a deep passage through, but it must be intricate and dangerous, and only to be attempted in a case of the most pressing emergency. On the island to the southward, are two sandy bays. The land to the southward is doubtless a part of the main: and is, like the other islands, high and rocky. It forms the eastern shore of MERMAID's STRAIT, which is an excellent port, affording safe and secure anchorage at all seasons. ”

“ Is it not a land of enchantment and dreams, not a place for living men and women, Indians though they be?
It is a land of enchantment, but also of stern reality, as those who have marched, unprepared, across its waterless wastes can testify. No fabled land ever surpassed it in its wondrousness, yet a railway runs directly over it, and it is not on some far-away continent, but is close at hand; a portion, indeed, of our own United States.
In our schoolboy days we used to read of the Great American Desert. The march of civilization has marched that "desert" out of existence. ”

“ The ocean broke angrily against the stern basalt, or entered these huge pits and sprang out of them in welling masses of foam and spray. An iron-bound coast that defied the heart, or any sentiment but wonder and fear. Boulders as big as ships were half attached to the precipices or lay near-by to attest the continuous devouring of the land by the sea. Coming from Tahiti, with its beautiful reefs and beaches, and the clouds like wreaths of reva-reva, with cocoanut-palms and breadfruit-trees and bananas covering all the land, this Easter Island seemed terribly bare and forbidding. ”

“ There is another class of men who traverse the Great Desert. For many years there has been a commerce carried on between the oasis of New Mexico and the United States. This commerce employs a considerable amount of capital, and a great number of men—principally Americans. The goods transported in large wagons drawn by mules or oxen; and a train of these wagons is called a “caravan.” Other caravans—Spanish ones—cross the western wing of the Desert, from Sonora to California, and thence to New Mexico. Thus, you see, the American Desert has its caravans as well as the Saära of Africa. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As soon as the taboo is off, canoes go in great numbers. The appearance of three ships at any one time also breaks the taboo.
The natives here also live in a state of great subjection. The principal authority is vested in a king; the chiefs rank next, each chief having authority over a particular tribe, who are held more as slaves than as free men. The climate is warm, and of an even temperature, the island being forty-eight miles south of the equator. They enjoy alternately the sea-breeze and land-breeze, the thermometer ranging from seventy-five to eighty degrees. ”

“ Beyond Lake Eyre, extending almost across the continent to within three hundred miles of the west coast, and to within about the same distance from the [Pg 5] ocean on the north and south, is the Great Desert. This has an estimated area of eight hundred thousand square miles, or about one fourth of all Australia. Except in the southwest corner, where gold is mined, there are said to be less than one thousand white people in this arid waste. The air is so dry that one’s fingernails become as brittle as glass, screws come out of boxes, and lead drops out of pencils. ”

“ The numerous patches of foul ground lying off the coast, between New River and Jacob’s River, were made visible by only a slight break on the rocks awash, and by the presence of some quaint-looking peaks in their midst. These dangers are chiefly to the eastward of Centre Island. This island is not of great height in any part, but it slopes from its summit gently to the north and east: and it is asserted that these islands in Foveaux Straits—Ruapuke, for instance—enjoy a better climate, and a more genial soil, than do some of the contiguous parts of the mainland. ”

“ 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. ”