Western Isles

“ Coming now to Continental Islands we consider first those of most recent origin and offering the simplest phenomena; and begin with the British Isles as affording the best example of very recent and well known Continental Islands. Reviewing the interesting past history of Britain, we show why it is comparatively poor in species and why this poverty is still greater in Ireland. By a careful examination of its fauna and flora it is then shown that the British Isles are not so completely identical, biologically, with the continent as has been supposed. ”

“ Just in front of the headland can be seen the two peaks of the mountain of Rano Raraku, from which the statues were hewn and which is the most interesting place in the island; while on a clear day there can be obtained a glimpse of the northern coast and the sea beyond.
Such is Easter Island. It bears no resemblance to the ideal lotus-eating lands of the Pacific; rather, with its bleak grass-grown surface, its wild rocks and restless ocean, it recalls some of the Scilly Isles or the coast of Cornwall. It is not a beautiful country nor even a striking one, but it has a fascination of its own. ”

“ His home!—the Western giant smiles,
And twirls the spotty globe to find it;
This little speck the British Isles?
'T is but a freckle,—never mind it! ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Western Islands are kept free from severe frosts by the waters of the Gulf Stream, so that in the spots which face the southern suns, and are sheltered from the north and east, there is a growth which rivals, and perhaps outdoes, that of Devonshire and Cornwall. ”

“ At 4 we discover'd some low Islands and Rocks bearing West-North-West, which we stood directly for. At half Past 6 we Anchor'd on the North-East side of the Northermost, in 16 fathoms, distant from the Island one Mile. This Isle lay North-West 4 Leagues from Cape Grenville. On the Isles we saw a good many Birds, which occasioned my calling them Bird Isles. Before and at Sunset we could see the Main land, which appear'd all very low and sandy, Extends as far to the Northward as North-West by North, and some Shoals, Keys, and low sandy Isles away to the North-East of us. ”

“ The east and south coasts show considerable stretches of uniform uninflected coast-line, and except for the Farne Islands and Holy Island in the extreme north, the flat islands formed by ramifications of the estuaries on the Essex and north Kent coasts, and the Isle of Wight in the south, they are without islands. The west coast, on the other hand, including both shores of the great south-western promontory, is minutely fretted into capes and bays, headlands and inlets of every size, and an island-group lies off each of the more prominent headlands from Land’s End northward. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At any rate, the previous notice of the ethnology of the British Isles during the Historical period, prepares us with a little light for the dark walk in the field of its earliest antiquity.
Nothing, as has just been stated, in the earliest historical records of Britain, throws any light upon the original occupation of the British Islands by man; indeed, nothing tells us that Britain, when so occupied, was an island at all. The Straits of Dover may have existed when the first human being set foot upon what is now the soil of Kent, or an isthmus may have existed instead. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It lies nearer the Continent or Main, than most of the other considerable American Isles; which Islands, as it were, guard it from the violence of the Winds, and great Atlantic Ocean, and render it fitter for the produce of the Manufacture and Trade of those parts, than any of them. ”

“ When this comes to be proved, we shall be no longer at a loss to know how the Islands lying in those Seas came to be peopled; for if the inhabitants of Ulietea have been at Islands laying 2 or 300 Leagues to the Westward of them, it cannot be doubted but that the inhabitants of those Western Islands may have been at others as far to Westward of them, and so we may trace them from Island to Island quite to the East Indies. ”

“ We have also the curious fact of our outlying islands, such as the Shetland Isles, the Isle of Man, and the little Lundy Island, possessing each some peculiar forms which, certainly, do not exist on our principal island which has been so very thoroughly worked. ”

“ From its commencement to the present day, fully two thousand teachers and native ministers have been here trained, including a considerable number of men from far-distant Papuan Isles—from the New Hebrides, New Caledonia, the Tokelau, and Savage Isles—all speaking different tongues, but here meeting together to learn what they can, and then carry the truth to their own distant isles. ”

“ How shall we account for this nation's having spread itself, in so many detached islands, so widely disjoined from each other, in every quarter of the Pacific Ocean! We find it, from New Zealand, in the south, as far as the Sandwich Islands to the north! And, in another direction, from Easter Island to the Hebrides! that is, over an extent of sixty degrees of latitude, or twelve hundred leagues, north and south! and eighty-three degrees of longitude, or sixteen hundred and sixty leagues east and west! How much farther, in either direction, its colonies reach is not known ”

“ The Population of the Northern Island is certainly very great; the Southern is much more thinly populated; quite a different Race of Men; they are much blacker; they are a very inferior Race of Men altogether. I had an Idea of colonizing Cloudy Bay myself.
Where is that?
That is on the Southern Island. What deterred you from that?
The Circumstance of Captain Stewart having gone down to assist those Natives deterred me; I was afraid to go among them after that. I expected that they would take every Ship connected with New South Wales and Great Britain. ”

“ What is it that attracts strangers from every part of the world into this distant land, and has more than compensated a remote situation and a churlish soil, and given to our own Northern Isle a splendour unknown to the regions of the sun? What is it which has brought together this mighty assemblage, and united the ardent and the generous from every part of the world, from the Ural mountains to the banks of the Mississippi, on the shores of an island in the Atlantic? ”

“ The group is bounded by the North Sea and the Pentland Firth on the south, the Atlantic on the west, Sumburgh Roost on the north, and the North Sea on the east. Our measurements take no account of the distant Sule Skerry, an islet of 35 acres lying 321⁄2 miles north-west of Hoy Head, and inhabited only by lightkeepers and innumerable birds. The archipelago is naturally divided into three sections: the Mainland in the centre, the South Isles including all islands to the south, and the North Isles all to the north, of the Mainland. The Mainland—the Norse Meginland, or Hrossey, i.e. ”

“ There is another contrast: in the south and west of the island we have no fiords or inlets, but long, smooth coasts hollowed out into bights; whereas the north is made up of islands, inlets, and peninsulas. We shall see later that these differences in structure have more than a purely geographical interest, since they have had a most marked influence on the settlement and history of the island.
North Island: Political.
Let us now start on our journey by rail and observe the country as we pass rapidly through it. At first we [107] travel through open lands with many prosperous-looking farms. ”

“ Whisky is very plentiful: there are several stills in the Island, and more is made than the inhabitants consume.
The great business of insular policy is now to keep the people in their own country. As the world has been let in upon them, they have heard of happier climates, and less arbitrary government; and if they are disgusted, have emissaries among them ready to offer them land and houses, as a reward for deserting their Chief and clan. Many have departed both from the main of Scotland, and from the Islands ”

“ 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. ”

“ Islands have always exercised a peculiar fascination over Englishmen, perhaps because, accustomed as they are to a sense of security induced by the surrounding sea, they never feel more comfortable than when the sea is on all sides at a measurable distance. It has been the ambition of many an Englishman to possess an island, however small, of his own. But England is not particularly blessed in this matter, and we may look with envy at the fringe of islands, large and small, precipitous and flat, scattered along the rugged shores of the west coast of Scotland. ”

“ So far as concerns {106}the British Isles it seems to be almost exclusively an inhabitant of the salterns, or sea marshes of Essex.
Abroad, the species occurs inland, and is not confined to the coast; its range extends eastwards to Siberia and Amurland. ”

“ The most tantalizing archeological puzzle of the Pacific is Easter Island, with its strange images of stone, ancient dwellings and antediluvian caves. Dropped at haphazard in the sea, a thousand miles from anywhere, and owing a passive allegiance to the Chilean Government, Easter Island is one of the wonders of the world, and holds a secret that no man has yet read. ”

“ The island lies in a lonely position, at the extreme west of the South Pacific series, and measures but thirteen miles in length and about seven in width. The hues of the land are sand and tawny; the sea is a faithful mirror of the turquoise sky; the dreamy heat of Polynesia endures throughout the year. Easter Island is lonely, lazy, unproductive, a little speck upon the broad breast of the Pacific. ”

“ If you will examine the map you will understand the situation better, and a geological chart of the island will show you that the western coast, from Mizzen Head to Bloody Foreland, is protected by a chain of mountains, bleak, rugged, and abrupt, which nature has placed as a buttress to support the rest of Ireland against the fierce attack of the Atlantic. ”

“ Polynesia, extending from the Pelew Isles on the west, to the Isle of All Saints on the north-east, and the Sandwich Isles in the east, and having for its other boundaries the latitude of 20° north, and of 50° south, near the latter of which it joins Australasia, is the only remaining division of the globe which remains to come under our cognizance, as having been explored by maritime expeditions ”

“ 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. ”

“ It contains between two and three thousand inhabitants. The business men rarely live in either St. George or Hamilton, the only towns in the islands; but, when the work of the day is ended, they drive or sail away to their cottages on the islands. ”

“ Thus we gain an altogether fresh interest in the beautiful spots of our own islands, especially those of the wilder and more mountainous west, where the older inhabitants of the land lingered longest. Saxon conquest obliterated much in Eastern Britain, and changed more; but in the West of England, in Wales, in Scotland, and especially in legend-haunted Ireland, the hills and dales still keep memories of the ancient gods of the ancient race. ”