Keynes, Richard

English

Aquatic Commons

THE ENCHANTED ISLANDS: THE GALAPAGOS DISCOVERED 
by John Hickman 
" .• ", Publthed 1m by Anlbony Nelson Lid., P.O. Box 9, Oswestry, Shropshire, SYIIIOY. England. 
£10.95 plus £2 postaae. 
Also ... ilaMe .. USA from Tanager Books, 51 Washington Street, Dover, New Hampshire. 03820 
$17.50 plus 75c. postage 
'Take five and twenty heaps of cinders dumped here and there in an outside lot; imagine some of them 
magnified into mountains and the vacanl 101 Ihe sea; and you will have a fit idea oflhe general aspect oflhe 
Encantadas.' So wrote Herman Melville in his book The EncQntados or Enchanted Isles. But Charles 
Darwin was no more flattering. for his first impression recorded in his diary the day after the Beagle's 
arrival at the Galapagos was as follows: 'These islands at a distance have a sloping uniform outline, 
excepting where broken by sundry paps and hillocks; the whole black lava, completely covered by small 
leaness brushwood and low trees. The fragments of I ava, where most porous,are reddish like cinders; the 
stunted trees show little signs of life. The black rocks heated by the rays of the vertical sun, like a stove, give 
to the air a close and sultry feeling. The plants also smell unpleasantly. The country was comparable to 
what one might imagine the cultivated pans of the Infernal regions to be.' And FitzRoy thought them 'a lit 
shore for Pandemonium'. 
For most of us today. the enchantment of the Galapagos lies not in the rather forbidding scenery that 
Darwin and Melville described so vividly, but in their truly fascinating wildlife. No less fascinating, but 
much less familiar, is the hislOry of their original discovery, and the accounts of them given by their early 
visitors, as set out by John Hickman in his highly readable book. 
That people from the mainland had visited the islands before the Spaniards was proved by Thor 
Heyerdahl's finding of Chimu pouery on them, and it seems clear that the Incas knew of their existence. 
However, the first documentary account of the accidental discovery of an island where there were 'such 
big tortoises that each could carry a man on top of itself. and many iguanas that are like serpents' was that 
written by Fray Tomas de Berlanga. Bishop of Panama, after he had Wlded on it on 10 March 1535. His 
ship had been carried there by the ocean current during a windless spell, when he was bound for Lima at 
the command of the Emperor Charles V in order to report on the situation in the newly conquered 
territories in Peru. Fray Tomas claimed no credit for what he had found. but the Flemish cartographer, 
Abraham Cortelius, read his dispatch and in his Orbis Terrarum. published in 1574,showed theislandsas 
'Isolas de Galapagos'. Ten years later another of the conquistadors. Diego de Rivadeneira, sighted the 
islands again, but landed only once. 
The next recorded visit was by the Dutch explorer, Jacob Herenite, in 1624. But no further interest was 
taken in the Galapagos until at the end of the century the English buccaneers began to make use ofthert:l as 
;1 hase. Ambrose Cowley, of the Balchelor's Delight, made the first chart in l684,andgavethe islands their 
English names; and among the same group of sailors was William Dampier. who described them vividly in 
his New Voyage Round 'he World. published in 1697. Dampier was again present when the Duke and the 
flu('hess, under the command of Captain Woodes Rogers, paid a rather traumatic visit to 'these 
unfortunate Islands' in May 1709. 
The Galapagos were now firmly on the map. but during the 18th century they were little visited except by 
occasional smugglers. In 1792 the situation began to change. following a repon by CaptainJames Colnen 
R.N., commissioned by the leading British whaling company. on the possibilities of exploiting the whale 
stocks of the Pacific. Colnen wrote a detailed report on the islands. and is said to have instituted the box 
for the exchange of mail at Post Office Bay. In April 1813. Captain David Poner U.S.N. of USS Essex 
used the post box to infonn himself about the British whalers in the vicinity, and in five months of cruising 
captured a dozen of them. Soon there were great numbers of whalers operating in the Pacific - around 
1830 Ihere were at least 700 vessels from America alone - who found in the Galapagos a prolific and 
seemingly ineKhaustib1e supply of tortoise meat. Even the Beagle added to the toll, and departed with 30 
tortoises on board destined for culinary rather than scientific purposes. But the whales were slaughtered 
faster than the tortoises, and by the eod of the American Civil War their numbers were so reduced that 
whaling ceased, and the tortoises were reprieved. 
26 
Noticias de Galapagos, vol. 42 1985
Afler 1832, the govemment of Ecuador assumed nominal responsibility for the administration of the 
Galpagos, though it was some time before any close control was exercised. Various attempts to make use 
of the meagre natural resources such as the orchilla moss and guano foundered under economic realities 
and harsh living conditions, though an increasing number of setllers managed to maintain themselves 
precariously by cuhivating crops on the higher moist zone of one or tWO of the islands. Their possible 
importance in relation to the Panama Canal, either strategically or as a coaling stalion, was discussed from 
time to lime, but came to nothing until in 1942 the Uniled States Sixth Air Force constructed a complete 
air base on South Seymour Island (Saltra). The American base was closed in 1947, but later the runway 
was resurfaced by the Ecuadorean Air Force, and the Saltra air Si rip now serves as the mai n linkbelWttn 
the islands and the mainland. 
One natural resource, however, the Galapagos had in great abundance. and the material in the fi nal 
chapters of the book will be fami liar to the readers of the Noticios. In Darwin's footsteps came a series of 
scientific ell:peditions led among others by Rollo Beck, William Beebe , Victor Wolfgang von Hagen and 
David Lack. In 1959 the Charles Darwin Foundation forthe Galapagos Islands wasformallyconstituted 
under Belgian law, and in 1964 irs Resea rch Station on Santa Cruz island wasopened. A few years later the 
Galapagos National Park Service came into operation. 
The whole story with its ups and dol'o'f\s , its successes and failures. is told in a masterful manner by John 
Hickman. combining historical detail with human interest to great effect. I have very greatly enjoyed 
reading it . 
Opunt i~ c,'hios barr iil~' {} n t'nsis ('I' &! l1ta I·c h la •. J 
1'1i0/, )gl"<lp11/ly ROj!.lr !"'rry 
" 
Richard Keynes 
Noticias de Galapagos, vol. 42 1985


The Enchanted Islands : the Galapagos Discovered by John Hickman [book review]

http://aquaticcommons.org/6287/1/NG_42_1985_Keynes_Book_review_Enchanted_Islands.pdf

The Enchanted Islands : the Galapagos Discovered by John Hickman [book review]

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