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Title: David goes voyaging
Author: David Binney Putnam
Illustrator: Isabel Cooper
Don Dickerman
Dwight Franklin
Release date: October 10, 2024 [eBook #74551]
Language: English
Original publication: United States: G. P. Putnam's Sons
Credits: Jeroen Hellingman and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net/ for Project Gutenberg (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DAVID GOES VOYAGING ***
DAVID
GOES VOYAGING
BY
DAVID BINNEY PUTNAM
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS, AND
DECORATIONS BY ISABEL COOPER, DON DICKERMAN
AND DWIGHT FRANKLIN
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
The Knickerbocker Press
1925
Copyright, 1925 by G. P. Putnam’s Sons
First printing, September, 1925
Second printing, October, 1925
Third printing, November, 1925
Fourth printing, November, 1925
Fifth printing, November, 1925
Made in the United States of America
To
GRANDMA
AND
GRANDPA BUB
A SOLEMN FOREWORD
Mr. George Putnam has asked me to write a solemn foreword to David’s
book. An ideal foreword cannot be too brief, should never be in the
nature of an apology or a panegyric,—and in fact any direct reference
to the subject of the volume in which it is printed is in the nature of
redundancy. Its only use, as far as I can see, is a chance to exploit
some idea of the foreword’s author which he can find no opportunity to
print elsewhere.
Pragmatism alone was the stimulus of my suggestion that eleven-year-old
David Putnam go on one leg of the Arcturus expedition—a Squeersian acid
test of sorts. Also a selfish desire to see how my blasé enthusiasms
had changed since I thrilled at my first palm tree and my first
dolphin.
I wanted to see the immediate result of a temporary shift from school
to skyline, from books to boobies, of the putting of volcanoes into
vacations, and of the working out of a sublimated hooky. Of the
immediate personal reactions between David, myself and our gorgeous
environment I can speak only with sheer enjoyment. Neither of us ever
tired of exeleutherostomizing at every new thrill.
As to the sifting of all these impressions, their reclothing in words
and phrases, I am looking forward with keen interest to reading David’s
book when it is published, to see what has been gained or lost, in
this, one of the most severe tests of the working of a human mind.
William Beebe, Steam Yacht Arcturus.
CONTENTS
PAGE
David Goes Voyaging 3
We Start on Our Cruise 13
The Galápagos Islands 23
Tower Island 31
The Volcano 41
A Day Ashore 47
The Diving Helmet 53
The Shipwrecked Man 59
Hood Island 65
A Day on Shipboard 73
Dredging 79
Panama 85
Cocos Island 91
May 20th, 1925 99
Weeks at Sea 105
Tagus Cove 111
The Giant Devil Fish 119
Molten Lava 125
Song to Davie Putnam 131
ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING PAGE
“I Lifted a Frigate Bird Off His Nest” Frontispiece
Using a Net from the Boom 4
David and an Albatross 6
In the Pulpit at the Bow 8
These Lizards Bite if They Get a Chance 26
The Frigate Birds are Unbelievably Tame 32
Diving in a Rock Pool at Darwin Bay 36
The First View of the Volcano on Albemarle 42
In the Diving Helmet, Standing in Front of Shark Cage 54
Dwight Franklin’s Pirate Sketch 60
Examining a Haul 74
On Deck with “Pinkie” the Penguin 76
Inspecting a Deep-Sea Haul 86
The Pirate 88
The Arcturus at Cocos Island 92
Ashore at Chatham Bay, Cocos Island 94
The Birthday Party 100
Don’s Birthday Card 102
With “Fury,” Don’s Famous Cutlass 104
Chiriqui, Dyna, the Dog-House and David 108
Reading from Left to Right, David, Don and Bozo, the
Young Sea-Lion 112
Entering Tagus Cove, Albemarle Island 114
The 46-Pound Tuna 120
The 18-Foot Devil-Fish on the Deck of the Arcturus 122
Where the Molten Lava Poured into the Sea 128
DAVID GOES VOYAGING
Mr. Beebe lets me call him Uncle Will, even if he is the head of this
big expedition. He was awfully nice to let me go on part of it.
I had my twelfth birthday on the Arcturus down on the Equator. And I
know how lucky I was to be taken along. It was great fun. And I think I
learned a lot, though perhaps it will hurt my school work, being away
and everything. Anyway, Mother and I joined the Arcturus—Uncle Will’s
ship—at Panama. We spent nearly three months in the Pacific Ocean,
studying sea life and visiting seven uninhabited desert islands. And I
promised Dad to write a little story about it all. He told me to try to
tell what we did and what I saw just like fellows telling each other
about their adventures. That’s pretty hard to do.
Then when I got back they let me make this little book out of what I
wrote most every day on the boat. It’s meant for boys and girls. Mother
helped me fix up the spelling and make the grammar right.
The writing took quite a long time, and I think being a naturalist
would be more fun than being a writer. Anyway, my stories help me
remember the fun we had on the Arcturus. I don’t see how it could have
been much better.
We arrived in Colon from New York and Havana early in the morning of
March 27th, and after our inspection, Capt. Lane took us in his own
launch over to the Arcturus—a high white ship which was lying across
the harbor.
This Arcturus, the boat on which we are to take our trip, is named for
the great star which sailors use as a guiding star in sailing strange
seas. She was fitted out by men who are interested in the New York
Zoological Society, which has the wonderful Zoo in the Bronx. Among the
living animals collected for the Zoo are albatrosses, flightless
cormorants (a very rare bird), boobies and penguins. A great many
specimens were to go to the American Museum of Natural History and fish
to the Aquarium at the Battery. She is fitted with a whole outfit for a
scientific expedition. At first sight she looked like a freighter, high
sided and built for cargo, with many booms and cables and equipment for
hoisting and moving things.
There are two laboratories in the forward part, the lower one fitted
with bottles, microscopes, modelling clay and all sorts of glass jars
in which to preserve specimens. The upper room is more of a library
with reference books and text books on all subjects about oceanography,
for this is an expedition mostly to study about the sea and the strange
creatures in it. Also there is a chemical laboratory so that the blood
of fishes can be examined.
The bridge, or main part of the ship, is built up of five decks, and
the members of the expedition have cabins here. The crew’s sleeping
quarters are in the after part of the ship, and many of the men have
hammocks hung up under the awning there, in which they sleep at night,
or lie around in the day time.
On the port side of the ship there is a special boom that goes out over
the side. On ships the word “port” means left, and “starboard” means
right. You never say back or front, but “aft” or “forward.”
This boom has two railings tied to the bottom plank so one can walk out
there and fish or haul in nets or go down the rope ladder. Sometimes
when the ship rolls a lot the end goes right under the water. And out
from the bow a pulpit is hung, a strong wire cage-like thing in which
we can stand for harpooning or catching floating objects as we pass. To
get down to the pulpit you climb down a rope ladder. When it’s rough
it’s pretty exciting.
In the forward part of the ship there are two rooms fitted out as
shops, one belonging to Bill Merriam the general handy man, who always
mends the nets, shapes a new dredge, puts another seat in one of the
rowboats, makes a lobster pot or fixes the motor boats. The other is a
workshop for Serge the taxidermist and for Dwight Franklin the
sculptor. Dwight makes wax moulds and plaster casts of fishes and
preserves them, as well as making drawings and paintings.
Isabel Cooper is the scientific artist. She has been on many other
expeditions and made many wonderful pictures. On this trip she did over
two hundred water color drawings of fish.
The Arcturus has two huge cables, one seven miles long, for hauling in
the big trawls. These are put down over the side and held out while the
ship goes slowly along at half speed. Sometimes the cable goes out as
much as three miles and often the sea is over a mile deep below us.
There are thirty-eight in the crew and eighteen members of the
expedition. Each night and morning the nets are put over, for a surface
haul and for a deep one a sounding is taken—a curious lead on a wire,
weighted down with an iron weight which forces the sound lead down to
the sea bottom and brings up a sample of the bottom, so we can see if
it is muddy or rocky or sandy. Each time the weight automatically drops
off when the bottom is reached, because the sounding wire isn’t strong
enough to pull it up.
After the nets are out for an hour they are hauled in and the contents
put into tubs of water. Sometimes the whole net has only a pint glass
full of tiny, tiny fish which have been brought up from a depth of over
a mile or two miles.
On the boat my room mate was Dr. W. K. Gregory of the American Museum
of Natural History, who is also Professor of Comparative Anatomy at
Columbia. Pretty nice, I think, for a real professor to let a
twelve-year-old boy bunk with him! Everyone called him just “Greg” and
liked him a lot because he always is so nice and so interested in his
work. I think Greg would rather dissect a fish than do almost anything.
I know I’d just about rather catch them!
My bunk was right next to where the smokestack went up from the engine
room, and the wall was pretty hot. So most of the time, except when it
rained, I slept on deck. Really, although we crossed the Equator
twenty-one times it was not so hot while we were at sea. Lots of times,
right on the Equator, it was cool enough to be comfortable wearing a
sweater.
WE START ON OUR CRUISE
For a day after our arrival on the Arcturus we waited in Colon while
the crew shifted coal from one bunker to another because it was getting
so hot in the forward one there was fear of its catching on fire.
And on the very first day while the rest of the crowd were ashore
seeing the city of Colon, which is at the Atlantic entrance of the
Panama Canal, I went with Serge, the Russian taxidermist to a little
beach across the bay. We took nets with us and were lucky to catch some
wonderful butterflies, several very bright blue fish and some unusual
shells.
Next day we started through the Canal early, and steamed along up to
the first lock. This is one of the finest and highest of all the locks,
Gatun, and here also is the great spillway, which empties out into the
Atlantic Ocean from Gatun Lake. The concrete walls and the little
railroad engines which pulled us through the locks all seem so simple
and like toys that you can hardly believe they would be able to take a
big ship through. For there are only one or two men to be seen the
whole time and one in an engine house turns a handle and the locks
open, fill with water, take us in, lift us up, and then set us out upon
a higher level into another lock, or the lake. The little engines have
cogged wheels and run along up and down the grades like tractor
engines.
In some of the locks we saw garfish, like eels a little, with long
sharp beaks or bills in front of their heads. And at many places along
the bank of the river or lake we saw big crocodiles lying out in the
sun.
In the afternoon we were in Panama, a city built by the Spaniards when
the first city of Old Panama was destroyed by the great English Pirate,
Morgan. We drove out to this old city six miles away. There are only
ruins there now, but the walls of the old cathedrals still stand, and
the square tower can be seen very far away. Morgan attacked the
Spaniards here after he had crossed the Isthmus with a few hundred men.
His men were nearly starved and were worn out with the hard work to get
across but they were determined to take this city for there was much
gold and jewels here and the pirates wanted to win it. Also the
Spaniards were afraid of them and after a first defeat in the open
plains outside the city, they ran away.
In the sea wall around the new city of Panama there is a prison, and at
one time there were terrible torture chambers and undersea dungeons
there in which the early Spaniards kept their prisoners. It is called
Chirique Prison.
Next morning we were sailing along on the calm Pacific Ocean which
Balboa discovered in 1513 from a high peak on the Isthmus of Panama. By
night time we had put over the big Peterson trawl net and had brought
in many small fish ... salpas and many kinds of tiny deep sea fish.
Everybody ran to see what was in the net and looked at things through
microscopes and immediately sat down to identify them and classify
them. One person taking the little fish-like ones, another the jelly
fish, another shrimps and Uncle Will, the director, taking anything
that was very unusual or a new species.
The next day when the big net was put over, we caught a lot of
different things, tiny fish, glacous, salpa and others. At night the
deep net again brought in new ones and many of the first ones again
except that many of these specimens were bright red. It is queer but
many of the deep sea things are red like the shrimps, or else have the
power to change to red, like a small squid which was white one minute
and bright red the next, when he seemed to get angry and scurry around.
One of these very little fish, named argyropelecus has lovely silver
sides, beautiful colors, and small spots which shine and almost
sparkle.
Another fish, less than an inch long, oneirodes, is the only specimen
ever to have been seen alive. It was still wiggling a little bit when
the net was brought up. Most of these fish die when they are brought to
the surface, for under the water there is a great pressure on them and
when this is released by coming to the surface they explode or all come
to pieces.
One night we were on the gangway, Uncle Will, Ruth Rose, Serge and
myself and all of a sudden a great big squid came up and made a kind of
“Ha—aa.” He tried his best to take hold of the net with which Serge
tried to grab at him, and put his huge tentacles out of the water. He
was a sickly whitish color. When we brought the smaller ones caught in
a trawl net into the aquarium later however they changed color several
times, turning from this whitish to a bright red as quick as could be.
Squids can squirt out an inky liquid which discolors the water so that
they cannot be seen by their enemies. This is used in making sepia ink.
For an hour or two in the afternoon I had my line over and at sunset
time it hooked a 32-pound dolphin fish, a coryphinea. He was fifty-six
inches long, a lovely bluish green color, yellow tail, green back and
blue sides. During the day we had seen many of them swimming two or
three feet beneath the surface around our bow, and darting right near
under the pulpit. The crew had had one hooked but lost it; and Dr. Cady
also had one hooked.
In pulling it up over the boom there was great fun and excitement for
it was heavy, slippery and three men helped before landing it.
THE GALÁPAGOS ISLANDS
These islands were first called the Islands of Tortoises, and they have
been known for a hundred years or more. There are about sixty of them
and they are located mostly on or south of the equator six hundred
miles off the coast of Ecuador to which country they belong. They are
volcanic islands with lava rock and dry sandy dust. Very little else
except cactus or scrubby bushes grows on most of them.
Our first landing was at Seymour Island, April fourth. This is a small
flat island just off Indefatigable, one of the bigger islands 3,000
feet high. There is lots of cactus and prickly bushes on the steeper
part of Seymour, but near the shore the rocks are bare and black and
very hard, where we saw our first sea lions lying about sunning
themselves just out of touch of the waves.
In some places on the cliff there are big streaks of reddish color in
the rocks, like iron rust. All along these cliffs and at the edge of
the water and on the rocks we saw many birds—Galápagos gulls, petrels,
shearwaters, boobies, two small green herons, a great blue heron and
many little gulls. Pelicans flew about and even tried to land on the
rowboat which went ashore.
Of course at first I didn’t know the names of all the birds, but Uncle
Will or someone else helped. When they weren’t too busy they would tell
me the names and pretty soon I got so I knew most of them. I think by
now I know the names of nearly all the birds in that region.
Anyway, I like birds. At home I am trying to learn to know the names
and I have a pretty good collection of nests and some eggs. One nest is
a camp robber’s nest, which a ranger in Yellowstone Park gave to me.
Then I have a weaver bird’s nest from India and a good many others. Dad
is letting me have a little room all to myself for my collection. It
will be like a little Museum. Things will go in it like my drum from
New Guinea, which Frank Hurley gave me, and a head hunter’s sword from
Colombo.
Uncle Will told Mother “Look out or he will become a scientist,”
pretending he thought that pretty bad.
Well, I’d like to be only Mother says first I must learn a lot at
school if I want to take trips. Dad says if I do well he and Carl
Dunrud—that is a forest ranger friend of ours in Montana—will take me
on a big packhorse trip in British Columbia. I have been on two trips
something like that before, and then if I am lucky perhaps I’ll go on a
trip on a schooner up to Greenland in a couple of summers.
The dry land is full of big land lizards, four or five feet long called
Conolophus. They scurry about over the dry ridges and then run under
the queer evergreeny bushes. They try to bite but if you pick them up
by their tails they cannot reach your hand and you can carry them all
around. They have very bright colors, yellowish underneath, red heads
and close to, look like pictures of dragons only smaller. The little
black water lizards do not bite and are almost gentle when you catch
them.
There is another kind of lizard here, much smaller, with bright red
heads and dull gray bodies.
These animals and birds and sea lions have seen so few people that they
are not afraid at all and we went right up very close to many of them.
As it is right on the Equator the sun’s glare is very bright and so hot
that for the first few days all of us were very badly sunburned and
blistered; everybody was going around with sore shoulders and blistered
legs and two or three even had their entire backs burned and sore.
The first night here Bill Merriam and Dr. Cady went ashore and caught a
big female turtle that was going up the beach maybe to lay her eggs.
Sea turtles come ashore, go way up a beach and bury their eggs in the
dry sand. They leave them there till it is time for them to hatch. We
saw many deep holes in the sand from which piles of eggs had hatched.
They lay hundreds of eggs. When we were there the egg season was over.
All we saw were shells.
TOWER ISLAND
Tower Island was our second landing. Early in the morning we had
sighted a low strip of green, and by the time breakfast was over at
half past seven we were already in the most protected little cove or
harbor. It was almost closed to the outside ocean and was calm without
any surf or big waves. At first when we came in we couldn’t see any
beach for landing on or swimming, but pretty soon we saw one, a
beautiful one hidden behind a small reef.
When we entered the harbor birds came and rested on the mast heads.
Many of them stayed there or came back to it on and off all day. The
whole rigging was full of boobies and frigate birds.
We saw three great rays too, at least fifteen feet across. Later on we
caught a huge ray. They seem to fly under the water just below the
surface. Every once in a while they flip themselves right out of the
water and turn a complete somersault. Sometimes they do this three
times in succession. One of the biggest ones we struck with our bow and
neatly turned it over.
When we landed on the little beach we saw many of these frigate birds
on their nests, boobies, gulls, and the cutest little doves. They
seemed so tame. They were always fighting for each other’s twigs in
their nests and as soon as a bird left her nest another bird came and
stole a twig and flew away with it.
I lifted a frigate bird right off his nest, and then put him back and
he never seemed to mind at all, just looked surprised. About the next
time I picked up a frigate bird, I wasn’t quite so lucky. I wanted to
lift him up to have a picture taken and he didn’t seem to like posing
much more than I did. Anyway, he pecked me and I suppose that’s why I
look so cross in the picture. They have big strong bills and this one
got hold right in the lower part of my left leg. All the time, I was
barelegged and wore shorts, which is the way everybody aboard dressed.
The frigate birds and boobies weigh about two and a half pounds. The
former have not webbed feet like the boobies and therefore they cannot
catch fish as easily for they only swoop down and dip them out of the
water; but the other dives right in and sometimes out of sight for
several feet underneath and swims with his webbed feet. Frigate birds
steal the other’s fish. Both birds have tremendously long wings and
sail in the sky with a long, long spread.
The male frigate has a queer pouch on his throat. He is dark brownish
in body, with a few greeny feathers on the top of his neck and then
this very strange balloon which is so distended he can rest his head
upon it and go to sleep. He can puff it up or have it empty. The male
sits on the nest in the mornings mostly while his mate goes out to sea
fishing. She is dark brown with a white breast. Of course you can see
these bright red pouches a long way off and they look like so many toy
balloons in among the bushes. All these birds, the boobies and
frigates, build rather foolish looking nests right on the bushes about
two feet from the ground so of course one can go right up to them and
see the eggs or young chicks.
The little doves and the mocking birds have their nests on the ground
often under a jutting out rock. The doves have bright red feet, soft
tan brown bodies and eyes as blue as forget-me-not flowers.
On Tower we saw amblyrhinchus, or the marine lizard. I really learned
to pronounce that word, although I can’t spell it yet. A lot of these
scientific names are awfully long and hard. It is black, about a foot
long or maybe fifteen inches, and swims in around the edges of the
rocks. All the specimens brought to the ship had seaweed in their
stomachs which they must have been way out to sea to get.
Some of the crew had seen goats at Seymour. They had been left there a
hundred years ago by a sea captain who had had some on his boat for
fresh milk; he took them ashore to give them a chance to eat grass.
Each day he took fresh water to them. Then one day they did not come
back for the water, and he guessed they had found some on the island
and sailed off leaving them there.
But there are no goats here, nor the land lizards which we had seen at
Seymour. The land is absolutely all lava rock and cactus and stiff
prickly bushes which makes climbing around very difficult. I made a
fine collection of shells that I found on the beach.
Several times I went ashore in the evening with the crew, and one night
two of the men had an awful fight. Just the few of us were on this
desert beach alone, and it reminded me of a story that Darwin told in
his Cruise of the Beagle nearly a hundred years ago. He went to a
little lake on one island and saw there the skull of a captain who had
been murdered by his crew there many years before.
Darwin was a very famous scientist about 100 years ago. This book, The
Cruise of the Beagle, describes a great voyage he took in the ship
Beagle around South America and mostly around the world. He stopped at
the Galápagos Islands. Mother read this book aloud to me. There were
too many things to see and do on the Arcturus for me to have much time
to read. Everything was too interesting and there was always something
exciting happening. I think the only book I read through was Ivanhoe.
Early one morning Dwight went off walking across the island. He did not
come back at four when the ship’s whistle blows to call us all to the
landing beach, nor later at bedtime, and not until midnight. He had
lost his way for a time and accidentally discovered a crater lake which
no one had ever seen before. Although it is in the middle of the island
it is salty and the water must come in with the tide. There are
mangroves around its edge, and green scum on it, but small fish live in
it.
THE VOLCANO
On April nineteenth Mother woke me up at one thirty in the morning
saying there was a fire way off to the south and west of us and that
the mate and the captain thought it must be a volcano in eruption. Far
away in the sky there was a faint pink glow, and we were all very much
excited.
The next morning we left Tower Island because the harbor would be
dangerous in case of a tidal wave or any disturbance from an
earthquake. Towards evening after trawling and fishing all day around
Tower and Bindloe Islands, we started for the direction of North
Albemarle. We could see the glow for seventy miles or more.
Later that night as we got nearer, the red glowed much more and the
great bank of clouds over it was all pink like a very bright sunset. By
three in the morning we were within ten miles of it and we could see
flames and juts of smoke.
In the morning Uncle Will and John Tee Van went ashore. They had a hard
time finding a landing place for the shore was all steep lava cliffs
against which the surf broke. But finally they went into a little
protected cove, and from there started off for the nearest smoking
place they saw. For a time we could see them as they climbed over the
terribly rough lava flows, older ones that had been coming down for
centuries. But soon we lost sight of them.
There was a lot of pumice which is a very light stone, kind of pale
gray or whitish in color. It comes from the volcanoes, like the lava.
Sometimes when you step into it you sink right up to your knees. It is
so light it floats on the water. It is fine for cleaning stains off
your hands.
At about two thirty or so they came back to the shore again and Uncle
Will had such terrible cramps in his legs he could hardly stand. They
said that they only went to the nearest place from which the smoke was
coming. It was so hot underfoot they had to keep going, it was
impossible to sit down or rest because of the heat. So when they
finally reached it after much climbing and walking, there was only time
to take some samples, make a few notes, test the gas, and return.
Uncle Will named the two volcanoes Mt. Williams and Mt. Whiton, after
Mr. Harrison Williams and Mr. Henry D. Whiton, two gentlemen who helped
most in making the Arcturus trip possible.
The volcano was erupting on the slope of the mountain, not on the top,
and there were many other little places from which smoke and cinders
were coming through besides just the one big crater. At night when the
fire showed more in the dark it looked like trains of brightly lighted
cars running down the mountain side.
Next day I went ashore with Betty and Lin. I saw three sea lions, two
huge crawfish, or speckled lobsters, many sharks, and lots of different
kinds of small fish. I stayed right in the little bay because it was so
hard walking around on the lava, which was just like clinkers.
This day the groupers, big heavy rock fish, were so hungry they even
attacked the moving propeller of Bill’s evinrude engine and when he
shook his sock at them they actually grabbed it. I would not want to
jump over near that shore. I believe the big groupers would attack a
man. We saw more big devil fish jumping near here than at any other
place. And the crew hooked several sharks.
A DAY ASHORE
When I go ashore I usually take a net for fish or butterflies and
bottles in which to put insects, a canteen of fresh water, a helmet to
keep the heat of the sun from my head (and in the tropics this is very
important, especially to protect the back of the neck from the sun).
Also I like to have a gig or spear with which I can get some of the
kinds of fish which do not bite at bait.
My main idea is to get birds’ eggs. Gulls’ nests are mostly on the
rocks of the cliffs, doves build on the lava rock on the ground or in
little crevasses, mocking birds in low bushes or the cactus trees or
shrubs, and the big boobies and frigate birds make ugly twig nests
about two or three feet from the ground, the greater number of them
nearer the shore, although I did see some on my way up to the crater
lake that Dwight had discovered in the center of the island, and these
were in higher trees. There was one big nest right on the lava rock
under a tree. It was a green heron’s nest and the three half grown
birds walked out of the nest when I came near.
One day I speared two crawfish in a pool right near shore, but the
prongs of the gig were too short to hold them and they got free and
darted away. I lost a moray, or poisonous eel the same way.
When we swim at the beaches or in the ocean pools near the shore we
have to watch out for sharks, sting rays and morays.
One day at Tower Island, I went to climb the cliff for birds’ eggs. I
took two boxes of soft cotton for packing any eggs I might find. And as
I went along I tapped the ground to make the small birds fly up from
their nests. This way I could locate them.
I found a mocking bird’s nest, took one egg, got some frigate eggs and
a gull’s egg. Then I turned to come back and I could not remember the
way. So I made for the cliff and the sea and came along till I found a
place to climb down again over the huge boulders of loose lava rock.
The frigate nests were near the shore. Their eggs are about the size of
a hen’s egg, quite white. The Galápagos gulls’ eggs are smaller. And
the boobies’ eggs are like the frigates’ only a little smaller.
After hunting for birds’ eggs I thought I would go over to see what Lin
was doing in the big shallow pools across the beach. She was fishing
with a tiny hook and line. So I tried, too, and I caught a lovely
little blue and silvery fish about four inches long. It had small white
speckles and was a new species. There are many different kinds of fish
in these little pools, whole schools of them, varying from one to
eighteen inches long and some with very lovely colors, many having
stripes of gold and silver.
Later I speared a whole collecting bag full of crabs for Mother to use
as bait for her fishing out in the inlet. The black lava rocks are just
full of bright colored crabs crawling around ... thousands of small
black ones, speckled, and lighter color sandy ones, and great big
bright red ones. Evidently they are all chasing each other all the
time, and acting like cannibals. And then the rest of the time the
birds are swooping down and snatching one. They certainly scurry the
minute a shadow appears, and dart up and down the rocks so quickly it
is hard to catch them.
The ship’s whistle blows at eleven in the morning and at four at night
to warn us to return to the beach to be ferried out again.
THE DIVING HELMET
In addition to the nets and trawls and dredges, the ship is equipped
with a diving apparatus. It is a helmet or head piece, but not the rest
of a suit.
This tall helmet is made of thick brass with a triangle shaped glass
window in the front. It fits on the shoulders and there is an air space
inside so one can breathe. Then fresh air is pumped in by a hand pump,
and whole flocks of bubbles keep rising to the surface coming out from
under your arm pits.
Uncle Will is the best one at it for he has used it most and goes down
oftenest. It can be used at any depth a man can stand pressure, and of
course the deeper down, the stronger the pressure, and one feels this
especially in the ears. They buzz and hurt as though someone was
pushing on them. You have to swallow hard to keep back this feeling and
equalize the pressure, the same as going down in a high elevator.
There is air in front of your eyes so you can see just as perfectly as
when you are on the surface. Whole crowds of tiny fishes swim by, many
of them different colors and very bright. Pink, or green, or blue, or
silvery or striped ones.
One day as Uncle Will entered the water, and was just going down, a
huge shark swam by. He waited a few minutes and then went down, and the
shark had apparently gone along on his business. Later he had a cage
built, so he could stay in that and look around if there were too many
sharks.
That afternoon when he went down he saw many very strange fish, some
bright orange and black with a white cross like a belt, others dark
gray with yellow tails.
Of course there is always a chance in these waters to see octopus, big
sting rays or devil fish and sharks. So the cage with three heavy wire
sides one can stand in, is pretty nice.
One day I went down. I was a little scared because the helmet weighs
forty pounds or more and the stuffy feeling of having something over
one’s head is unpleasant. I went over the stern of a rowboat in about
fifteen feet of water near shore, and climbed down a heavy iron ladder,
holding onto the rounds. There is a kind of roar from the air coming
in, and a curious feeling against the ears, but otherwise it is grand
fun to be down underneath the sea and see all the rocks and ledges and
fish swimming past.
Your feet seem to float out around you and the distances under the
water all look different. You think you can reach out and take hold of
something, not believing it is far away.
It must be fun to go down often enough to get used to the feeling and
then walk all around on the bottom like the pearl divers do, or the men
who go way down below to salvage wrecks.
THE SHIPWRECKED MAN
Today Christianson is a taxi driver in New York City, but in November,
1906, he was a sailor on the ship Alexander, bound from South Wales to
Panama with a cargo of coal. Fred Jeff was his pal, and they had made
other voyages together.
The story of the wrecked taxi cab driver is told in a chapter in Uncle
Will’s book Galápagos, World’s End. I read it long before I ever
thought there would be a chance of my really seeing the Islands myself.
It is about the most interesting adventure story you could imagine.
On May 8th, the captain said they were seven hundred miles off South
America, and the weather was still bad because they had no wind, and
the Alexander was a sailing ship. For three weeks they had just
drifted. He thought they had better put to sea in the small boats
because water was scarce, and their supplies had given out. Galápagos
Islands were the nearest land, so they started for them.
They had sixteen-foot oars and rowed for twelve days, four men on and
four off, taking turns. One day the old cook cried out “Land.” Nobody
believed him at first but soon they could make out a dim cloud-like
object on the far horizon. They realized it was really land and pulled
hard on the oars till they came to a small beach to land on. They
fairly ran up the beach to try to find water for they were all
suffering from thirst. After a short time they were attracted by the
old cook crying out and waving his hands.
But they ran about licking up the brackish water from puddles in the
rocks. The rain had left some, but the surf had thrown spray up into
the pools. However, they drank up the surface, for the salt was at the
bottom.
When they looked back for the cook, they saw him alone on the beach. It
was too late to help him; their boat had smashed to pieces on the
rocks. They were on a small island ten miles from another big one.
The captain said, “Now we are all just men together, not captain and
crew. And we will try to reach the other side of the island.” They
started out to cross over, but the way was terribly rough, they were
exhausted and weakened by long suffering, and after a short distance
they had to come back.
They walked around the island later and in one cove they discovered
some sea lions, and two of the men who were good swimmers went out and
chased them to shore. Once ashore, the rest of the men stoned them to
death, skinned them for shoe leather, ate the meat, and drank the
blood. All were sick as a result, but later they found turtles and
after killing them, sucked the blood and ate the meat.
After two months of living like this, with very hard going, they found
a small beach with fresh water. Here they buried a lot of gold in a
crack in the rocks. And one day after living on that one beach for
three or more months, they were rescued by a chance ship sailing by.
When Christianson heard that Uncle Will was coming on this trip again,
he wanted to come back here, mostly to find the gold. But he could not
afford to leave his job, and he would not tell just where it was
buried.
HOOD ISLAND
After cruising around to the south of the Galápagos Islands for two
days, doing deep dredging and hauling, we turned back to Hood, the most
southerly of all the islands. It is low-lying with two or three rather
higher hills and at the south end an albatross rookery which shows way
out at sea, a high rocky headland, with the birds showing white against
the black rocks.
Compared to the other islands there is little known about Hood. There
are lots of sea lions on the beaches and in the coves around the rocks.
You may get almost close enough to touch them. Isabel Cooper, who is
not afraid of anything, crept near enough to pat one old bull on the
flipper. When she laughed aloud he gave a curious grunt and slid into
the water.
We noticed that several of the sea lions had eye disease, many of the
little pups being entirely blind, and the older ones having perhaps one
eye dimmed with a white film. So Bill Merriam shot one of them, brought
it to the boat, and the doctor took the eyes out to study the sickness.
I went ashore with the crew one day, and we got a huge log which was
covered with barnacles. We pushed it back into the water again and
played with it, diving and climbing over it and fooling with it as we
would a raft at home. The water is beautifully clear, the white sand
and the black rocks showing up perfectly clearly for many feet deep. Of
course we were all terribly scratched with rough housing, but it was
good fun and fine exercise.
I lifted up some of the black rocks along the beach at low tide and
found a small octopus. Someone took him out of the jar I had put him
into to look at him and left him in the sun, so he died. But he was
valuable as a specimen on the ship and has been put with the other jars
aboard.
The beaches here at Hood have very soft white sand, unlike that at
Tower which is crumbled up coral and sharp and cuts the feet.
Also there are many bays or coves like fiords along the shore. Don
Dickerman, one of the best collectors in the outfit, was getting
beautiful starfish, some like worms, some brittle and a lovely pinkish
coral color, and some small red and green fish while I rowed the boat
around so it wouldn’t smash on the rocks. When he was doing this I saw
seven sharks, one huge turtle and one small one.
Another day John Tee Van took me with him when he went ashore to trap
birds. He uses a long pole with a small twig on the end. This is
covered with very sticky paste. He whistles the song of the bird, and
when it comes to see who it is, John hits him on the back a light tap
which makes him stick to the twig. Then John takes him off, wipes off
the paste, puts him in a box, and takes him to the ship.
Dwight Franklin harpooned a big ray along the shore of the beach, and
lost the harpoon. Afterwards we saw the handle going along the surface.
He got four other rays, but never caught the one that had gone off with
the harpoon handle. We saw spotted rays, brown ones, red ones and black
ones.
At night when we are at anchor, there are two great arc lights lowered
over the ship’s side, one over the boom and one above the gangway. This
bright light attracts the fish in great numbers. At Hood the flying
fish were very plentiful, and a large size—ten or twelve inches long,
with lovely pinkish purple wings or fins. One night I harpooned enough
for breakfast for the crowd.
The fish seem to get quite crazy with the light and they dart around
cracking themselves against the boats and the shipside. To add to the
excitement, sea lions come skimming by and snatch at the wounded ones
gulping them down and stuffing themselves on more. One big sea lion
came close enough to the gangway for me to reach over and touch him.
Another night I caught a Portuguese man-o’-war in a scoop net and was
stung by him on both hands. This is a jelly fish kind of thing with
long trailers or tentacles. And these tentacles are poisonous and sting
their prey so they can eat the little fish or plankton. I also caught a
little transparent fish, pale colors with dabs of bright red on the
lower fin. Miss Cooper painted him. And I got a bright red squid and
many small crabs one of which was scarlet.
Altogether I think I had the most fun at Hood Island, because the beach
was so long and the shore line was so easy to explore. Mother went to
the tops of three of the highest peaks in the island and saw way over
the first ridge a long low lagoon of fresh water, probably rain water
with great reddish muddy pools.
There are many goats here, quite wild and unused to man. Some are
bright faun color, others have black stripes or spots and one old buck
which the crew shot and brought in had entire white hind quarters,
brownish head, black beard and large horns. They eat the cactus leaves
and the small trees and the wisps of grass.
There is a good deal of soil here, reddish and evidently very heavy
rains at this season. The lagoons are fresh rain water and in places
climbing up the mountains it seems like half dried stream beds or water
courses—rocks and muddy places between, and then great terraces of
tuffa rock, a very sharp lava rock which is hard to climb over.
A DAY ON SHIPBOARD
Soon after dawn each day one of the crew washes the decks. And it seems
only a short time later that Willie, the German mess boy calls “Hallf
pass seex.” I jump out of my cot on the upper deck, put on shorts,
shirt and sneakers and beat it for breakfast at seven o’clock.
Just after breakfast or just before, the temperatures are taken and
samples of water brought up from the different depths of the ocean.
When that is finished, the depth of the ocean is measured. This is
called “sounding.” A heavy lead weighing seventy-five pounds is let
over on a piano wire till bottom is reached. Of course the ship’s
engines have to be stopped while this is going on. The sounding machine
has a contraption for bringing up samples of the sea bottom, so that
one knows if there is sand or mud or rock below. Our soundings have
varied from 746 fathoms to 2070 fathoms. A fathom is six feet.
It is fun to feel the icy cold water brought up, sometimes just above
freezing although we at the surface are broiling with heat if we get
out of the breeze.
The nets are put down 600 fathoms or more. There are three or four nets
let out on the same cable, 150 to 200 fathoms apart. The net goes out
for two hours, then begins hauling in. And of course there is
excitement when it comes up for everybody wants to see, first if the
nets are still on, and then what has been brought up in them. In it are
tiny fish, pieces of strange unknown fish, once a black octopus with a
queer umbrella-like arrangement over his mouth and head. Early in the
voyage several nets were lost because they twisted off from the cable.
And one was cut off by the propellers.
Next we feed the animals. The mocking birds have crumbs, the lizards
are forcibly fed with bits of bread and water, the two very lovely
albatrosses eat fish which is kept on the ice for them. These are now
at the New York Zoological Park in the Bronx. I hope they like it
there. And the little fish in the aquarium are given the “crumbs” from
the nightly plankton nets. The nice little penguin died although for
days he came out and had a swim, then gobbled up fish.
Then we have lunch. One day, the ship was stopped for half an hour, the
gangway let down and we went swimming right in the ocean. It was over a
mile and a half deep too. And beautifully clear water. If you even let
yourself sink a few feet below the surface you could see right under
our ship with the sunlight showing on the opposite side.
For an hour or two in the afternoon we seemed to be in a lot of
drifting stuff. We saw two turtles, some big logs with birds resting on
them and hundreds of tiny fish swimming round in the shadow underneath,
and two poisonous sea snakes all brown and bright yellow. We caught a
small dolphin fish on a line and while pulling it in three sharks
followed.
All the nets were in before five o’clock for we have supper at that
time. It is nice to sit up on the roof of the laboratory to watch the
sunset and the moonlight later. And at eight o’clock the plankton net
goes out for a short while. Plankton is very small sea life like bugs,
queer fish that can’t move themselves. And then to bed for another day
just like it tomorrow.
DREDGING
The Blake dredge has a ten-foot iron bar across the top, a handle
arrangement and a long twenty-foot net at the bottom, in which things
are thrown after being loosened by the top bar. The bottom of the net
is fastened so that specimens cannot be dropped out.
This is put way down till it is on the ocean bottom, and then trawled
along slowly for an hour or more. Sometimes the whole dredge is lost
when it hits an unexpected mountain peak or rock or ledge at the
bottom, as it was at Abingdon Island, and once the whole thing was
terribly twisted and bent out of shape because of hitting something way
down in the depths.
It is dragged along, the top iron bar loosening things from the floor
of the sea, dumping them into the net, and then brought to the surface.
The things brought up are always very cold, often just above freezing
because it is so cold down there. One day a whole bucket load of sea
cucumbers came up in the net and they were icy cold as if they had been
in an icebox.
Sometimes there are fish, pieces of coral, bits of rock, legs or even a
whole starfish, many sea cucumbers and once or twice a strange fish
with curious contraptions for lighting his way around, a long tentacle
or barbel out in front of him with a light on it, or a bulb on top of
his head on a curious trailer thing out in front of his mouth so other
fish will be decoyed in front of him and he then swallows them.
When the dredge is coming in we stand around to see what it brings up.
For two hours the cable will be coming in and winding up on the huge
drum by machinery, then at last the net shows under the water. Everyone
hurries to the side and holds dishes or buckets or tubs of water into
which to dump specimens.
And the crew help, one at the engine, one oiling wire as it winds on
the drum, and two or three of us beating the cable with heavy clubs to
shake off the water as much as possible to keep it from rusting.
Many of the deep sea things are very bright red. The shrimps, the
starfish and the cucumbers are different colors, reddish, yellowish
white, purple, and even a bright bluish one came up.
PANAMA
Panama is crowded with Blacks, Indians, Hindus, Spanish, and many
Chinese. The streets are narrow and full of people all the time. The
stores open right upon the streets, and all the houses are built at the
edge of the sidewalk with balconies on the upper stories out over the
sidewalk.
Some of the children are terrible beggars and hang onto your coat while
you are walking along the street. And many of them run around, without
a thing on, stark naked funny little black children.
We drove out to Old Panama one day, and saw the ruins of what used to
be the richest city in the New World. All the pirates knew this was a
very rich city and full of treasures. Gold was brought there from Peru
and then shipped to Spain on Spanish ships.
In 1637 Henry Morgan, a famous English pirate and adventurer, came
across the isthmus and attacked the city of Old Panama. The city burned
up, almost all of it, and the few people who escaped then made another
city which is the present Panama, six miles away. It is a better place,
with a better harbor at the mouth of the Boca Grande River.
We went to the top of Ancon Hill in an auto, way up above the City to
get the view—way off over the Canal, over the city, far beyond the Old
Panama ruins, and of course far out to sea. There are three cannons on
this hill, and I could turn one all by myself and see how it works. If
Panama should ever be attacked, this would be a wonderful hill for
protecting the city. There are fortifications on both sides of the
Canal entrance at Balboa. They also have quite a few aeroplanes.
We went swimming at the Balboa Club-house pool, one of the best I have
ever seen. Mr. Grieser showed me the proper leg stroke for the crawl,
and I met a twelve year old boy there who had gone to New York with a
crack team of swimmers. He dived from a sixty-foot board in Madison
Square Garden.
Don Dickerman bought three dugouts from a native fisherman in Panama,
and he also got two monkeys, a Cebus, a marmoset, and a cunning little
monkey-like animal called a kinkaiu, which goes out mostly at night.
This last little one was very soft and furry and was very gentle too.
He curled himself and tried to keep in the dark all day, sleeping. I
hope I can buy one some time for I like him better than the other pets.
Bobbie Fish bought a little pet called a coatamundi. We call him
“Snootie” for his upper lip is long and sticks out over his lower. He
is little almost as a rat with a furry long tail. Betty has a brown
puppy, named Dyna—short, she says, for Dynamite Bill who gave it to
her.
Gregory Bateson left at Panama and took many of the live things back
with him to New York. The lizards and smaller things died but the pair
of lovely albatrosses lived and I hope I shall see them when I go to
the Zoo. Bateson is still a student at Cambridge University in England
and his father is a famous scientist.
On Saturday night late we pulled out of the dock at Panama, but we had
to wait all next day at anchor in the outer harbor for two new firemen.
Two of ours had left and not come back to the boat. And as the Captain
wanted to keep all the rest of the crew aboard we stayed out there so
more couldn’t leave.
COCOS ISLAND
Cocos Island is about five hundred miles from Panama, in the Pacific
Ocean, and belongs to the country of Costa Rica. Four times a year it
is visited by a government boat from Costa Rica.
It is a steep high island, bright green jungle, with few protected
coves or bays. The best anchorage is Chatham Bay which has some shelter
with a big high solid rock island to the west and a small rock island
to the east side. The only settlement ever made here was around two
bends or coves from Chatham Bay, at Wafer Bay. The beach is more
beautiful there and the slope behind the beach is easier to climb;
there was more level ground to cultivate and plant to trees and
vegetables. But this second bay is not a safe harbor for a ship to lie
in, open and with squalls and winds blowing all the time and rollers on
the beach at nearly every high tide.
For about ten years a Captain Gissler, his wife and servants lived at
this Wafer Bay. He spent his time mostly looking for treasure and we
saw many deep holes which he probably had dug. As he is not here today
and the place is deserted, maybe he found it and moved away to a less
lonely place.
Pirates had been here and buried gold, and it is said that some
treasure has been found at different times.
There are many beautiful waterfalls. Lots of them tumble right down
into the sea from the steep cliffs and for over a hundred years ships
have come here for fresh water, whalers and pirates and merchant ships
or “tramps.” One stream empties right into the Bay.
There are many beautiful ferns and tree-ferns and tall jungle trees.
The tangle of vines is very thick, and the only way to go into the
interior of the island at all is to follow along the beds of streams
and climb up rocks and waterfalls and around cascades for the sides of
the brooks are like solid walls and there are not many places where you
can get up.
We went up a lovely stream bed one day from Chatham Bay. We pulled
ourselves up rocks and around bad places and stepped into deep pools
sometimes up to our necks. We had gone at least a mile and a half up
the river, climbing steadily, when we came to a beautiful little
cascade that fell down a cliff about seventy feet high. I was catching
small blue crayfish in the pool at the foot of it when I lost my
balance and fell down onto a jagged rock.
For a time I could hardly bear the pain of it and just sat and cried.
Mother and Isabel and Betty were all afraid I might have broken a leg
or something. They were awfully worried for we were so far from the
shore and had climbed waterfalls all morning to get there. But it was
only a terribly bad bruise and I was glad Mother was so strong. She had
to practically carry me and lower me down over rocks and waterfalls all
the way back. We stopped to eat our lunch on a lovely huge bowlder in
the middle of the stream about half way down. After resting a while I
felt a little better and could help myself getting down hard places. It
would be awful to break an arm or a leg or even to sprain one’s ankle
in such a place for even a trail is impossible there and it is very
hard to carry anyone down such a place.
Mother was pretty tired, especially as she had a bad sunburn on her
back and shoulders and I broke the blisters by putting my arms around
her to steady myself, and sometimes I even had to climb down her back
to lower myself from one high rock to another six feet below.
The night before this trip up the river, we had a furious gale. The
wind blew harder than I ever felt it, and for a time the rain came in a
solid mass like a warm wet curtain, streaming across the decks.
Everything was soaked, chairs fell over, curtains were tangled up,
doors slammed. And then the boobies kept flying right into the ship
banging their heads and bodies against things and stunning themselves.
They dropped headlong into the “lab” where we were sitting, they fell
to the floor in our cabins if the doors were open for a minute, and all
over the decks the poor things were crouching around squawking. And
they vomited up fish all over the place.
This is a curious habit with some birds; they seem to do it as a
forfeit to another bird. They cough up their food which the other bird
then takes as payment, leaving the stranded one alone without pecking
him. White-headed terns flew aboard too. We were all of us busy
throwing them overboard.
In the middle of all the gale and rain and wind, the five rowboats
which were over the side tied to the boom by lines, had to be brought
on board. A mate stood on the top of the gangway, a life preserver on a
long line in the water in case someone fell overboard, and then one by
one five men went out on the boom, to the end, down the rope ladder,
into a tangled up and bouncing boat, and then rowed it aft to be
hoisted up by other men onto the ship. It was all quite exciting and I
stood in the rain a long time watching.
The next morning it was all calm again and you couldn’t believe there
had been a small hurricane the night before.
MAY 20TH, 1925
May twentieth is my birthday, and Mother had made me a whole pirate
outfit—pantaloon trousers, red sash, calico head scarf, a machete, rope
soled shoes, and a ragged shirt.
Everybody met at Uncle Will’s cabin just before dinner, and then to the
pounding of a big drum we all marched down to the dining saloon,
everybody dressed in full pirate costumes, with wild looking wigs and
knives and cutlasses of every description.
I got two knives, a jar of jam, a box of sweet crackers, a cocoanut, a
fine piece of old Chiriqui Indian Pottery, and a peach of a collecting
bag. “Lumpy,” the baker, made me a huge birthday cake.
Then after dinner Shorty took a flashlight picture of the gang against
the shrouds down on the hatch deck. We really looked like a pirate crew
too, with everyone in costume and apparently on a sailing ship. The
steep rocky island near the north point of Chatham Bay showed in the
background, and made it seem even more real.
The night of the birthday party Don Dickerman wore his “Marooned man”
costume. It is entirely rags and tatters and mended with bits of old
string and leather. With a wig of tangled hair all knotted and a
bandanna and a cutlass he looks pretty awful. John Tee Van had torn
trousers, bare body, a frightful long black wig and he painted on a
terrible scar across his face, and slashes of blood on his insteps.
Some of the others had fine clothes of velvet with old lace, the rich
pirates or those who had stolen booty from some recent captive. And the
girls looked like pirates’ wives or sweethearts, except Mother who came
as a wild woman, my captive, all bound up with ropes and being dragged
along.
About the grandest birthday present one could get was given me by Don.
It was his favorite sword, a real old time cutlass which perhaps was
used by pirates. He called it “Fury” and got up an awfully funny card
to go with it.
And Dwight Franklin made me a lovely drawing of the beach at Cocos back
in the old days, with a regular pirate landing on it from his ship.
That picture is used at the end of my book.
Cocos Island is really a wonderful place for a pirate party anyway, for
real pirates were there many times, and maybe men were marooned there,
or left there, and mutinies occurred. Treasure was buried there. Along
the beach where ships came for fresh water, there are carvings on the
rocks, ship’s names and dates, many of them old and back as far as
1813. There were names of famous whaling ships, and one, The Shrew, was
a real pirate ship but the date was not given with that one, probably
on purpose.
There is a fine tunnel right through the rock in one place, going fully
a hundred yards through a point of land to another bay quite round the
corner. Don went through it in his little dugout canoe which he bought
in Panama and Tamms, the third mate, went in his motor skiff with the
Johnson engine.
In one little bay beyond the settlement we found a hole twenty feet
deep where Captain Gissler or someone else had dug for treasure. Don
and Dwight went down it on a rope and only found a board and a piece of
rope there.
WEEKS AT SEA
For two weeks after leaving Cocos Island we were at sea again. The
daily soundings were taken, the temperatures of the water and samples,
and then there were the nets. We had out the big otter trawl net to go
to the bottom every day until we lost it by getting it tangled in the
propeller over the stern. And the long eight-foot net to go to bottom
we also lost, probably because it hit a submerged mountain peak or a
huge rock.
But there were always other nets, the one metre net, the half metre and
the Blake dredge. A metre is a little over three feet. Once in the
morning and once every afternoon these went over, and there was always
great excitement about it. There were some fine rich hauls.
In about the best haul there were two tubs of deep sea fish from
bottom—black and queer looking, some with long pointed tails without a
tail fin, some eels, black with pointed heads, and a lot of funny
little fish like sharks only with bright green eyes. Many of these come
to the surface with the scales all torn off or soft and peeling.
There were light pink starfish, very brittle, a few sea cucumbers, some
living sponges, crabs, bright red shrimps and two or three very queer
looking fish with faces like demons or bogeys with funny little
electric light things sticking out in front of them on long barbels,
which is what they call the long whisker-like thing.
I brought home for my collection a few specimens of this rare deep sea
life. Starfish, shrimp and cyclothone, which is a small deep sea fish.
Apparently there is a great undersea plateau around Cocos. It is about
six hundred fathoms deep. Just off the edge of this it is thirteen to
sixteen hundred fathoms deep.
For days we saw many ocean tunnie fish jumping near the ship, and we
tried all kinds of baits and different spoons and squids to catch them.
One day Mother finally got four of them by jerking a squid up and down
from off the boom. They weighed from ten to fourteen pounds and it
certainly was very good to have fresh fish for breakfast next morning.
They are a beautiful fish, like a torpedo, or bullet shaped with lovely
dark blue backs and pinkish silvery sides with four stripes below the
middle line and they are very swift swimmers, moving as fast or faster
than the ship, for hours at a time.
One day I was sitting on the rail preparing a fish skeleton, and
suddenly there was a loud “Pwishshsh” right near me. Mack, the first
mate, called out “Whale!” and I jumped up and saw him not fifteen feet
away. A big black body about forty feet long.
Another day we saw a whole school of big blackfish, a kind of small
whale, and they also were right near the boat for an hour. They first
look like huge slow porpoises coming slowly to the surface to breathe.
They are black, with rounded snouts and a big huge, fin, something like
a shark’s, on the back.
During this time at sea, Shorty and I made a cute little dog house for
Betty’s puppy, Dyna. It is white, with a red roof and a little gable
over the door with a sign, “Beware of the Dog.” Shorty Schoedsack is
the photographer who went with my friend Colonel Cooper to Persia and
took the wonderful movie “Grass.” He is called “Shorty” because he is
about six feet six inches tall.
We had rough seas and constant rains almost all the time out here
perhaps because we were still so close to the Cocos Islands. But it has
meant we could not go over the side for a swim or even put out the
little motor skiff for game fishing or trolling.
TAGUS COVE
HALF A MINUTE SOUTH OF THE EQUATOR
Tagus Cove is on the west side of Albemarle Island, a deep little bay
about half a mile wide. The cliffs around it are steep except for one
place at the end where there is a little gully in the rocks. There is
no beach, so we landed in this gully where the rocks were very
slippery.
When you are once ashore, however, it is fairly easy walking because
the lava is very old and crumbly, like clinkers, and the scrubby bushes
and stumpy trees give one a hold.
Over the nearest and lowest ridge there is a little crater lake and
nearly one hundred years ago Charles Darwin climbed up and discovered
it when he was cruising around here in the Beagle.
There is a five-mile channel across to Narborough Island which is a
huge volcano, with sides almost entirely black with lava right down to
the sea.
Don and I were almost the first ones ashore, and we found a small sea
lion right in the rock gully, asleep. We tied a rope to him and played
with him quite a while before Don took him back to the ship.
Serge took me with him collecting and we scrambled over two or three
hills. I caught a two-inch scorpion under a rock and quite a few big
grasshoppers and moths and butterflies. Serge is a Russian, whose last
name is Chetyrkin. He speaks very little English, but is a fine
taxidermist. His job is to preserve and mount birds and fish. He
mounted for me my little pet penguin which died after we had him aboard
for nearly a month. He was an awfully funny little bird, as tame and
friendly as could be. We’d put small live fish in a glass tank and then
watch him catch them, for these penguins are wonderful divers and
swimmers. I think their entire food is fish. And that was the way my
pet got his exercise and his dinner at the same time.
Another day, Don and I fished right off shore near the landing place
and got many fine fish, one especially beautiful one all bright orange
and black with a big bump over his nose. And once when we left a string
of new specimens in the water to keep them alive, a shark came right up
and bit one off the string!
The very first day in Tagus, Mother and the Doctor went out fishing and
they brought in the finest lot of game fish we had the whole trip—big
mackerel, groupers, bonito, tuna and barracuda.
Betty wanted to get up high enough on the mountain slopes to see across
to the volcano which was the other side of the Island. It was the same
one we had seen in eruption seven weeks earlier. She left the ship at
five in the morning and was climbing all day till evening. She did get
up beyond the clouds and then had to go by compass. There was damp wet
grass and vegetation up there, although the lower slopes had all been
dry lava and burned bunches of grassy stuff. She saw fresh tortoise
tracks and wanted to follow on, but she knew everyone on the ship would
worry if she did not come back and so she had to leave to climb down
again. She went all alone.
Mother and Isabel took a hard climb in the opposite direction over two
high hills and they saw a very much bigger crater lake which had never
been reported before. It had very steep walls over five hundred feet
high, and six little cone-like islands in the middle.
Along the shores of the cove there are grottoes and little caves and
here there are penguins, and pelicans, and boobies and some very
strange birds called flightless cormorants—birds which really have lost
the power of flight because they have lived so long on the island and
never really used their wings because they didn’t have to get food or
travel anywhere.
THE GIANT DEVIL FISH
Two days after leaving Tagus we were cruising around along the shores
of Narborough Island, trawling with the nets.
Two or three skiffs were near shore, some diving, some fishing and
others dynamiting. Mother and Doctor Cady were trolling for big fish
and suddenly Mother had a terrific hard pull, and for half an hour she
had to “play” a tuna. It was 46 inches long, and weighed 46 pounds.
Soon after they saw a great long fin moving slowly along and when they
came near found a big flat fish like a skate, slowly skimming just
below the surface so that only his two fins came above the water. They
followed him around and actually herded him over towards Bill and
Dwight in another boat.
Next morning Don and Dwight and Doc went out to find one with two
harpoons, plenty of rope and two kegs. They cruised around a little and
soon saw a big ripple on the water, a ray going along with his fins
sticking up in the air twenty inches.
They struck with their harpoons and after a great splash the big ray
just sank out of sight and pulled the rope and two kegs right down with
him. They waited a long time and watched for him to rise, but when we
came along in the launch Pawnee we said we would stay to look while
they went to the ship for another harpooning outfit. We chased another
big ray for almost half a mile before the others came back.
Dwight took first shot, but the harpoon soon pulled out, and the big
fish went sailing along the surface again. Then Don took a shot which
held and he played out the rope, holding on to the end so that the ray
had to tow the boat.
Meanwhile Bill had come along in another skiff to see the excitement.
Bill gave them a second harpoon which Dwight stuck in and then the fish
towed the two boats for a time, every once in a while flipping up its
tail and hunching its back to try to sweep off the ropes and harpoons.
Gradually it swam back towards the ship and the men started their
engine and forced it over that way. When it was quite near, we hurried
to the boat to get the movie camera for Shorty, and I brought Dwight’s
revolver to him. He shot it five times with a thirty-eight, and Bill
put in five loads of heavy buck shot. Then it seemed to make a great
effort and tried to swim down deep. Don held it with all his strength
and would not let it go straight down. It flipped its wing and hit Don
right across the shoulder and head twice but he never let go. Then it
tried to spill over the boat by getting right under it. But finally
they towed it near enough for the sailors to throw a rope down and get
a line over it.
It had been bleeding pretty heavily and there was a big trail of blood
all the way to the shore, and some sharks were following this up.
It measured eighteen feet across from wing to wing and weighed 2400
pounds. And after they started dissecting it they found an unborn ray
that weighed 28 pounds and made a perfect specimen to preserve and take
back to the New York Zoological Society.
MOLTEN LAVA
We were sailing along the east coast of Albemarle Island for we wanted
to know if the volcano we had seen in eruption on Easter Sunday, nearly
two months before, was still in eruption. We were almost there,
practically on the Equator, and we recognized the columns of smoke half
way up the side of the mountain.
Suddenly a yell came from the bridge and the Mate blew the foghorn
(which is the way we are called to hurry to see something) and when we
came running out we saw a high funnel of bright white smoke rising
right out of the sea down at the end of a point, a few miles ahead of
us. It couldn’t be spray for it was too enormously high and kept right
in one place.
Uncle Will thought for a long time it must be a geyser or small volcano
right at the water’s edge. And everybody watched it through glasses and
climbed up into the crows-nest for a better view. But when we came
along closer we could easily see it was a great field of hot lava which
had reached the sea and was pouring into the cold water. For a while
before we reached there we could see a streak of dull green in the
water, quite distinct from the dark indigo blue, making a very clear
line between the two. And the temperature of the water went up from the
normal 74 degrees which we had had right along, to 99 degrees, and even
that was a quarter of a mile away from the shore.
Luckily, the strong on-shore wind made it possible for us to go very
close and not run any danger of getting in poisonous gases or smoke,
for there were great clouds of smoke.
The shore rocks were black, there were two colors in the water, green
close to shore and blue out beyond, and these big masses of very white
steamy smoke. And then as we came closer we could see huge openings at
the end of the lava flow, like pipes emptying red hot lava out into the
water. It looked like bright blood.
All day till dark, we circled around and kept passing near it, keeping
about a quarter of a mile from shore. There were high waves and a
strong breeze and the smoke was blowing steadily up the mountain side
so that by sunset time we couldn’t see the little cones up on the
higher slopes from which the whole flow had come down.
But after dark we could tell just the line the stream had flowed down,
a rather zigzag course, and right over the place to which Uncle Will
and John had climbed two months earlier. There were great hot patches
which glowed red in the dark and little specks of hot fiery places all
along the slopes. And then at the bottom right at the shore, these
great huge open hot red streams spilling out into the sea. Once or
twice it would break out in bigger flows or whole big chunks would fall
off into the water, and then it would shoot out and throw boiling lava
into the air, way up, like blasting or skyrockets.
Through the glasses we could see several birds which had flown too near
and their bodies were floating along in the water. Once we saw a poor
sea lion throw himself straight up into the air five times and then
flop down dead right near the terrible stream. A great big octopus
floated by, just about dead. And we watched a whole wave so full of
fish it looked black, swimming as fast as they possibly could straight
out to the cold water. Once too, we saw a shark in a kind of daze,
swimming along, and probably not knowing why the water was so suddenly
growing hotter and hotter.
Shorty took some fine pictures of the whole thing, the smoke spurting
up in the air, the pieces of rock crunching off and exploding into the
water, and the great streams of melted rock.
The last thing at night when we left, we saw six big outlets or hot
glowing spouts dimmer and dimmer as we turned eastward. Next morning we
left the Galápagos Islands for Panama.
(A Little Song Written by Don Dickerman for
David’s Birthday Party)
SONG TO DAVIE PUTNAM
Oh, his name was Davie Putnam,
And the youngest man aboard,
In truth we guessed they shipped him for a lark.
Didn’t need no powder monkey,
Guests we couldn’t quite afford,
But he sailed with William Beebe on the Ark.
Oh, we took this Davie Putnam,
And we sailed away I say,
To those desert islands cruel, bleak and stark.
There we captured giant lizards,
Sharks and tortoise in the bay,
As we sailed with William Beebe in the Ark.
And this little Davie Putnam,
Who was only twelve y’see,
With his mates t’home a’friskin’ in the park,
Steps out with all his olders,
Hunts and fishes with the best,
As he sailed with William Beebe in the Ark.
So this little Davie Putnam,
Smallest man aboard the ship,
As the topmost fightin’ pirate makes his mark;
And besides we liked his spirit
And his many a merry quip,
As we sailed with William Beebe on the Ark.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DAVID GOES VOYAGING ***
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