Bonin Islands  Notes  Source  Whalesite

      THUS sang and sighed a half dozen hardy sons of the ocean, about the year 1829. They had tried their fortunes in every clime; they had attempted continents and isles; but Dame Fortune always frowned upon their efforts. They were at the Sandwich Islands, tired of the world, when they heard the Bonin Isles

were a paradise, not only of the mighty Pacific, but of the whole world. Its waters were represented, truly, to abound in fish and turtle, and its wilds in game, its shores with safe harbors, its mountainous surface in beautiful valleys, and its soil was capable of producing every thing without cultivation or toil. The Bonin Islands offered them, then, a place where they might retreat from all the cares and vexations of the world, and, for the future, be free from all anxiety. They flattered themselves, that the soil would produce so abundantly, that they would be soon enabled to supply vessels employed in whale fishing with fresh fruits and vegetables, which, in a short time, would result in competency and even fortune to themselves, when they might return again to the society of the world.

      "In this mind, Matthew Mazarra, a Genoese, Alden B. Chapin, Nathaniel Savary of Massachusetts, Richard Millechamp of England, and Charles Johnson of Denmark, sfet sail from the Sandwich Islands, accompanied by several of the natives, male and female, who served them as servants and wives. In June, 1830, they arrived at the haven of their hopes, and, before reaching the land, they found they had been misled; but it was too late to retreat. They landed, and began the settlement of that island of the group called, by Captain Beechey, Peel's Island.

      "These islands, which are about 29 degrees east of Canton, and eight south from Jeddo, are most conveniently situated for watching the trade of China on the west, the Philippines on the south, and Russia on the north; and if any intercourse is soon to be opened with the Japanese, they form the position from which it could be most easily effected. The earliest accpunt which we find of the Bonin Islands is contained in Kcempher's History of Japan. ' About the year 1675,' says the historian, ' the Japanese accidentally discovered a very large island, one of their barks having been forced there in a storm from the Island of Fatsisio, from which they computed it to be three hundred miles distant towards the east. They met with no inhabitants, but found it to be a very pleasant and fruitful country, well supplied with fresh water, and furnished with plenty of plants and trees, particularly the arrack-

tree, which, however, might give room to conjecture, that the island lay rather to the south of Japan than to the east, these trees growing only in hot countries. And because they found no inhabitants upon it, they called it Bunin Sima, or the Island Bunin, (in Chinese woojin, without people,) the uninhabited island. On the shores, they found an immense number of fish and crabs, some of which were from four to six feet long;' probably turtle.

      "In September, 1825, the port was visited by an English ship, named the Supply; and in 1826, the William, a whale-ship belonging to London, was lost here, owing to neglect. In June, 1827, the port was visited by Captain Beechey, in H.B.M. ship Blossom.

      "When he arrived off the harbor, they met two individuals in a boat, who proved to be a part of the crew of the unfortunate William. "This ship, which had once belonged to his majesty's service, had been anchored in the harbor in deep water, in rather an exposed situation, the port then not being well known, and had part of her cargo upon deck, when a violent gust of wind from the land drove her from her anchors, and she struck upon a rock in a small bay close to the entrance, where, in a short time, she went to pieces. All the crew escaped, and established themselves on shore as well as they could, and immediately commenced building a vessel from the wreck of the ship, in which they intended to proceed to Manilla; but, before she was completed, another whaler, the Timor, touched there, and carried them all away, except our two visitors, who remained behind at their own request. They had been several months upon the island, during which time, they had not shaved, or paid any attention to their dress, and were very odd-looking beings. The master, Thomas Younger, had unfortunately been killed by the fall of a tree, fifteen days previous to the loss of the ship, and was buried in a sandy bay on the eastern side of the harbor.'

      "The Blossom remained from the 8th till the 15th of June. Captain Beechey took formal possession of the island in the name of his Britannic majesty1, and nailed to a tree a sheet of copper, with the necessary particulars engraved thereon. He named the harbor, in compliment

to the bishop of Oxford, Port Lloyd, and the island in which it is situated, Peel's Island.

      "In August, 1834, the American barque Volunteer touched at the Bonin Islands to procure supplies. Having been informed at the Sandwich Islands, that the settlers had gone to the south island, she made for that first, and, •after a fruitless search for them of three days, found them •on the south of the north island; and, on the 24th. under the pilotage of Mr. Mazarra, the ship was worked into the harbor, now named by the settlers Port St. George. The latitude is 27° 6' 30"N., and the longitude 142° 16' E. Their position, on the most modern chart, is very much to the westward.

      "We found the entrance of the harbor, the approach to which is very pretty, to be on the south-western side of the island. The rocks are, in many places, castellated, and some of them, on close examination, present the appearance of rude masonry, wherein the stones had been piled up loosely together, and a mortar, or cement, afterwards poured in amongst them. Within a few miles of the coast are seen, here and there, a fragment of rock standing above the sea, like a sentry-box or watch-tower.

      "The general outline of the bay is oval, being about a mile and a half long, and three quarters of a mile wide, having the entrance towards the southern end, which, between the promontory on the south side, and the quoinshaped rock mentioned by Beechey, we estimated to be half a mile wide. The breadth of the channel, however, does not exceed a quarter of a mile. The land round the bay is broken into numerous angular hills by ravines, rather than valleys, beautifully green with close-growing trees and shrubs, which flourish to the water's edge. The average height of the hills is, perhaps, four hundred feet; and the highest point does not, probably, exceed six hundred. The shore of the harbor is broken into several small bays, or coves, bounded by white sand beaches, which, contrasting with the blue sheet of water, and here and there the white spray dashing over a dark rock, imparts a picturesqueness to the whole scene.

      "However bright the picture to a sea-weary voyager, or however fit for the pencil, Mazarra and his followers

saw nothing in the deep ravines, and fan-leaf palm, and cabbage-tree, to invite them to establish their home upon this uninhabited island. But it was too late to turn back. Though disappointed to find there were no plains of any extent, and the small basins of level land among the hills were covered by a close jungle, they set to work, and now show, with no little satisfaction, the result of their tedious and painful toil. The same industrious perseverance in the 'far west' would have made them comparatively rich men; but he^e their snugly-thatched cabins are valueless, in the event of their leaving the island, which is not improbable, and then their six years' labor is thrown away. Nor have they been free from those difficulties from which they fled. They found here, as every where else, that man is doomed to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. Until their first harvest, their food consisted almost entirely of turtle and the pith of the cabbage-tree, which no one eats except from necessity. Instead of a mild and benignant clime, every year has brought typhoons and earthquakes; and the.numerous uptorn trees bear testimony of the violence of these storms. Indeed, they have never been able to obtain bananas, for the reason that, about the period of their maturity, the pltnt is destroyed or torn away by a typhoon. Neither the phases of the weather nor the prevalence of the wind have been regular in their succession any two years.

      "Besides these difficulties, dissensions crept into their little community, and still exist. They have been several times annoyed by refractory seamen turned on shore by the masters of whale ships, where, being without a fear of punishment, they have committed outrage and violence to an extent seriously detrimental to the prosperity of the settlement. In 1833, the whaler Cadmus left fifteen. men on shore, among whom were some of daring character, who put the settlers at defiance: eight of them perished in an attempt to leave the island in a whale boat, and the rest have been since taken away.

      "Within a few days, a written code has been agreed to by all the settlers, now fourteen in number, the principal features of which are, that all disputes shall be decided by the opinion of the majority; that, henceforward, no indi-

vidual shall instruct or assist any vessel in taking turtle, nor shall any one sell turtle, or feed his hogs upon it; no one shall maltreat the slaves or servants of another, or endeavor to seduce any woman from her lord; nor shall any one encourage men to desert from ships arriving at the island; but, on the contrary, use every effort to apprehend and return every deserter to his vessel. This code is signed and »worn to by all; and it is remarkable, that only three of the fourteen are capable of writing their names: Mazarra, the most respected among them, is not one of the latter number.

      "The morality of the community is, I fear, of a low grade, and religion is out of the question. Most of the white men have one or two wives, natives of the Sandwich Islands. In all, there are nineteen women on the island, among whom infanticide and infidelity, which tiiey are at no pains to conceal from their husbands, are common; and this in a population not exceeding forty souls!

      "On the evening of our arrival, I accompanied several officers in pursuit of turtle. We landed on one of the sand beaches in the bay, under the dark shade of the high land. We had scarcely sprunjjftm shore, before a turtle, weighing between two and three hundred pounds, was found, and turned upon his back. Encouraged by this success, we searched the whole beach very carefully; but without finding any thing. We now divided the party, and took our stations along the sand, to wait until the animals should come up from the deep, as they are wont to do at night to deposit their eggs. The sky was bright with stars, and there was a dead silence, Only interrupted by the sullen splash of the sea; we lay shrouded in the shade of the rocks, beneath wide-spreading trees; and the whole scene disposed the mind to wander from present objects. I gazed upon the heavens, and wondered that man could become so lost to his own interest, and in affection for friends at home, as to prefer an exile, 'the world forgetting, by the world forgot,' on an isle like this,

to pursuing an honest life beneath his native skies.

      "The revery was broken by a canoe gliding gently upon the sand, and two athletic forms leaped silently upon the shcfe, and drew their frail bark after them. They advanced towards us without speaking, and we could discern, through the deep shadow of the hills, that they were seamen in coarse shirts and trousers. They proved to be Americans, who had been nearly a year on the island, and were now on the same errand with ourselves. They told us they were out every night, and the beach we were upon was a very good one for our purpose. They led us into the edge of 'the bush,' where the turtles go to lay their eggs; and, after a little while, we found one as large as our first prize.

      "A fellow-feeling and sociability had suddenly grown up between the new-comers and our boat's crew. The two quondam whalers at once aided them in dragging the turtle to the boat, and assumed a generous contempt for an animal over which an alderman's eyes would have sparkled. When some one gave a hint about 'the poor fellows' having a share,' 'Why, we have it every day,' said they, as they launched their little canoe, and, with one or two strokes of the paddle, urged it out of sight, though not out of ear-shot; for the stroke of their paddles and the sound of their voices were heard some time afterwards.

      "After watching another hour, we returned on board, and found another party had been more successful, having taken five.

      "From February till August, great numbers of turtle visit the sandy beaches, where they deposit their eggs in the sand, beyond the reach of the tide. In a few weeks, the process of incubation is completed by the heat of the sun alone, and the young turtles, numbering from one to five hundred in each nest, betake themselves to the water. The half-grown turtles may be taken on shingle and rocky shores, but never on sand beaches. After the season, they disappear, and, from some of them having been taken with Japanese hooks in them, are supposed to visit the coast of Japan. Dampier, speaking on this subject in his Voyages, expresses his opinion that the habits of turtles are migratory.

      "While here, we caught about forty, any two of which furnished ample food for one hundred and eighty persons during a day. Notwithstanding the innumerable eggs deposited and hatched, the settlers think the number has in the past years diminished; and hence the regulation abovementioned in relation to them. They suppose the turtle does not attain its full size in less than five years. When they first escape from the egg, they are about the size of a dollar, and when full grown, from four to six feet long.

      "The next day, we pulled ashore, and landed near a mass of rock, standing apart from the shore, and connected to it by a flat of broken stones, over which we made our way to the beach. It is narrow, and forms a dividing line between Port William and a small bay which opens more to the southward. Here Mr. Mazarra met us, and led us towards the little village, at the entrance of which are several broad-leafed trees. Several Sandwich Islanders, men and women, were lounging on some rough hewn logs, beneath their shade. We halted here for a moment, and Mr. Chapin and an Englishman came forward to welcome us. The latter was tremulous, and had a wild expression, which betrayed his fatal addiction to the abuse of intoxicating spirits. We leared afterwards, that three barrels of New England rum had been lately obtained; and, having been nearly a year wjthout any thing of the kind on the island, it had met with rather a hearty reception. 'Nothing will be done,' said "the old gentleman,"as Mazarra is respectfully styled, 'until it is all gone, and that will be in a few days.'

      "We were now led through the village, consisting of half a dozen comfortable huts, each fenced in with vertical posts of cabbage-tree, including a small garden in front. We were conducted to the dwelling of Mr. Chapin, and ushered into a square apartment that betrayed the professional taste of the tenant. On our left stood a table, covered with newspapers and writing materials, and over it, upon the wall, hung a spyglass, and a thin manuscript, headed 'Laws of the Bonin Isles.' A sea-chest stood on each side of the room, and a bed, with calico curtains, filled each corner. A few French prints, and a shelf of fifty or sixty miscellaneous volumes, occupied, rather than

adorned, the walls. A chair, of home manufacture, and a three-legged stool, completed the furniture.

      "A door, between the beds, communicated with two inner apartments, half the size of the first, in which were women engaged in affairs of the household. The roof was thatched with fan-palms, and the walls hung with coarse mats. Such is the general style of the huts of this new settlement, which is called Clarkston.

      "Mr. Chapin, barefoot, and in shirt and trousers, his face shaded by a broad hat of sinnate, invited us to be seated, and, as he conversed with folded arms, walked the floor as if he had been upon a quarter-deck. He was polite and intelligent. He showed us his cornfield, and a saline spring close at hand, and assisted us in picking up some small shells from a fresh-water stream. Melons, yams, sweet potatoes, and taro, were abundant, and the Indian corn was flourishing.

      "Among the vegetable productions of Bonin, are several varieties of wood well suited to cabinet work, but difficult to get at, from the almost impenetrable jungle in which they grow. It was said that camphor and spice-trees abounded, but the settlers have not yet met with either.

      "Hogs and goats are numerous, and many are running wild in 'the bush.' Domestic fowls, in spite of feeding and kind treatment, have forsaken the village, and subsist wild in the jungle.

      "When the settlers came to the island, they found the house-fly in great numbers, and, to their surprise, more numerous in the interior of the island than upon its coasts. Small lizards, crows, and a species of ptyropus, called flying-fox, were very numerous! The latter were very troublesome to the products of the gardens.' While here, we got two of the foxes on board; one alive, which, in the course of two days, became tame, and fond of being caressed. It ate melon and sweet potato, and remained in the cabin, suspending itself by its hind legs. One day, it alighted on the stuffed skin of its mother, when it manifested much sensibility, and clung to it with seeming affection. This is the animal erroneously mentioned, in Beechey's Voyage, as a vampire bat. It is of a blackish-gray color, and has light chestnut-colored irides, but in

other respects does not differ from that seen in various parts of India.

      "On a second visit to Clarkston, we found our acquaintances on the beach, with a number of dogs, which they found of very great use in their hunting of hogs and goats. They had instructed the dogs to catch fish; and two of them will plunge into the water, and seize a shark, one on each side, by the fin, and bring it ashore, in spite of resistance. One of these dogs had several scars, which he had received in contests with wild boars, and, on one occasion, was so severely wounded, that his master carried him home on his back a distance of several miles.

Catching a Shark with Dogs.

      "I embarked with a friend in a small canoe, paddled by two Sandwich Islanders, and, crossing the bay, ran through a natural tunnel, or rocky cave, open at both ends, which pierces the southern promontory of the small bay. The passage was perhaps thirty yards long, and there was just room for the canoe, with its wide-spreading out-rigger, to pass. The water within the cave was smooth, and of considerable depth, but so transparent that various seashells and different colored marine growths were seen

among branching coral at the bottom. Emerging on the other side, we were in the open Pacific. Next, we entered a little bay, wherein a number of porpoises were sporting gayly in their native element; and the canoe was paddled to shore and drawn up on a pretty sand beach, which, at this point, was not more than ten feet wide, dividing the blue waters of the ocean from a streamj which, from its stagnation and greenish color, might be mistaken for a pool. A canoe loaded with melons and pumpkins floated on its surface; and a Sandwich Islander, asleep in the shade of a rock hard by, declared it to lead to some habitation or cultivated ground. It is emphatically called the river. In a moment, our light bark was carried over the sand, and launched upon its peaceful bosom. We again embarked, and pursued its windings for half a mile. It was perfectly calm and silent, and no animated thing except ourselves was abroad. On one side, the rocky bank rose perpendicularly three or four hundred feet; on the other, it spread out into a level plain, a quarter of a mile in extent, covered with trees and wild brush-wood. Presently, we espied, on a point stretching into the stream, a little terrier, that stocfd with ears erect and one foot raised., regarding us with attention. We had no sooner doubled the point, than we met Mr. Mazarra in a canoe. He had been to his plantation, but kindly turned about, and we paddled on together for a quarter of a mile, and landed.

      "This plantation, where we saw corn, yams, sugarcane, and taro, (arum esculentum,) growing luxuriawtly, extends on either side of the stream to a considerable distance. The soil is rich, and the hills rise on all sides, forming a long, narrow valley. After examining the farm, we entered the dwelling of our host, which resembled the huts at Clarkston, and refreshed ourselves with a fine melon. I observed here a great number of spiders, and wondered they were permitted to infest the domicil, till Mazarra said, 'We find them very useful in killing the flies about the house, and are glad to see them.'

      "We returned as we came, and, not finding our boat at Clarkston, spent some time wandering over the rocks, which the tide had now left, in search of shells."

      Charles Ellms, (June 21, in 1805-March 13, 1866), was an early 19th century writer of pirate and sea stories. See Charles Ellms, Pirate Story-teller for more on his life and writings.

      His reworking of Dr. Ruschenberger's chapter on his July 1836 visit to the Bonin Islands excludes all footnotes, almost all of the first three pages and the final three pages of the original account.

      Ellms does not acknowledge the source of his Bonin Islands Chapter which is, if the American editon, is:

W.S.W. Ruschenberger 1807-1895.
      A voyage round the world: including an embassy to Muscat and Siam in 1835, 1836, and 1837.
Philadelphia : Carey, Lea & Blanchard, 1838.
pp.437-448.

Charles Ellms,       Robinson Crusoe's own book; or, The voice of adventure, from the civilized man cut off from his fellows, by force, accident, or inclination, and from the wanderer in strange seas and lands ... Boston: J. V. Pierce, 1843. pp. 133-143.

Bonin Islands  Notes  Source  Whalesite