Bonin Islands  Source  Whalesite

CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL

OF

POPULAR

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.

Fourth Series

CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS.

THE BONIN ISLANDS.

About five hundred miles south of Yokohama, the capital of Japan, there lie three groups of islands, known as the Bonins, and which as regards soil, climate, and general beauty can scarcely be matched anywhere. Let us see what Mr Consul Robertson of Yokohama, who visited the Bonins in 1875, has to say about these charming islands and their history.

      The northern group are known as Parry, and the southernmost as Bailey or Coffin. The central group, nine and a quarter miles in length, consists of Stapleton, Buckland, and Peel Islands, the last of these being nearly five miles long. Hillsborough Island, the largest of the Bailey group, is seven and a half miles long by one and a quarter broad. There would appear to be little reason to doubt that the Japanese were the earliest discoverers of these islands; but it is to Captain Beechey, who visited them in H.M.S. Blossom in the year 1827, that we are indebted for the first trustworthy reports. The Blossom, despatched from England for the purpose of co-operating with Franklin's and Parry's Arctic expeditions, having failed to meet the explorers at the rendezvous in Behring's Straits, proceeded with her commander Captain Beechey to the Pacific, and in the course of her cruise visited the Bonins in June 1827. Here the captain remained, in the harbour of Port Lloyd, for several days, taking possession of the group on behalf of Great Britain -- a fact established by nailing to a tree a sheet of copper punctured with a declaration to this effect -- and giving the various islands their present nomenclature. The copper, in a fair state of preservation, is now in Mr Robertson's possession.

      Although at the period of the Blossom's visit the population was limited to two shipwrecked sailors, it was soon destined to receive reinforcements. In 1830, a party of mixed nationality, and comprising some Sandwich islanders, arrived at Port Lloyd from Honolulu and hoisted the British flag. They were provided with live-stock and seeds, and would seem to have thriven in their settlement, so much so that, in 1842, hogs and goats abounded, and a fair amount of land was found under cultivation. The colonists gained a few accessions during the eleven following years, until, on the arrival of Commodore Perry's expedition, which visited the islands in June 1853, they numbered thirty-one members, nine being of European or American nationality, the remainder natives of the Pacific islands, and children. Commodore Perry devotes some space in his published work to an account of the group, and even submitted to his government a scheme for their more perfect colonisation, deeming the islands useful from their position as a coasting station for the contemplated mail-line from San Francisco to China. Urging upon the settlers the desirability of living under some organised government, he drew up a simple code for their guidance. Its rules, however, were never enforced, and are already forgotten. Some livestock were left on the islands by Perry, who also subsequently forwarded from America a present of useful seeds and implements of husbandry for the use of the colonists. Some visits of men-of-war and whalers occurred during the following years; and in 1861 an effort was made by Japan to colonise Peel Island, when a special Commissioner and about one hundred colonists arrived from Yedo. The Japanese soon wearied of their colonisation scheme, and withdrew in batches; and in 1863 the Commissioner himself followed, leaving, however, a stone inscribed with a declaration that the islands were discovered by Japan, that they were revisited in 1861, and that they still continue the property of that empire.

      Mr Robertson's visit was made in H.M.S. Curlew in November 1875, when also the Japanese government lighthouse tender Meiji Maru called at the islands. He describes the character of the land as hilly, marked here and there with bold crags. The hills are clothed with luxuriant vegetation, comprising cabbage-palms and tree-ferns; and the valleys, which are girt round with fringes of trees, appear to be rich and prolific. That the islands are of volcanic origin is more than probable -- Commodore Perry indeed expresses an opinion

that Port Lloyd was at one time the centre of an active volcano -- and hence no doubt the richness and fertility of the soil. A solitary hut at the head of the harbour, from which the American flag was displayed, and a few canoes drawn up on the beach or sailing along the shore, furnished the only evidence of colonisation visible by the new arrivals as their vessel anchored. They shortly learned, however, that the community then numbered sixty-nine souls -- thirty-seven males and thirty-two females -- twenty of the whole number being children. Five only of its present inhabitants may be described as white. They hail respectively from England, France, Germany, Holland, and the Azores, and appear to have arrived at the islands for the most part in whaling-vessels during the last thirty years. The dark-skinned population is composed of natives of the Sandwich Islands, Agrigan, the Caroline and Kingsmill groups, and comprise a Bermudian, a Malay, and two Japanese women. Thirty-five of the number were born on the islands, and exhibit the usual curious effects of mixed alliance.

      The holdings of the settlers are dotted over the shores of the Harbour, or lie in some of the sheltered nooks which indent the coast of the island. Here, in the cultivated patches which surround their cottages, may be seen the sweet-potato, taro, pumpkins and other garden vegetables growing luxuriantly. On the sloping hillsides, plantations of sugar-cane, maize, and cocoanut appear to succeed, and but for the occasional hurricanes, would thrive abundantly. Plantain and lemon groves are numerous, and there is no lack of running streams. The visitors found the settlers provided with an abundance of tame pigs, geese, ducks, and fowls; and in the season -- the months of April, May, and June -- enormous numbers of turtle are secured without much labour, one man capturing as many as fifty during the day.

      The dwelling houses are rudely constructed. The side-posts and rafters are of hardwood, and being covered with the leaves of the cabbage-palm, afford weather-tight shelter. The floors are boarded, and the house divided into a dwelling and a sleeping room, the kitchen being in a building apart. The furniture of the cottages is sparse and simple; a rough deal table, chairs, a bed, a shelf bearing the family earthenware, a clock, and some cheap gaily coloured prints, which line the walls, being its leading features. Everything being kept scrupulously clean and neat, the good order of the households impressed the visitors favourably. It may be added that there are few books to be met with, and that only one man in the islands -- Webb, an Englishman -- can read and write.

      It may easily be imagined that the wants of the settlers are neither numerous nor hard to satisfy. Clothing and calico of a light texture, salt, soap, tobacco, hardware, nails, knives, tools of useful description, and ammunition, comprise their chief wants; and for these they have been hitherto indebted, in exchange for their island-produce, to passing whalers putting into the islands for refreshment. On the occasion of Mr Robertson's visit, a goodly supply of presents, consisting of blankets, cottons, grocery, and other useful articles, was forwarded for the use of the settlers by the Japanese government; nor were their needs overlooked by Captain Church, who provided them with shirts, shoes, flannel, and other necessary gear from the stores of H.M.S. Curlew.

      Mr Robertson mentions some thirty varieties of wood growing on the islands. Wild-cactus, curry-plant, wild-sage, and celery are also found ; and mosses, lichens, and ferns are said to abound. Of metallic minerals, excepting some traces of iron pyrites, found in Peel Island, there would appear to be no indications. Earthquakes and tidal waves are frequent. The peculiarity of the latter is that no bore rushes up the harbour; the water rises suddenly -- precisely as it rises in a bowl in which an inverted tumbler is plunged -- and as suddenly recedes. The earthquakes are probably slight, as the inhabitants do not seem to dread them. Hurricanes, which prevail it is to be presumed at the change of monsoon, are more serious in their consequences, especially to the crops.

      Of the inhabitants as he found them Mr Robertson speaks by no means unfavourably. Rumour, he says, ascribed to the settlers of the group a character for lawless life and irregular conduct, of which, however, he saw no evidence. He found a small colony of a simple mixed race, living to all appearance in decency and order, clean in their persons, neat in dress, and dwelling in comfortable homes, to which they hospitably invited the stranger. But to this bright side of the picture there is a dark reverse. Of religion they know nothing; they are utterly uneducated, and are as apathetic as the savage to all but the pressing needs of every-day existence. Owing to the want of government amongst themselves, human life has at times been somewhat insecure, one of the settlers having informed Mr Robertson that within an experience of twenty-five years eleven men had to his knowledge met with violent ends; this however, is to be accounted for by the fact that the islands were the refuge of the runaway scum of whalers and trading-ships, among whom quarrels must have been of common occurrence. Notwithstanding this, the islanders appear to feel some repugnance towards settled government, and ask that they 'may be permitted to live as Bonin Islanders.’

      Let us hope that some good may result from Mr Robertson's visit, and from the ample and exhaustive report of the little group which he has given to us; and that the attention of the governments which claim its possession may at least be drawn to the responsibilities which the have undertaken. We have seen that England, through Captain Beechey, and Japan on more than one occasion, have claimed the ownership of the islands; and on one or other of these powers would seem to devolve the natural duty of guiding the young settlement through the perils of a peculiarly dangerous infancy, and of laying the foundation of a happy and prosperous community in the distant Pacific. Japan is manifestly unfitted for this. She has proved herself unable to colonise the magnificent island of Yesso, which lies at her very doors, and which, permanently settled, would have afforded her a powerful bulwark against the Russian aggression she so constantly dreads. There is little probability of her proving a wise administratrix of the Anglo-Melanesian settlement which she has repeatedly tried to colonise, and as often abandoned. It is left to England, therefore, to take this group beneath her protecting wings, and

to initiate some simple and inexpensive system of self-government there; or, failing this, to renounce definitively the sovereignty of the islands, claimed on her behalf by Captain Beechey in 1827.

"The Bonin Islands."
      Chambers's Journal.
No. 811, Saturday, July 12, 1879.
pp. 444-446.

Bonin Islands  Source  Whalesite