Galapagos Islands  Notes  Source  Whalesite

Friedrich Ritter

Eve Calls it a Day

Friedrich Ritter

      In my last article, I promised to have you as my guest for one day so that you might see for yourself just what it means to be a modern Adam and Eve. Welcome, then, to Friedo, our Garden of Peace. And may you find your hours with us as stimulating and enjoyable as we have found each day of the year and a half that we have lived here–one man and one woman alone upon a tiny island in the tropical Pacific!

      This charming young lady whom you seem to be so surpised to meet in this desolate wilderness is Dore, my inseparable companion, who came out with me from Germany and has worked industriously beside me, sharing the heavy toil of subduing the jungle to make this clearing which we call home. Here is our house–just a rude shelter, as you see, but enough to serve all our present purposes. Over there our permanent abode is nearing ccompletion, each stone of it laboriously carried up from the lower ground below and placed in position by Dore and myself. We are proud of it. Before the day is done I shall take you through it and point out some of the novelties of its construction, which, I flatter myself, are quite ingenious.

      Meanwhile, take a turn through the garden–a monument to our faith or foolishness, call it what you will. Each inch of that black soil we had to win by almost superhuman effort from a jealous and rebellious nature. Then, after we had won it, we had to fight to keep it; day and night we guarded the growing things against insect swarms and against marauding bands of cattle, asses, hogs, as well as lesser plagues of cats and dogs. All of these animals were once domesticated, but when they were abandoned by their owners they went native, and now they roam wild over the island in search of food. In spite of everything, however, the garden lives and supplements the native fruits to feed us abundantly.

      You see that clump of palm trees over there? From beneath their roots a large spring bubbles up to supply us with drinking water and to irrigate the garden through the ditches that criss-cross between the beds. Farther on, that thicker growth of trees is our orchard. As if to compensate us for the trouble she has caused us in the cultivation of domesticated vegetables, nature has made ready to hand a bountiful reserve of native fruits–papayas, oranges, bananas, pineapples, guavas, lemons, and coconuts.

      These black lava cliffs that form a wall about us on three sides will tell you plainly enough that our Friedo lies in the crater of an extinct volcano. Through the open end you can look out on the blue, unruffled sea, which washes with a scarcely audible murmor the sandy beach five hundred feet below. Beyond our crater rim, in the

interior of the island, stretches a waste land of volcanic rock covered with an almost impenetrable thicket of brown thorn bushes. We live, you see, in a natural amphitheatre–fertile, luxuriant, ample for all our needs; and it also serves us an impregnable fortress against any possible intruders.

      Thus, though we dwell here alone on the Island of Floreana, a mere ten-mile speck upon the bosom of the Pacific, we have no fear of molestation. Our nearest neighbors are more then one hundred miles away on the next island of the Galapagos group, while the mainland of South America is five times as far distant to the eastward. Here we are completely isolated from what we regard as the evils of modern society.

II

      In the restlessly active world of modern civilization everyone recognizes the dynamic urges which move it from day to day and year to year along the path of so-called progress. This creative restlessness is the very essence of life, and you wonder how there can be any dynamic power to motivate the existence of two solitary beings here in the primeval quietness of the Pacific, where we are so utterly cut off from our fellow men. Must not the joys of activity be stifled in the monotony of our daily round? Must not the "man of culture" become little better than an animal, finding his only satisfactions in alternating between food and sleep?

      Certainly the animal instinct in man, like every other part of his nature, seeks its development, and woe to that man who would attempt an experiment such as ours if his culture, like that of so many moderns, had been wholly concerned with the external irrelevancies of life–with the mere niceties of manners and good form as society prescribes them. Here, the thin veneer of sophistication would soon be torn to shreds on these Galapagos thorns and only the animal would be left. Then the process of degeneration would continue in the direction indicated by Nietzsche: "The wilderness increases; woe to him who carries it in his heart."

      With most men, culture is only an aptitude acquired by training, just as tameness is acquired by the beasts in a circus; in both cases the surface gloss disappears as soon as the creatures are given back to their natural surroundings. But the man of true culture has grown together with it; the two are inseperable. Wherever he may be, this deeper culture which he has made a part of his enriched personality will find some suitable expression, or he will perish with it; but he cannot put it off like a garment and sink to the level of an animal. In reality, then, there is no “back to nature” as Rousseau thought. There is only a passing through culture to the wisdom of self-knowledge.

      For endurance in solitude it is indispensable that a man should be able to find pleasure in satisfying the smallest demands of everyday life. The more intellectual one's nature, the greater is the temptation to try to make one's self master of the humdrum and the disagreeable by observing a rigid time-table in their performance. But this is suicidal to the intellect. Before long such a time-table, instead of being a man's servant, becomes his master, and drives him along as inexorably as if he were a machine. The imperious requirements of his schedule leave him no time for contemplation.

      We, for our part, do not try to observe a set programme. We let our actions be determined not so much by outward necessities as by the demands of duty which we feel inwardly. This gives to our life a certain mixed rhythm,

in which periods of feverish physical exertion are alternated with periods of quiet reflection, reading, or conversation. I have sometimes wished that I could order my life a little more by a fixed time-table. If followed in moderation, a schedule is conducive to systematic thinking, as Kant's daily walk to his philosophy. But this I have never been able to acheive; I am not made that way. I must be content with the mixed rhythm of life which my nature seems to require. After all, it has its compensations.

      For example, it is now the middle of the Galapagos winter, and for several days we have been kept indoors by a dust-fine, powdery rain which has transformed the landscape with its magic mantle. Mountain, forest, and sea appear like the unread objects in a dream. It is the world of a poet's fantasy. Every sharp outline becomes a shadow in the mist, every angle a curve; the whole prospect is that of a wild, exotic picture seen through the meshes of a silken veil. The rain falls noiselessly;l only the patter of heavy drops of moisture from the trees breaks the silence.

      Unfortunately, when the rain comes it brings hordes of mosquitoes. They attack us unmercifully during the evenings, especially in the months from February to April, and we have to make sure that the netting about our beds is carefully adjusted before we retire. We take advantage of the weather to lie abed late in the mornings and contemplate lazily the drenched and steamy out-of-doors. At the moment, Dore and I are both writing. The rainy season gives us an excellent opportunity to rest after our strenuous exertions of the preceeding months, and we seize the occasion to set down our philosophic meditations, to read our favorite books, or to pen letters to friends in Germany, trusting that some ship may eventually pass this way to pick them up.

      Beside me as I write, one of our tame cats is curled up in a box, apparently feeling none the worse for having eaten four poisonous sparrows. We gave her up for lost, but she surprised us by disgorging her deadly meal and reviving again. A strong wind has just sprung up and is blowing the rain out to sea. The clouds have momentarily parted; the sun bursts forth with a golden flood; every wet leaf and blade of grass has become a sparkling jewel.

III

      Seldom are our nights as quiet as one would expect them to be on a solitary island. If there is no other sound, there is always the soughing of the wind in the trees. Then there are the animals. These wild things of the Galapagos sleep during the hours of daylight and spend the nights feeding, fighting, and making rowdy love.

      At almost any time we can hear, either close at hand or in the remote distance, the ardent braying of numerous asses or the half-anxious, half-threatening bellowing of bulls. The latter lead their cows and calves down into our valley to graze, and even if they don't break through the fence into our garden, we can hear them outside. Sometimes loud snortings or the sharp snapping of twigs and branches will proclaim a battle between two bulls. Again, the lowing of cows just beyond our door may warn us that our premises have been invaded. Only last night I awoke to see a cow grazing not ten feet from my couch. I softly arose and stole almost to her side before she saw me; then, with such agility as I should hardly have thought so clumsy a beast capable of, she galloped away and leaped over our fence, which is four feet high. More disagree-

able intruders are the pigs, black as crows, of which I related a special episode in my last article.

      Sometimes we are disturbed by the barking of the wild dogs. They run in packs and frequently attack the asses, which defend themselves by kicking and biting. Whenever one of the dogs lets out a sudden yelp louder than the general chorus, we know that he has received a knock-out blow from some agile hoof. The prowling cats of the island are also as noisy as cats are wont to be. One night I was summoned from my bed by the pitiable mewing of our domesticated she-cat. I found her in the topmost branch of an acacia tree, wither she had fled from the pursuit of a wild tomcat. The event proved, however, that our tabby was well able to take care of herself, and, womanlike, was merely calling for sympathy after the danger was past. At the foot of the tree lay her fiece assailant stone-dead, his throat artery slashed as neatly as if it had been cut by a knife.

      When the night life of the island has ceased raging two or three hours after midnight, we hear the first impatient crowing of our domesticated cocks, and they repeat their signals at measured intervals. (Unhappily, mute cocks have not yet been bred.) Soon the voices of many birds announce the dawn, and, except in the rainy season, we arise with the sun. The temperature allows complete nakedness even at this early hour. My first business is to walk through the garden to see whether a pig has broken through, or whether the wind has blown down a banana tree, or whether the cockroaches and wood lice have been too voracious. On the way I gather ripe fruits for breakfast. Dore's first trip is to the hens, which eagerly wait to be let out and fed.

      After breakfast we plan the day's work. If it happens to rain, early morning being the favorite time for showers even in the dry season, we read or write till the cloud passes. Then we toil on the further completion of our settlement–sometimes in the garden, sometimes upon the building of our permanent house.

      By noon the heat becomes oppresive and all nature settles into an exhausted respite. Many of the tropical plants fold up their leaves to avoid the burning rays of the sun. The only creatures stirring are the gorgeous yellow butterflies that tumble drunkenly above the blossoms of the garden. By this time heat and hunger remind us of dinner. This is our big meal of the day, and we follow it with a siesta during which we rest, read, or sleep until about three o'clock. The hills are now beginning to throw long shadows, the day grows refreshingly cooler, and we return to our work where we had left it at noon.

      When darkness comes on, our active day is ended. The sun sets blood-red into the western ocean. The night wind springs up and scatters ripples over the surface of the water. The great yellow disk of a tropical moon sheds a soft, golden light over the trembling waves. The sandy shore line becomes a silver band. We withdraw to our shelter, where, without eating again, we settle down under a large mosquito net to read or write by the light of a kerosene lantern until slumber overcomes us.

      This is the ordinary routine of our daily life. Of course, it is frequently interrupted by the varying necessities of the moment. It may happen, for example, that we will read or write for two or three days running if our interest in a certain subject compels us to do so. Or again, great numbers of seed-eating birds, which we have named the Galapagos sparrows, may descend upon the garden and force us to undertake a campaign against them. My only defense in such

emergencies is a shotgun, but, in spite of my 90 per cent accuracy in aim, we cannot notice any marked decrease in their numbers.

      Thus life for us is one continuous battle. With it all, however, we feel that we are growing in a closely harmonized union with our surroundings. At the end of each day we have the satisfying sense that we have lived completely, with a full utilization of all our powers.

IV

      We have now practically exhausted the store of foodstuffs which we brought with us from Germany. Consquently we are subsisting wholly upon the produce of our own agriculture and the native fruits which nature has so bountifully supplied us. Occasional seamen who put in at the island for water have frequenly asked us why we do not adorn our table with steaks and chops when there are so many wild cattle and hogs in the hills about us. The answer is that Dore and I are both vegetarians. We do not eat meat, partly as a matter of principle and partly as a matter of taste. We really prefer a vegetarian diet. We have learned by experience that we feel better, both mentally and physically, when we eat no flesh.

      As I have already indicated, we find that we are amply nourished on only two meals a day. We breakfast wholly on fruits. At the midday meal we distinguish a sweet food and a salt food. We prefer the first, but, since we also have need of the second, we alternate two days of sweet food with one of salt food. Our sweet food consists of two beaten eggs, raw, with bananas or other fruit and cane-sugar sap, either fresh or as syrup. Salt food is composed of several raw or cooked greens and root vegetables, with peanut butter or oil.

      We have no grain at all, and I am glad we have got entirely rid of flour dabbling. When I was practising medicine in Europe I exerted myself for years to discover some satisfactory method of utilizing grain, but to no avail. With the exception, perhaps, of raw oat cakes and malted wheat gruel, all my dietary experiments with cereals proved disappointing. The reason for this failure was the obvious one that man is not a grain-eating chicken. The chronic "flour diseases" with which mankind is afflicted could rapidly be eliminated if people would simply omit bread from their diet.

      Fats and oils we have not yet been able to produce in Friedo as abundantly as we could wish. All nut trees require many years before they reach maturity, and the almonds and hazelnuts which we planted did not germinate. To be sure, we have native coconuts and are cultivating peanuts, but we should like more variety. Still, we can get along well enough for the present.

      Albumen we get in eggs, lima beans, and peanuts, which in addition to their fats contain about 15 per cent albumen. Potatoes and yams provide us with carbohydrates. Then, too, we always have bananas, which we eat only when they are fully ripe, never in their green state. In ripe bananas a great part of the relatively indigestible starches are transformed into aromatic and easily digestible sugar.

      In my last article I mentioned that we planted sugar cane very soon after our arrival in the Galapagos. We thought by this means to escape from dependence on white sugar, which has so much of its very best part removed in its manufacture. Our expectations of having some good natural sugar grew apace with the growing cane, but we were soon to learn the difficulties that are involved in its extraction. The cane fibre is exceedingly

tough, and with the primitive means at our disposal we found ourselves devoting a great deal of time to getting a very small quantity of the syrup. By trial and error we attempted three different methods before we hit upon one which was reasonably successful.

      We first proceeded in this fashion: we peeled the cane and then I pounded it on a rock with a heavy hammer, finally wringing out the fibres with my bare hands, much as though they were a handkerchief. In three quarters of an hour my hands were blistered, and I had only a litre of juice to show for my pains. The fibres, of course, still remained sweet with a large content of sugar which I had been unable to extract; so we boiled them for several hours and produced two more litres of juice of slighly less concentration. The three litres of sap we then boiled down for another two hours, and in the end got from them only half a litre of yellow, honeyed sap.

      After this unsatisfactory attempt we tried another method. We took the whole canes and chopped them up crosswise in thin slices. These we placed in iron pots, poured water over them, and set them to boil. All our vessels were pressed into service during this experiment. My hands were thus saved, and by nighfall we had acheived about six litres of sap–just twice as much as we had obtained in the same length of time by the other method. On the whole the results were gratifying, for the sap was rather clear after straining. But this, too, had a catch in it. Overnight a sour film formed over the top of our precious extract; we had to remove it and boil the remainder again in order to save it. Neither process, then, was practicable.

      Finally we concluded that we should have to employ machinery, and I succeeded in constructing a crude but relatively efficient lever press for crushing the cane. I selected a thick-forked branch of a tree and dug the long end of it into the ground so that it looked like a large letter Y lying on its side. The shorter branch I leveled into shape as a pressing block. Dore discovered that it was easy and comfortable to sit upon the free end of the branch and, by swinging to and fro upon it, press the sap out of the cane which was placed between the forks. We call this aparatus "Dore's sugar swing." By devoting all the forenoons of one month to operating it, we swung out ninety gallons of sugar sap. The net result, after it was boiled down, was about a hundredweight of thick sugar honey.

      We are so well pleased with our invention that we don't wish for a more perfect press for our limited purposes. To be sure, the mystery of refining sugar from the syrup is still one of our unsolved problems, but this does n't trouble us. We can get along very nicely without sugar in granulated form. The syrup answers every purpose, and when it is mixed with various fruit juices it makes a splendid sweet drink. Thus we are able to provide all the sugar that our bodies require, and are independent of any import.

      As for refined sugar, we simply do without it–and it is no hardship. The human body does n't call for it, anyhow; in fact, it is often actually harmful. Any Robinson Crusoe who has been spoiled by civilization would do well to learn from horses and asses to use his teeth, tongue, and palate to manufacture sugar whenever it is necessary. But let him beware if he attempt to obtain it by chewing the cane! Civilized man with teeth reinforced by porcelain or gold must look to his fillings; unless he is careful he may swallow his hardware instead of his sugar.

V

      If people heare that we are not yet living in a house, not even a log cabin, but that we have camped for many months under a provisional roof of corrugated iron, they will think us very casual and gypsylike. In the climate of the Galapagos, however, a large mosquito net and a water-tight roof are almost shelter enough. Still, we are longing for a more comfortable lodging, and already it is taking form. Since I must be architect and workman at the same time, as well as gardener and general handy man about the place, I must be economical with my strength. Naturally, the construction proceeds slowly.

      In planning the house in which we expect to spend the rest of our days there were many special considerations which we had to bear in mind. In the first place, we wanted to set it high enough so that we could look out at the sea. For convenience we thought it ought to be as near the centre of the garden as we could build it without allowing it to cover any of the precious garden soil. An engineering requirement of no little importance was to place the building in such a position that we could run a pipe from the spring to give us a bath and running water. Aside from these obvious and practical matters, there were other more general considerations of equal importance.

      As usual when I wish to solve a problem, I asked myself, "What is the ideal solution?"–and then, "How and where must this ideal be modified to make it conform to reality?" The most beautiful and also the most expedient ground plan for a house is undoubtedly the circle. Nature knows this. Does not every tree endeavor to round out its crown in a hemisphere? Are not our eyes, as well as our organs of touch, offended by points and corners? A circular ground plan is at the same time the most suitable from an economic point of view, because it encloses the largest area within the smallest circumference. Accordingly, the dome is the most beautiful roof; but it would be exceedingly difficult to carve a dome out of wood with my primitive tools. To erect circular walls of stone would also put too great a strain upon my ingenuity. Therefore we decided to compromise upon the form nearest approximating the ideal–an octagon for the ground plan and a pyramid for the roof.

      In making the blueprints for any building a good architect never lets himself forget the sun. A house whose rooms are not harmoniously arranged to provide the best light for the varied purposes of the household is misbuilt. We agreed, therefore, that our bedroom should occupy the eastern side of the building, so that the sun might greet us with its warning to arise in the morning. The room for recreation and comfort should be in the western wing, for the setting sun announces the end of a day's work. On the shady north side we would build the kitchen, storerooms, staircase, and lavatory.

      To fulfill these conditions we selected for our site what was originally the most barren spot in the valley; thus we should deprive the garden of none of its soil. To get elevation we decided to set the house on stone pillars; this would give us our much-desired view of the ocean, and we could pipe water into the basement for our bath. To give us a solid foundation we dug down to the rock at each angle of the house and sunk large lava shafts as corner stones. Upon these we piled up other blocks of stone to form the pillars and

filled the space between the pillars with smaller rocks to make the walls. As mortar we employ a mixture of clay and sand. Of course it does not harden as lime mortar would, but it resists rain much better than I had expected. Moreover, when the roof goes on, it will extend out two feet or more to protect the walls from the weather.

      The most tedious part of the work is in the selection of stones which will fit together. What a pleasure it would be if we only had some flat sediment rock to build with! But there is none on the island. We have only lava rock, and the earth spirits who made it show plainly that they knew nothing of Euclid's geometry. Even where it appears that they wanted to construct a straight edge on a stone it turns out curved, and all the right angles which they wanted to demonstrate are either acute or obtuse. (The only natural formations of any kind which I have found in my Galapagos quarry are a stone armchair, a couch, a few flat rocks that we shall use as plates, and two rectangular chunks that will serve as steps in our staircase.)

      The refractory nature of our material is a great handicap to us, for in building the walls of a house one needs many straight edges and right angles. Here all the rocks are in whorls and curves. We must spend weary hours hewing them to some approximate shape that we can use. And the task entails risks of two kinds. First, I am not equipped with the tools of a stone mason. Second, these rocks are formed of lava which cooled unequally, and they are very tricky to work on. They are full of incalculable internal tensions. Stone splinters are continually cracking off at unexpected moments to threaten eyes and shin bones. Often after I have chiseled away for a long time the whole stone will burst and my toil goes for naught.

      As soon as we had raised the walls breast high, we encountered a new obstacle. It became increasinlgy impossible to lift the rocks into position, even when we chose the smaller ones. Lacking cranes and pulleys, we had to fall back on the ancient Egyptian method used in building the pyramids. We piled up earth to make an incline to the walls, and with great effort dragged the boulders up it. In this kind of work there is constant danger that hands or feet may get crushed if we lose our grip and the stone starts sliding down the embankment. Once Dore nearly had her hand mashed in this way, and it seems a miracle that she got out of it with only three bruised fingers. On another occasion I forfeited a finger nail. Such accidents are all in the day's work; the best we can do is to take whatever precautions we can to avoid them.

      Skilled masons with adequate tools could have finished the house long ago; for us it has been the labor of nearly a year, and it is still a-building. But it will not be many months now before the roof goes on and we can move in. Even if it had been possible to employ others in the construction of it, we should not have done so. Each stone that has gone into it has received the imprint of our thought and labor. We have derived a very real satisfaction from our toil–a satisfaction inferior only to that which we shall soon know when we begin to enjoy the fruit of it.

VI

      On the beach of Post Office Bay there stands a famous hogshead or barrel which is known to many a seaman who frequents these latitudes of the Pacific. It was there when we arrived and it will doubtless be there long after we have been dead and forgotten. This ordinary object repre-

sents the only distinguishing tradition of Floreana Island and has come to play quite an important rôle in our solitary lives, for it is our one link with the outside world. How or when it came there I know not, but it may possibly have been that the captain of some vessel which had run short of provisions first conceived the idea of setting the barrel on shore with a message describing his plight, so that some other ship that put in for water might see it and come to his assistance.

      However this may be, the barrel is now an institution–a sort of Neptune's clearing house for messages between the ships that ply in these waters. A barque or steamer that chances to pass this way would not think of going by without sending a boat ashore to have a look-in at Floreana's barrel. Naturally, we too make use of it whenever we wish to communicate with civilization. The letters that we write to friends in Germany are left there for the next passing ship to take off, and whatever mail we receive is also deposited there for us.

      Not very long after we settled here, we were surprised to discover that the barrel was yielding us a queer assortment of mail. It seemed that a newspaper in Berlin, learning from our friends that we had undertaken this experiment, published a long article about us and quoted some of the descriptive letters we had written home. Immediately we were deluged with inquiries from unknown people who were impatient to imitate our example. They begged to be allowed to join us and establish a community of "like-minded souls." Aspirations of escape are not uncommon in European society, but in all but the rarest instances the ambition to found a colony of this sort proceeds from a flabby and hysterical sentimentality.

      Needless to say, we who had come so far to find a solitude in which we could meditate and live our own lives free from the distractions of social intercourse were rather appalled by the prospect of having our retreat become a haven of refuge for all the misfits of the world. Most of these appeals, therefore, I ignored completely. A few of them, written by people who seemed to be bolder spirits that the rest, called for positive action, and to these I wrote in the strongest language I could command, urging them not to follow us.

      In spite of everything I could do, some of these folk have persisted in their romantic intentions, and from time to time one of them will suddenly turn up in the flesh. They come expecting to be treated like invited guests, and the only way we can deal with them is to make it clear in the beginning that we want to be alone and consider them intruders. We refuse to have anything to do with them. Fortunately for us, our little valley is circumscribed by acres of thorny hills. We are more than an hour's difficult journey from the nearest possible site for another settlement. We are able, therefore, to go about our own business indifferent to the presence of anybody else who may come to the island. Invariably the intruders find their enforced solitude unbearable, and in the end they go away, glad, no doubt, to return to civilization.

      One newcomer who proved more pertinacious than any of the others finally came to me and confessed that he could not go on living the life of a hermit; it was too "cold and unnatural," particularly since we were there to keep him company if we only would. He ended by declaring that we should live closer together. To this I could only repeat what I had told him in the beginning, and send him away. We did not see him again for four weeks, and

shortly thereafter he departed from out midst for good.

      One day a lady from Berlin came ashore and calmly announced that she intended to live with us. Unlike all the other would-be colonists, she had no illusions about seeking solitude. She brought with her a complete menagerie consisting of four monkeys, a parrot, a dog, a rabbit, a cook, and a consumptive husband, who, she said, had been assured by a specialist that he would recover if he spent a year on Floreana. After looking over the island, the lady had concluded that the only place she could live was with us. I had to tell her frankly that she was mistaken; that that was the only place she could not live; that we could not undertake to house her zoo, and that we would not leave the valley. Finally she sailed away in the same ship that had brought her. Her darlings, the four apes, from whom she said she could not be parted for an instant, she abandoned in the wilderness of the Galapagos. Some days later one of them attacked us savagely and had to be shot; the others must have starved to death, for we have seen nothing of them.

      At the moment a German private-school teacher has settled in the neighborhood. He brought with him a domesticated ass, but otherwise is quite alone. He enjoys a rather good view from his camp site, but he has no such oasis as ours. Besides, he had not prepared himself for this kind of life. He is already being galled by loneliness, and I do not doubt that he will soon go the way of the rest.

      Thus we manage to preserve our independence in spite of all the attempts made against it. We never feel a want for human society, so long as we have each other, and never seek the companionship of strangers who may arrive on the scene. In any others chance to put in an appearance here–well, it may happen, but we shan't let it disturb us. The crater of our volcano is so small that there is no room left for others to appropriate. It is surrounded by such a vast extent of waste land that we are naturally insulated from any future settlement. Whatever the gods may have in store for us, we shall resolutely resist the establishment of a community of "like-minded souls" in the district of our spring.

VII

      Now that we have been living on our desert island for a year and a half, you will inevitably want to know how we feel about our experiment. Do not the hardships of our new existence sometimes make us wish for the comforts of Europe? Do we not occasionally experience a longing for human society? Do we not at times regret the decision which led us to this island spot? To all such questions I can honestly answer in the negative, and this goes for Dore as well as myself. With our present mode of life we are amply content. We look forward with confidence to spending the rest of our days here in the wilderness.

      I realize, of course, that anything I may say upon this point may be received with a slight lifting of the eyebrows. I was responsible for the decision which brought us here, and it would not be unreasonable for others to think that I should naturally do my best to justify the consequences. Let me, then, submit the evidence of an impartial observer. El Telégrafo, a newspaper of Guayaquil, Ecuador, interviewed a naval officer who had paid us a visit. He had no reason to look upon us with special favor; he merely answered the questions that the reporter put to him and told what he had seen. I shall translate his interview verbatim:–

      We have been told, lieutenant, that a cultivated German doctor has been living a primitive life on one of the Galapagos Islands in an amazingly eccentric manner. Is this true?

      Absolutely. A German couple are living as man and wife on Floreana in a very primitive fashion, distinguished from that of our early ancestors by the fact that both of them are highly educated and have moved in cultured European circles. They are living on a vegetable diet, shunning the use of meats, and they appear to thrive on it. Their thoughts are free from the prejudices of the civilized world. As for myself, I was surprised at such novelty and self-possession.

      And how do this Adam and Eve procure their food?

      From a small garden, hardly sufficient to guarantee their daily bread. Vegetables and fruits of every description form their meals and are prepared in natural dishes. While they eat they carry on a spirited conversation in German as though they were at a banquet. They are alwasy cheerful and in harmony. They have completely forgotten the bitter struggle between man and man which characterizes life in society.

      Did you notice any weariness of mental depression?

      Quite the opposite. Rejoicing manifested itself in all their gestures, contentment at the sight of their surrounding wilderness. Neither the woman nor Dr. Ritter was the least bit excited by my visit. They are happy in their natural life, void of prejudice, affectation, and sordidness. Faith which cannot be shaken animates them. They seem to possess a super-natural ability to stand the silence–that might silence which is disturbed only by living creatures such as birds, reptiles, and other wild things.

      What else did you notice worth of comment?

      Curiosity and a desire to see and speak with this German couple led me into the temporary dwelling where they have been living for several months. Decidedly original in its construction, it is built of brances to give it security and covered with corrugate iron plates. The interior is not al all inviting, being plain and sturdy for the necessities of life. They sleep on the floor like Adam and Eve in their earthly paradise. Dr. Ritter speaks Spanish indifferently. He told me he intends to stude nature at close range, and that he wishes to close his life in the mides of the primitive forest.

      So much, then, for our peace of mind.

      To make our story complete I should perhaps add a brief footnote about some of the things which we lack and with which we shall take measures to provide ourselves at the earliest opportunity. We have already ordered some garden tools and plants from Stumpp and Walter of New York, among which are two almond trees, two peach trees, two breadfruit trees, as well as some mixed seed for the chickens. To protect our clothes against cockroaches and dampness we shall have to obtain some tight-fitting chests or trunks. For our food, too, we should like to have a metal box to keep out the ants and other insects. We have been cooking on an open hearth improvised of lava stones, but it is very smoky. We soon hope to remedy this by buying a small secondhand stove with some lengths of pipe to carry off the smoke. Except for these odds and ends, we are able to take care of all our needs as they arise.

      This completes our little history. Perhaps in America people will be astonished to find such mystical religiousness, and so little sensationalism, as the motives for our endeavor. It is hard to believe in natural things naturally. But it ought not to be hard to understand that whether one lives in the temperate zone, the arctic, or the tropics, paradise is not impossible of attainment. It is only a state of the soul within one's self, and it consists of love, patience, and contentment. These are truly the entrance gates of heaven; since we possess all three, we do not ask for anything more.

      Use of the centered roman numerals in all three articles follows the Atlantic Monthly style applied to its feature articles as noted in John Woram's now defunct website – galapagos.to, which was the source used for this transcription.

      Dr. Friedrich Karl Ritter of Berlin was a dentist who longed for a retreat where he could indulge his raw food theories and complete his magnum opus, a philosophical theosophist treatise. He was accompanied by his devoted disciple and girlfriend, Dore Koerwein, who was known to island visitors as Dore Ritter, although their respective spouses had been left in Germany with instructions to take care of each other.[ Smithsonian Institution Archives.]

Friedrich Ritter.
      "Eve calls it a day."
Atlantic Monthly.
Vol. 148 (December 1931)
p733-743.

Galapagos Islands  Notes  Source  Whalesite