- end_line
- 7961
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T07:57:55.413Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 7892
- text
- Nor have there been wanting instances where the inhumanity of some
captains has led them to wreak a secure revenge upon seamen who have
given their caprice or pride some singular offense. Thrust ashore upon
the scorching marl, such mariners are abandoned to perish outright,
unless by solitary labors they succeed in discovering some precious
dribblets of moisture oozing from a rock or stagnant in a mountain
pool.
I was well acquainted with a man, who, lost upon the Isle of
Narborough, was brought to such extremes by thirst, that at last he
only saved his life by taking that of another being. A large hair-seal
came upon the beach. He rushed upon it, stabbed it in the neck, and
then throwing himself upon the panting body quaffed at the living
wound; the palpitations of the creature’s dying heart injected life
into the drinker.
Another seaman, thrust ashore in a boat upon an isle at which no ship
ever touched, owing to its peculiar sterility and the shoals about it,
and from which all other parts of the group were hidden—this man,
feeling that it was sure death to remain there, and that nothing worse
than death menaced him in quitting it, killed seals, and inflating
their skins, made a float, upon which he transported himself to
Charles’s Island, and joined the republic there.
But men, not endowed with courage equal to such desperate attempts,
find their only resource in forthwith seeking some watering-place,
however precarious or scanty; building a hut; catching tortoises and
birds; and in all respects preparing for a hermit life, till tide or
time, or a passing ship arrives to float them off.
At the foot of precipices on many of the isles, small rude basins in
the rocks are found, partly filled with rotted rubbish or vegetable
decay, or overgrown with thickets, and sometimes a little moist; which,
upon examination, reveal plain tokens of artificial instruments
employed in hollowing them out, by some poor castaway or still more
miserable runaway. These basins are made in places where it was
supposed some scanty drops of dew might exude into them from the upper
crevices.
The relics of hermitages and stone basins are not the only signs of
vanishing humanity to be found upon the isles. And, curious to say,
that spot which of all others in settled communities is most animated,
at the Enchanted Isles presents the most dreary of aspects. And though
it may seem very strange to talk of post-offices in this barren region,
yet post-offices are occasionally to be found there. They consist of a
stake and a bottle. The letters being not only sealed, but corked. They
are generally deposited by captains of Nantucketers for the benefit of
passing fishermen, and contain statements as to what luck they had in
whaling or tortoise-hunting. Frequently, however, long months and
months, whole years glide by and no applicant appears. The stake rots
and falls, presenting no very exhilarating object.
If now it be added that grave-stones, or rather grave-boards, are also
discovered upon some of the isles, the picture will be complete.
Upon the beach of James’s Isle, for many years, was to be seen a rude
finger-post, pointing inland. And, perhaps, taking it for some signal
of possible hospitality in this otherwise desolate spot—some good
hermit living there with his maple dish—the stranger would follow on in
the path thus indicated, till at last he would come out in a noiseless
nook, and find his only welcome, a dead man—his sole greeting the
inscription over a grave. Here, in 1813, fell, in a daybreak duel, a
lieutenant of the U.S. frigate Essex, aged twenty-one: attaining his
majority in death.
It is but fit that, like those old monastic institutions of Europe,
whose inmates go not out of their own walls to be inurned, but are
entombed there where they die, the Encantadas, too, should bury their
own dead, even as the great general monastery of earth does hers.
- title
- Chunk 8