Chapter: SKETCH FOURTH. A PISGAH VIEW FROM THE ROCK.

  --"That done, he leads him to the highest mount,
  From whence, far off he unto him did show:"--


If you seek to ascend Rock Rodondo, take the following prescription. Go
three voyages round the world as a main-royal-man of the tallest frigate
that floats; then serve a year or two apprenticeship to the guides who
conduct strangers up the Peak of Teneriffe; and as many more
respectively to a rope-dancer, an Indian juggler, and a chamois. This
done, come and be rewarded by the view from our tower. How we get there,
we alone know. If we sought to tell others, what the wiser were they?
Suffice it, that here at the summit you and I stand. Does any
balloonist, does the outlooking man in the moon, take a broader view of
space? Much thus, one fancies, looks the universe from Milton's
celestial battlements. A boundless watery Kentucky. Here Daniel Boone
would have dwelt content.

Never heed for the present yonder Burnt District of the Enchanted Isles.
Look edgeways, as it were, past them, to the south. You see nothing; but
permit me to point out the direction, if not the place, of certain
interesting objects in the vast sea, which, kissing this tower's base,
we behold unscrolling itself towards the Antarctic Pole.

We stand now ten miles from the Equator. Yonder, to the East, some six
hundred miles, lies the continent; this Rock being just about on the
parallel of Quito.

Observe another thing here. We are at one of three uninhabited clusters,
which, at pretty nearly uniform distances from the main, sentinel, at
long intervals from each other, the entire coast of South America. In a
peculiar manner, also, they terminate the South American character of
country. Of the unnumbered Polynesian chains to the westward, not one
partakes of the qualities of the Encantadas or Gallipagos, the isles of
St. Felix and St. Ambrose, the isles Juan-Fernandez and Massafuero. Of
the first, it needs not here to speak. The second lie a little above the
Southern Tropic; lofty, inhospitable, and uninhabitable rocks, one of
which, presenting two round hummocks connected by a low reef, exactly
resembles a huge double-headed shot. The last lie in the latitude of
33 deg.; high, wild and cloven. Juan Fernandez is sufficiently famous
without further description. Massafuero is a Spanish name, expressive of
the fact, that the isle so called lies _more without_, that is, further
off the main than its neighbor Juan. This isle Massafuero has a very
imposing aspect at a distance of eight or ten miles. Approached in one
direction, in cloudy weather, its great overhanging height and rugged
contour, and more especially a peculiar slope of its broad summits, give
it much the air of a vast iceberg drifting in tremendous poise. Its
sides are split with dark cavernous recesses, as an old cathedral with
its gloomy lateral chapels. Drawing nigh one of these gorges from sea,
after a long voyage, and beholding some tatterdemalion outlaw, staff in
hand, descending its steep rocks toward you, conveys a very queer
emotion to a lover of the picturesque.

On fishing parties from ships, at various times, I have chanced to
visit each of these groups. The impression they give to the stranger
pulling close up in his boat under their grim cliffs is, that surely he
must be their first discoverer, such, for the most part, is the
unimpaired ... silence and solitude. And here, by the way, the mode in
which these isles were really first lighted upon by Europeans is not
unworthy of mention, especially as what is about to be said, likewise
applies to the original discovery of our Encantadas.

Prior to the year 1563, the voyages made by Spanish ships from Peru to
Chili, were full of difficulty. Along this coast, the winds from the
South most generally prevail; and it had been an invariable custom to
keep close in with the land, from a superstitious conceit on the part of
the Spaniards, that were they to lose sight of it, the eternal
trade-wind would waft them into unending waters, from whence would be no
return. Here, involved among tortuous capes and headlands, shoals and
reefs, beating, too, against a continual head wind, often light, and
sometimes for days and weeks sunk into utter calm, the provincial
vessels, in many cases, suffered the extremest hardships, in passages,
which at the present day seem to have been incredibly protracted. There
is on record in some collections of nautical disasters, an account of
one of these ships, which, starting on a voyage whose duration was
estimated at ten days, spent four months at sea, and indeed never again
entered harbor, for in the end she was cast away. Singular to tell, this
craft never encountered a gale, but was the vexed sport of malicious
calms and currents. Thrice, out of provisions, she put back to an
intermediate port, and started afresh, but only yet again to return.
Frequent fogs enveloped her; so that no observation could be had of her
place, and once, when all hands were joyously anticipating sight of
their destination, lo! the vapors lifted and disclosed the mountains
from which they had taken their first departure. In the like deceptive
vapors she at last struck upon a reef, whence ensued a long series of
calamities too sad to detail.

It was the famous pilot, Juan Fernandez, immortalized by the island
named after him, who put an end to these coasting tribulations, by
boldly venturing the experiment--as De Gama did before him with respect
to Europe--of standing broad out from land. Here he found the winds
favorable for getting to the South, and by running westward till beyond
the influences of the trades, he regained the coast without difficulty;
making the passage which, though in a high degree circuitous, proved far
more expeditious than the nominally direct one. Now it was upon these
new tracks, and about the year 1670, or thereabouts, that the Enchanted
Isles, and the rest of the sentinel groups, as they may be called, were
discovered. Though I know of no account as to whether any of them were
found inhabited or no, it may be reasonably concluded that they have
been immemorial solitudes. But let us return to Redondo.

Southwest from our tower lies all Polynesia, hundreds of leagues away;
but straight west, on the precise line of his parallel, no land rises
till your keel is beached upon the Kingsmills, a nice little sail of,
say 5000 miles.

Having thus by such distant references--with Rodondo the only possible
ones--settled our relative place on the sea, let us consider objects not
quite so remote. Behold the grim and charred Enchanted Isles. This
nearest crater-shaped headland is part of Albemarle, the largest of the
group, being some sixty miles or more long, and fifteen broad. Did you
ever lay eye on the real genuine Equator? Have you ever, in the largest
sense, toed the Line? Well, that identical crater-shaped headland there,
all yellow lava, is cut by the Equator exactly as a knife cuts straight
through the centre of a pumpkin pie. If you could only see so far, just
to one side of that same headland, across yon low dikey ground, you
would catch sight of the isle of Narborough, the loftiest land of the
cluster; no soil whatever; one seamed clinker from top to bottom;
abounding in black caves like smithies; its metallic shore ringing under
foot like plates of iron; its central volcanoes standing grouped like a
gigantic chimney-stack.

Narborough and Albemarle are neighbors after a quite curious fashion. A
familiar diagram will illustrate this strange neighborhood:

[Illustration]

Cut a channel at the above letter joint, and the middle transverse limb
is Narborough, and all the rest is Albemarle. Volcanic Narborough lies
in the black jaws of Albemarle like a wolf's red tongue in his open
month.

If now you desire the population of Albemarle, I will give you, in round
numbers, the statistics, according to the most reliable estimates made
upon the spot:

Men,                          none.
Ant-eaters,                unknown.
Man-haters,                unknown.
Lizards,                   500,000.
Snakes,                    500,000.
Spiders,                10,000,000.
Salamanders,               unknown.
Devils,                         do.
Making a clean total of 11,000,000,

exclusive of an incomputable host of fiends, ant-eaters, man-haters, and
salamanders.

Albemarle opens his mouth towards the setting sun. His distended jaws
form a great bay, which Narborough, his tongue, divides into halves, one
whereof is called Weather Bay, the other Lee Bay; while the volcanic
promontories, terminating his coasts, are styled South Head and North
Head. I note this, because these bays are famous in the annals of the
Sperm Whale Fishery. The whales come here at certain seasons to calve.
When ships first cruised hereabouts, I am told, they used to blockade
the entrance of Lee Bay, when their boats going round by Weather Bay,
passed through Narborough channel, and so had the Leviathans very neatly
in a pen.

The day after we took fish at the base of this Round Tower, we had a
fine wind, and shooting round the north headland, suddenly descried a
fleet of full thirty sail, all beating to windward like a squadron in
line. A brave sight as ever man saw. A most harmonious concord of
rushing keels. Their thirty kelsons hummed like thirty harp-strings, and
looked as straight whilst they left their parallel traces on the sea.
But there proved too many hunters for the game. The fleet broke up, and
went their separate ways out of sight, leaving my own ship and two trim
gentlemen of London. These last, finding no luck either, likewise
vanished; and Lee Bay, with all its appurtenances, and without a rival,
devolved to us.

The way of cruising here is this. You keep hovering about the entrance
of the bay, in one beat and out the next. But at times--not always, as
in other parts of the group--a racehorse of a current sweeps right
across its mouth. So, with all sails set, you carefully ply your tacks.
How often, standing at the foremast head at sunrise, with our patient
prow pointed in between these isles, did I gaze upon that land, not of
cakes, but of clinkers, not of streams of sparkling water, but arrested
torrents of tormented lava.

As the ship runs in from the open sea, Narborough presents its side in
one dark craggy mass, soaring up some five or six thousand feet, at
which point it hoods itself in heavy clouds, whose lowest level fold is
as clearly defined against the rocks as the snow-line against the Andes.
There is dire mischief going on in that upper dark. There toil the
demons of fire, who, at intervals, irradiate the nights with a strange
spectral illumination for miles and miles around, but unaccompanied by
any further demonstration; or else, suddenly announce themselves by
terrific concussions, and the full drama of a volcanic eruption. The
blacker that cloud by day, the more may you look for light by night.
Often whalemen have found themselves cruising nigh that burning mountain
when all aglow with a ball-room blaze. Or, rather, glass-works, you may
call this same vitreous isle of Narborough, with its tall
chimney-stacks.

Where we still stand, here on Rodondo, we cannot see all the other
isles, but it is a good place from which to point out where they lie.
Yonder, though, to the E.N.E., I mark a distant dusky ridge. It is
Abington Isle, one of the most northerly of the group; so solitary,
remote, and blank, it looks like No-Man's Land seen off our northern
shore. I doubt whether two human beings ever touched upon that spot. So
far as yon Abington Isle is concerned, Adam and his billions of
posterity remain uncreated.

Ranging south of Abington, and quite out of sight behind the long spine
of Albemarle, lies James's Isle, so called by the early Buccaneers after
the luckless Stuart, Duke of York. Observe here, by the way, that,
excepting the isles particularized in comparatively recent times, and
which mostly received the names of famous Admirals, the Encantadas were
first christened by the Spaniards; but these Spanish names were
generally effaced on English charts by the subsequent christenings of
the Buccaneers, who, in the middle of the seventeenth century, called
them after English noblemen and kings. Of these loyal freebooters and
the things which associate their name with the Encantadas, we shall hear
anon. Nay, for one little item, immediately; for between James's Isle
and Albemarle, lies a fantastic islet, strangely known as "Cowley's
Enchanted Isle." But, as all the group is deemed enchanted, the reason
must be given for the spell within a spell involved by this particular
designation. The name was bestowed by that excellent Buccaneer himself,
on his first visit here. Speaking in his published voyages of this spot,
he says--"My fancy led me to call it Cowley's Enchanted Isle, for, we
having had a sight of it upon several points of the compass, it appeared
always in so many different forms; sometimes like a ruined
fortification; upon another point like a great city," etc. No wonder
though, that among the Encantadas all sorts of ocular deceptions and
mirages should be met.

That Cowley linked his name with this self-transforming and bemocking
isle, suggests the possibility that it conveyed to him some meditative
image of himself. At least, as is not impossible, if he were any
relative of the mildly-thoughtful and self-upbraiding poet Cowley, who
lived about his time, the conceit might seem unwarranted; for that sort
of thing evinced in the naming of this isle runs in the blood, and may
be seen in pirates as in poets.

Still south of James's Isle lie Jervis Isle, Duncan Isle, Grossman's
Isle, Brattle Isle, Wood's Isle, Chatham Isle, and various lesser isles,
for the most part an archipelago of aridities, without inhabitant,
history, or hope of either in all time to come. But not far from these
are rather notable isles--Barrington, Charles's, Norfolk, and Hood's.
Succeeding chapters will reveal some ground for their notability.

       *       *       *       *       *

 Mount Pisgah is in the Bible; that's the reference there. Melville gets silly and says to climb the rock, you should travel round the world and learn juggling. The point is that you can't really climb the rock. So this is a sort of imaginative vision. He says you can see the coast of South America, and other islands about. Has he mentioned it's very isolated yet? It's very isolated. He tells the story of a ship that tried to get from Peru to Chili which took four months to go a ten day trip because of nasty calms and currents. But the great explorer Juan Fernandez finally figured out that you need to put your ship farther out to sea rather than hugging the coast, and that works much better. Back to the rock and looking out; he describes some other islands. He describes the inhabitants of Albemarle, which include no people, and lots of lizards, snakes and spiders. It also has an inlet where sperm whales come. There's an anecdote about William Cowley, an explorer who named an island after himself, calling it Cowley's Enchanted Isle. He called it an enchanted isle because it seemed to change shape and aspect. He called it Cowley's island because he was egotistical, presumably

