Photograph by Dr. John D. Long

A TABLET TO WORLD WAR FIGHTERS ON JUAN FERNÁNDEZ

A monument to sailors of the German cruiser Dresden, overtaken here by British cruisers during the war. The Dresden now lies at the bottom of Cumberland Bay.

neath, fish swimming below do not readily see it; dark on top, as pelagic fish are, it is apt to escape the notice of birds flying above. But both fish and birds, working for a living, eventually catch the purple snail. That's the world's way. After a storm on tropical seas one may sometimes observe along the sandy beach at high-tide mark a purplish band formed by millions of these sea snails washed ashore.

Combing the sea for specimens, I worked around the greater part of Juan Fernández.

On the offshore banks are huge cod, and islanders boast of a record specimen weighing 62 pounds. However, there is nothing, it must be remembered, in the climate and history of Juan Fernández to hinder the imagination. Its legends of buried treasure, of bold buccaneers and lupine life in pirate times, easily inspire tall tale telling.

There is probably more excuse for fiction about Juan Fernández than about any other place its size on earth. For 360 years pirates, earthquakes, whalers, penal colonies, battle, and political storms have swept this now calm and dreamy island. In the hillside above Cumberland Bay one sees the tiers of cells, like the Roman catacombs, dug to hold prisoners when Chile used the island as a penal colony. Out in the harbor lies the hulk of the German cruiser Dresden, sunk during the World War.

Once vast packs of sea lions haunted the island rocks. Anson, English buccaneer, wrote home that there were so many of these creatures here that he couldn't move a ship's boat without putting a man in her bows with an oar to drive them aside. Traders slew them for oil, and wild dogs killed their young on the beaches; so now the sea lions seldom frequent these

waters.

To kill off the wild goats, and thus cut off the fresh-meat supply for the English and Dutch pirates who plagued the coast, Spanish rulers of Chile long ago sent bands of dogs to this island; but the plan failed. The dogs couldn't catch the goats. among the rocks!

PIRATE CHESTS OF PLANTS AND ANIMALS

"Tell me how a divining rod acts when buried treasure is near,' one islander begged me. "I know there's treasure hidden around French Bay, and my wife's a water witch. She knows how the hazel fork twists to indicate water. Can't you please tell us how it acts over gold?"

There may be buried pirate chests. Quién sabe? But priceless treasure, indeed, was left by Anson and other early explorers. They planted vegetables and fruit seeds, and let loose pigs, cows, and horses.

It was an unwritten law, tradition says, that every ship calling here in old days, whether merchant, whaler, or buccaneer, should leave animals or plants, and thus help stock the island for the common good. In consequence the variety of useful plant. life here is unparalleled in the Pacific. Cows, pigs, and horses are plentiful also. The day I spent at Crusoe's cave boys were chasing wild horses around the grassy canyons where Crusoe and Friday hunted goats.

In a single garden, a spot of dazzling beauty, belonging to a Frenchman shipwrecked here more than 30 years ago, I saw an astounding grouping of exotic and native plants and trees. Here grew, among other things, the botanically famous chonta palm, of which highly polished walking sticks are made. The creamy-white wood feels like satin and is marked with glistening black lines. I brought seeds to try this palm in America.

In this same botanical show place you see a Spanish cork oak grown from an imported acorn; the delicate papaya and fig ripening above beds of luscious white strawberries, to say nothing of oranges, lemons, apples, and cherries.

Small wonder the baffled and beaten buccaneers, after a sound thrashing at the Spanish forts of Guayaquil or other coastal towns, enjoyed coming here to rest, heal their wounds, and change their diet from "salt horse" and weevils to lobster salad, roast young goat, and fine fruits. Until greedy traders cut it all, even the sweet-smelling sandalwood, famous since Solomon's day, grew on this island.

Far up the moist island slopes I found giant green ferns, bizarre and outlandish, like the fantastic plant life pictured to us as shading the earth in the time of mud and reptiles. Except where trails have been cut or fires have burnt them off, these ferns are so big and thick that it is hard to walk among them.

HUMMING BIRDS SLAIN FOR TOURIST
TRADE

And then the Crusoe Island humming birds. The fern forests are full of them. Two gorgeous species inhabit the island. One is endemic to it. Hundreds are slain each season to supply the tourist trade.

The birds are killed and stuffed, then mounted in a grotesque manner, much like the old-fashioned American "game picture" that hung in the dining room a few generations ago. Into this Crusoe Island humming-bird group the native puts a queer little nest made of moss, in imitation of the natural one; and into this nest he puts humming-bird eggs made of pellets of dough.

The real nest of the humming bird, difficult to find, is wonderfully fabricated of the green moss that festoons all the island

tree ferns. It is lined with woolly fuzz from the same source.

Sailors report having seen these birds halfway between Juan Fernández and Valparaiso, flying for the mainland. The tale may well be true, for this island bird is well known in Chile. And we know, too, that our own ruby-throated humming bird makes trips of several thousand miles, nesting as far north as Saskatchewan and wintering in Central America.*

Nor is the sea hereabout less copious than the island with strange yet beautiful life. One day, at low tide, I hammered open a volcanic rock seeking crabs and shrimps in their under-water holes. Out rushed an odd spider, only to be seized and bottled, as one of the rarest finds I ever made. It was a species new to the Western Hemisphere, a marine spider whose closest relatives to-day live in New Zealand and Australia.

Juan Fernández has a few good beaches, but mostly its shores are rocky, rough, or steep, with swift currents whirling past towering volcanic cliffs. towering volcanic cliffs. Many a stout ship has piled up here. Now and then I saw the moss-grown signs of forgotten wrecks.

Long ago Captain Shelvocke's Speedwell went to pieces on these rocks. At that time cats, multiplied from a few left ashore by earlier ships, fairly overran the island. Shipwrecked sailors from the Speedwell lived for weeks on cat meat. Their hunger found more substantial relief from one meal of cat meat than from five meals of seal or fish, wrote Shelvocke in his journal.

There are no wheeled vehicles on the island, and nowhere on its whole 40 square miles did I see a road-only paths. There is a school and a seldom-attended church, but there are no places of amusement. No stores; just one room in the lobster factory at Cumberland Bay, open twice a week, where natives may buy articles from the mainland through an agent of the lobster-catching company.

More than once the island has been leased for trade or farming purposes, and during Spanish rule in Chile an official attempt was made to populate it by send

*See, also, "Holidays with Humming Birds," by Margaret L. Bodine, in the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE for June, 1928.

ing over young women, just as England sent them to marry Virginia settlers.

But somehow modern progress has passed this island by. Most of its green, wooded valleys are uninhabited. Probably a third of the people are descended from two or three early castaways and oldtimers. Once a year a priest comes from the mainland to baptize, to marry, and to conduct the only church services of the year.

Whether Defoe really used Selkirk and his sojourn on this island from which to

weave "Robinson Crusoe," I don't know. Many believe he did. If so, and Crusoe and Friday could come back to-day they would find little natural change in their island paradise beyond increased population.

Otherwise the lotus life on this beautiful island, with its abundant fruits and plants, its goats and great schools of edible fish, is just as pleasant as in that romance by Defoe, wherein Crusoe mastered Nature and gave the world one of its first classic lessons in applied geography.