Some of the crew had seen goats at Seymour. They had been left there a hundred years ago by a sea captain who had had some on his boat for fresh milk; he took them ashore to give them a chance to eat grass. Each day he took fresh water to them. Then one day they did not come back for the water, and he guessed they had found some on the island and sailed off leaving them there.
But there are no goats here, nor the land lizards which we had seen at Seymour. The land is absolutely all lava rock and cactus and stiff prickly bushes which makes climbing around very difficult. I made a fine collection of shells that I found on the beach. [[36]]
Several times I went ashore in the evening with the crew, and one night two of the men had an awful fight. Just the few of us were on this desert beach alone, and it reminded me of a story that Darwin told in his Cruise of the Beagle nearly a hundred years ago. He went to a little lake on one island and saw there the skull of a captain who had been murdered by his crew there many years before.
Diving in a Rock Pool at Darwin Bay.
Darwin was a very famous scientist about 100 years ago. This book, The Cruise of the Beagle, describes a great voyage he took in the ship Beagle around South America and mostly around the world. He stopped at the Galápagos Islands. Mother read this book aloud to me. There were too many things to see and do on the Arcturus for me to have much time to read. Everything was too interesting and there was always something exciting happening. I think the only book I read through was Ivanhoe. [[37]]
Early one morning Dwight went off walking across the island. He did not come back at four when the ship’s whistle blows to call us all to the landing beach, nor later at bedtime, and not until midnight. He had lost his way for a time and accidentally discovered a crater lake which no one had ever seen before. Although it is in the middle of the island it is salty and the water must come in with the tide. There are mangroves around its edge, and green scum on it, but small fish live in it.
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