The soil is a rich red loam, almost stoneless, and scarcely touched with the plough. There are three thousand five hundred head of cattle at present on Cristobal Island, and it could support fifty thousand with ease. There is no disease and no adverse climatic condition with which to contend, and at three years old a steer brings one hundred dollars (gold), live weight, at Guayaquil—when a steamer can be induced to call and take it there.
There are a few hundred acres under cultivation when there ought to be thousands, and two hundred bone-lazy peons do the work of fifty ordinary farm hands.
Looking down on this fertile valley it is hard to realize that one is standing on the lip of a long-extinct crater, that in reality Cristobal is a series of these, dour and uninviting to a degree, viewed from outside, but veritable gardens within. And there are four other islands in the Galapagos Group—some smaller, some larger, than Cristobal—uninhabited and exactly similar in character. Nominally, they belong to Ecuador, which accounts for their tardy development; but here, surely, is a new field for enterprise.
In the midst of the valley, situated on a hillock and surrounded by the peons' grass houses, is the owner's hacienda. Here we met, at a dinner of strange but appetizing dishes, the accountant and the comisario, the former a rotund little gentleman with very long thumb nails (the insignia of the brain worker), which he clicked together with gusto when excited or amused; the latter a tall, handsome youth and something of an exquisite, if one may judge by biscuit-coloured silk socks and an esthetic tie.
It was a cheerful occasion, followed by the best coffee I have ever tasted and songs to a guitar accompaniment.
Out in the compound, under the stars, the peons also indulged in a New Year's fiesta; so that by midnight the place was a blur of tobacco smoke, oil flares, thrumming guitars; gyrating, brightly hued ponchos, with their owners somewhere inside them; dogs, chickens, and children.
Everyone seemed thoroughly happy and contented. And after all, what else matters? That is the Ecuadorean point of view, and who shall say it is a bad one?
A starlit ride to the beach, a few strokes of the oars that carve deep caverns of phosphorescent light in the inky waters, and we are again aboard. And herein lies one of the manifold joys of one's own ship. One may travel at will over the highway of the earth, carrying his home and his banal but treasured belongings with him. Like the hermit-crab, he may emerge where and when he will, take a glimpse at life thereabouts, and return to the comfort of accustomed surroundings—a pipe-rack ready to hand, a favourite book or picture placed just so.
Sheltered by a coral reef that broke the force of the Pacific rollers, and with holding-ground of firm white sand, we made up arrears of sleep that night, and scattered after breakfast to explore the beach.
There was a lagoon swarming with duck, not half a mile inland, that attracted Steve and his new twelve-bore gun like a magnet. Peter interviewed the lighthouse-keeper's wife anent cooking for us during our stay, and I—I lazed; it gives one time to notice things that escape the attention of the industrious.