[57] Previous to the resuscitation, after considerable difficulty, of this important, indeed decisive document, by Mons. L. C. D. Van Dyk, among the archives of the East and West India Company of Amsterdam, of which he was Librarian, the utmost uncertainty prevailed as to the discovery, name, and geographical position of the two islands. Now, William Van Flaming, a Dutch navigator, was supposed to be the discoverer,—now, the hardy Van Diemen. Atlases, charts, and books of travels, spoke of the name St. Paul belonging, here to the northern island, there to the southern. This long-continued confusion of names had naturally left ample space for the most contradictory statements as to the position, conformation, and geological conditions of both islands. One traveller, for instance, describes Amsterdam as an island with good anchorage on the North side, and an extinct crater, into which ran a fissure, forming a natural link with the ocean; while, on the other hand, he described St. Paul as a desert island, with steeply sloping shores, which make it matter of difficulty, if not utterly impracticable, to effect a landing; while other voyagers, again, give directly contrary accounts of both islands. Compare the following:—"An authentic account of an Embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China, together with a relation of the voyage undertaken on the occasion by H.M.S. Lion, and the ship Hindostan, E.I.C.N., to the Yellow Sea and Gulf of Pekin, as well as of their return to Europe, taken chiefly from the papers of H.E. the Earl of Macartney, &c., by Sir George Staunton, Bart. (London, 1797), vol. I., pp. 205-27."—"Rélation du Voyage à la recherche de La Pérous fait par l'ordre de l'Assemblée constituante pendant les années 1791-92, et pendant la 1re et la 2de année de la République Française. Par le citoyen La Billardière, Correspondent de l'Académie des Sciences de Paris. Au VIII. de le République Française. Tome I. pp. 120-123."—"Johnston, A.K., General Gazetteer of the World (London, 1855)."—"Hamburgh, James, India Directory; or, Directions for Sailing to or from the East Indies, China, Australia, and the adjacent parts of Africa and South America (London, 1855). 7th Edition, vol. I., p. 101."—"Voyage to the South Pole, and Round the World, by Captain Jas. Cook, R.N. (London, 1777)." An interesting and tolerably circumstantial treatise on these islands is also to be found among the transactions of the Imperial-Royal Geographical Society of Vienna for the year 1857, second division, pp. 145-56, by Mr. A. C. Zhishman, Professor of Geography and History, in the I. R. Nautical Academy at Trieste.
[58] "It seems," says Lord Macartney, "that the Chinese possess remarkable skill in the dressing of seal-skins, by which they remove the long coarse hair, so as to leave merely the soft tender skin, and simultaneously manage to render the hide thin and pliant. Only the prospect of some such enormous profit could at any time induce human beings to pass fifteen months at a stretch on so ungenial a spot, which, moreover, their occupation must render yet more loathsome. They killed the seals as they basked in the sun on the rocks along the shore, and around the broad natural rock basins. As only the skins were of any value to them, they left the flayed carcases exposed to rot on the ground, and these lie heaped together here in such masses that it was difficult to avoid treading on them, when one reached the shore of the island. At every step some disgusting spectacle presented itself, while an unutterably nauseous smell of decaying matter poisoned the surrounding atmosphere. In the summer months the seals flock hither, all at the same period, in herds sometimes numbering 800 to 1000, of which usually only about one hundred are killed at a time. This is the utmost number that five men can skin in the course of a single day, it being necessary to peg them together on the spot, on account of the drying up of the skin. For want of the requisite vessels only an inconsiderable quantity of the train-oil, which these animals contain, is collected. A portion of the best of the blubber is melted, and serves these people in lieu of butter. The seal which frequents these islands is the Southern or Falkland seal (Arctocephalus Falclandicus of Gray—Phoca fusilla of Schreber). The female weighs ordinarily from seventy to one hundred and twenty pounds, and is from three to five feet long, the male usually considerably larger. In their natural state these animals are not particularly timid; sometimes, indeed, they plunge all together into the water when any one approaches them; but quite as often they remain sitting quietly on the rocks, or raise themselves erect with a menacing growl. A sharp blow on the snout with a stick seems sufficient to kill them. Most of those that approach the shore are females, the proportion they bear to the males being about thirty to one. This apparent disproportion between the sexes, according to observation hitherto, is explained as follows:—The Southern seal at certain periods often undertakes distant wanderings from one tract to another; and certain of these tracts, such as the Cape of Good Hope and the islands of St. Paul and Amsterdam, are only frequented by the females when about to bring forth, and by the younger males of the school. In winter the huge snouted seal, or Sea Elephant (Macrorhinus, "long snout," elephantinus of Gray—Phoca leonina of Schreber), which sometimes attains a length of twenty-five or even thirty feet, comes in great numbers to these islands, where they herd together like sheep in the natural coves which the coast is broken into, in which the males announce the presence of a herd by a vehement growling, deepening into a loud roar."
Owing to the important situation of St. Paul, midway between the southernmost point of Africa and the Australian continent (from each of which it is about 3150 miles distant), a complete, accurate survey of the island seemed of great importance, not merely to the scientific world, but also in the interests of navigation; as most of the ships bound for China, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as the East India liners, pass pretty close to these islands, especially during the winter season. Many captains trading in the Indian ocean see in St. Paul an advantageous haven for recruiting the strength of their scurvy-stricken crews, while the ships of others, shattered almost to the point of foundering in the storms of a tract of ocean where for thousands of miles there is no other land, can find here their only prospect of preservation.
For the voyagers on board the Novara, an interest of an entirely personal sort attached to their visit to the island. Among the unfortunates, who on the 24th August, 1853, suffered shipwreck on the shores of New Amsterdam, in the British ship Meridian, was a native of Brienz, in Switzerland, named Pfau. This person, together with the captain, Richard Hernamann, and a Frenchman had disappeared, leaving no trace, when, on the following morning, the surviving passengers of the wrecked ship were rescued by a whaler that happened to be cruising in the neighbourhood. It was supposed that the three unfortunate men had endeavoured to reach the adjacent island of St. Paul in a small boat, and probably were still living there. The father of the Swiss made application, through an indirect channel, to the chief of the Expedition, earnestly requesting him on his visit to the island to institute some enquiries with the view of finding some trace of his ill-starred son, still unwilling to renounce all hope that he might yet be found living at St. Paul.
We hove to about one mile and a half distant from the great crater-basin, in whose eastern buttress a natural communication has been opened with the sea through a breach in its side. When the Dutch captain, William Van Flaming, cast anchor before the island in 1697, the wearing action of the waves had not yet completed this breach, there existing at that period a dam of some five feet high between the sea and the cavity of the crater. At present small boats can, at any hour of the day, pass into the crater-basin, protected from the swell of the ocean by two natural barriers, which leave between them a passage of about 300 feet wide. Our last admeasurement gave a length of 600 feet for the southern barrier, and 1002 feet for that in the north; while the intervening water passage measured 306 feet in breadth, with a depth of 9.6 feet at high water, and from 2 to 3 feet at ebb tide. On the north side of the entrance to the straits stands a lofty pyramidal rock, called Nine-Pin Rock, round which circle innumerable sea-fowl, which to all appearance brood among the chinks and crannies of the rock, while in the water below crowds of sharks lash the water into foam. It must be highly dangerous hereabouts to be capsized in a boat, as there would be little possibility of any one being rescued, no matter how speedily assistance might be rendered.
Scarcely were we anchored, ere we in the ship perceived a boat approaching from the island, which rapidly neared the frigate, with three men who had taken up their abode in even this desolate wilderness. Our imagination deluded us with the pleasing idea that these three forlorn, forsaken figures might be the long lost men wrecked in the Meridian, whom pitying billows might have wafted to this solitary island.
Presently there stepped on deck by the side-ropes a grizzly figure, with deeply-furrowed features and long, grey beard, clothed in a blue blouse and coarse linen trowsers, that seemed to have weathered many a winter's storm. This primitive-looking old man proved to be a Frenchman named Viot, who had lived here for a considerable time as overseer of a fishing establishment on the island. Our first question had reference to the missing men from the Meridian. But how sore was our disappointment when the old sailor in the blouse told us he knew all the particulars of the catastrophe of the ship, but that he had never come across the slightest trace of the three unfortunates whom we had enquired about. Viot had visited the island regularly every year since 1841, except that in which the Meridian had been lost. The fate of these three shipwrecked men must therefore remain for ever undetermined, although, considering the tempestuous weather which usually prevails in the Indian Ocean in the month of August, it is highly improbable that a boat of such small dimensions as that to which the captain and his two unhappy fellow-travellers committed themselves, could reach St. Paul, which was distant 42 miles from the spot at which the ship was wrecked.
About 11.30 a. m. the naturalists, accompanied by the officers appointed to assist in the scientific operations, proceeded in two boats to the shore, for the purpose of making some preliminary observations. When we reached the bar there opened to our view, covered with luxurious grass growing in tufts, the walls of a majestic crater, the exquisite regularity of the cavity of which left the exact impression of an enormous natural amphitheatre.
