Beebe: II illiams Galapagos Expeditio13


returned late the same night, reporting that they had found no water
but giving such glowing accounts of the island that we determined
to stop there if only for a short time on our way to some other spot
in search of water.
    At noon on April 4 we anchored at James Island where eighty-
eight years ago Charles Darwin had spent a week. In James Bay
we hurried ashore in small boats. The landing was a difficult one
in spite of a long sandy beach, for the surf was very heavy and a
bad undertow combined with swirling cross currents made it a
risky spot. This island differed from Indefatigable in that trees of
considerable size grew close to the shore, which made it possible with
slight effort to reach the forested slopes of the crater. On Indefatig-
able we had not been able, in the limited time at our disposal, to
penetrate the miles of country, covered with jagged broken lava,
cactus and thorny scrub, which separated the semi-arid coast from
the forested high country of the interior. On James the going was
also made comparatively easy by the well-defined donkey trails.
Each of the larger islands that we visited seemed to have some sort
of animal, once domestic, which had bred and multiplied and reverted
to a wild state. Indefatigable, for instance, has its wild (logs; South
Seymour its flocks of wild goats; Albemarle its cattle, and James,
judging from the number and well-worn condition of the trails, is
the home of large numbers of wild donkeys, Here we also found the
skeletons and tracks of wild pig and one of our number shot a large
sow, Whether these animals were left here by buccaneers or whalers
as a future food supply, or whether they are the only survivors of
ship-wrecks of long ago, no one knows.
     It is an interesting fact that these imported forms, all of which
we are accustomed to consider as thoroughly tame, should here,
after a few generations of non-domestication, be the only really
wild animals. They have reverted to a completely feral state, that
is to say, of fear of man, while such creatures as birds or reptiles
from which we expect no confidence, are, in these islands, tamer than
barnyard fowls. On Indefatigable one glimpse of wild (logs was
vouchsafed to me, wolfish looking animals who, on sight, snarled
and slunk away.
    During our few hours at James 1)aay we saw only two donkeys,
one of which was pure white, though the hills often reverberated to
their hearty braying, and the one wild pig was secured only after a
stalking as cautious as though a (leer had been the object of the


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