Island. J. Edward Chamberlin

Island - J. Edward Chamberlin


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       Island

      Also by J. Edward Chamberlin

       The Harrowing of Eden: White Attitudes Toward Native Americans

       Ripe Was the Drowsy Hour: The Age of Oscar Wilde

       Come Back to Me My Language: Poetry and the West Indies

       If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories?

       Finding Common Ground

       Horse: How the Horse Has Shaped Civilizations

      

      Copyright © 2013 by J. Edward Chamberlin

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

      Published by

      Blue Bridge

      An imprint of

      United Tribes Media Inc.

      Katonah, New York

       www.bluebridgebooks.com

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Chamberlin, J. Edward, 1943–

      Island : how islands transform the world / J. Edward Chamberlin.

      pages cm

      Includes bibliographical references and index.

      ISBN 978-1-933346-93-9

      1. Islands. I. Title.

      GB471.C46 2013

      909'.0942—dc23

      2012047794

       Jacket design by Stefan Killen Design

       Cover image top: Purestock / Getty Images

       Cover image bottom: View of Lake Maggiore and the Borromean Islands, from “Voyage

       Pittoresque de Geneve a Milan,” 1819 (colour litho) by Swiss School (19th Century)

       Private Collection / The Stapleton Collection / The Bridgeman Art Library

       Text design by Cynthia Dunne

      10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

       Contents

       First Islanders

       SETTLERS AND STORYTELLERS

       Islands on the Horizon

       CROSSING THE WATERS

       3.

       The Origin of Islands

       OCEAN BOTTOMS AND VOLCANO TOPS

       4.

       The Origin of Species

       ISLAND PLANTS AND ANIMALS

       5.

       Amazing Islands

       REAL, IMAGINED, AND IN BETWEEN

       Afterword

       Notes and Acknowledgments

       Index

       in memory of Jack Cowdry (1921–2008)

       to Rob Finley, dory compass

       and for Lorna, sea anchor and heaven-haven

      The natural history of these islands is eminently curious [. . .] Seeing every height crowned with its crater, and the boundaries of most of the lava-streams still distinct, we are led to believe that within a period, geologically recent, the unbroken ocean was here spread out. Hence, both in space and time, we seem to be brought somewhat near to that great fact—that mystery of mysteries—the first appearance of new beings on this earth.

      CHARLES DARWIN

      I should like to rise and go

      Where the golden apples grow;

      Where below another sky

      Parrot islands anchored lie,

      And, watched by cockatoos and goats,

      Lonely Crusoes building boats.

      ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

      ISLANDS ARE EVERYWHERE. There are islands in the middle of a lake, some sacred—such as Manitoulin in Lake Huron, the largest freshwater island in the world, or Isla del Sol, one of the forty or so islands in Lake Titicaca—and some sentimental, such as William Butler Yeats’s Lake Isle of Innisfree or Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s St. Peter’s Island in Switzerland’s Lake Biel; others are dear to the hearts of those who live in or visit the lake regions of the world. There are islands in rivers and streams, some supporting great cities, like New York and Montreal, others shaping cultures, like Île de la Cité in Paris, and still others whose influence seems more modest, like the “smallest, barest island” in New England’s Merrimack River, which Henry David Thoreau described as having an “undefined and mysterious charm.” There are islands in between, such as the Canaries and the Azores, the Hebrides and the Faroes—those so-called stepping-stone islands in the Atlantic that offered relatively safe haven to early seafarers—or the chain of outcrops called Rama’s Bridge (or Adam’s Bridge) that links Sri Lanka to the mainland. There are islands in the deltas of the great rivers of Asia and Africa, like the Irrawaddy and the Zambezi, and islands where land and water are confused, like the muskeg islands at the edge of the boreal forest in Canada or the Sundarbans, the mangrove swamps in the Ganges Delta (which, according to one nineteenth-century observer, “looked as though this bit of world had been left unfinished when land and sea were originally parted”).

      While many islands are out on the open ocean, all alone and far away from any other land—such as Tristan da Cunha in the South Atlantic and Easter Island in the Pacific—others are snuggled along the shore, like Haida Gwaii on Canada’s west coast, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, and the islands that shape Singapore and Hong Kong, Mumbai and Venice. Countless rock outcrops and coral atolls are uninhabited by humans, while large islands like Java and Japan have a population of over a hundred million each.

      Altogether, about one billion people live on islands. They are often fiercely (if sometimes foolishly) independent. Nearly one quarter of the


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