Island. J. Edward Chamberlin
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
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
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