Читать книгу The Ipswich Sparrow and Its Summer Home - Jonathan Jr. Dwight - Страница 4

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Whether the Dane, Biorn Heriulfsen, really spied the island, as he is said to have done, in the year 986 A.D. or not, is a matter not susceptible of proof,^[1] but that it was known to the navigators of the sixteenth century is shown by its appearance on early charts.^[2] It is apparently indicated as ‘samta cruz’ on a chart of 1505 by Pedro Reinel, as ‘st cruz’ on one of 1544 by Sebastian Cabot, and as ‘Isola d’ella Rena’ (Sandy Island) on one of about 1550 by the Italian, Gastaldi; while it appears on various maps of later date under the names of ‘isle de sable,’ ‘I. Sable,’ etc., all ringing changes on the French word sable, meaning ‘sand,’ the adjacent mainland being in those times under French rule, and known as Acadie. The accuracy of some of the statements made by early writers regarding the island, is questionable; and whether the Frenchman, Baron de Léry, visited it and left behind him cattle and swine in the year 1518, is very doubtful; but that the Portuguese stocked it with these animals about the middle of the sixteenth century seems to be an established fact.

In 1583 occurred the first of a long series of disasters on its dangerous bars. The Admiral, an armed vessel in the service of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, was wrecked here, and nearly one hundred lives were lost. The expedition, under command of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, half-brother to Sir Walter Raleigh, consisted of five ships, and was proceeding from Newfoundland, which island had just been taken possession of in the name of the Queen.

In 1598 forty convicts were left on the island by the Marquis de la Roche, who intended to transfer them to the mainland as soon as he had selected a site for a new colony. A storm, however, presently arose that drove him eastward, and he finally returned to France where he is said to have been imprisoned. The convicts were not rescued for five or six years, when all save a dozen had perished, the survivors subsisting on cattle, seals and berries, and clothing themselves with skins and furs. During the first half of the seventeenth century the island was visited by English and French fishermen and hunters in pursuit of the seals, walruses and foxes that then abounded, and by others who hunted the cattle for their hides. In 1633 John Rose of Boston, who was wrecked upon the island, reported having seen “more than eight hundred head of wild cattle and a great many foxes many of which were black.” After he had effected his escape in a boat built from the wreckage of his vessel, he returned again with seventeen Acadians, who so slaughtered the cattle that few remained when, some years later, a company arrived from Boston having the same end in view. Apparently the cattle, foxes, and walruses were exterminated at about this time, for we find little or no reference to them during the next hundred years.

About 1738 Rev. Andrew Le Mercier, also of Boston, restocked the island with some domestic animals, expecting to settle there himself. The wild ponies that to the present day are found in ‘gangs’ all over the island are said to be descendants of this stock, although it is thought by some that they originally came from the wreck of a Spanish vessel.^[3] Since Le Mercier’s time the cattle have been at least semi-domesticated, for the island became during the latter half of the eighteenth century a place of resort, not only of honest fishermen, but of pirates and wreckers, attracted no doubt by the constantly increasing number of vessels that were cast away upon it. Gruesome tales are told of the robbery and murder of the unfortunate people who escaped the sea only to fall into the hands of these miscreants, and blood-curdling ghost-stories have grown out of this dark period of the island’s history. In order to protect life and property, the Government of Nova Scotia in the autumn of 1801 established on Sable Island the first relief or humane establishment, that has developed into the well-equipped life-saving service there today. Since 1801 accurate records of the havoc wrought by storms in the physical aspect of the island, and of the many wrecks that have occurred on its outlying bars, have been kept by the various superintendents. Up to 1882, no less than one hundred and fifty known wrecks had occurred, and by January 1, 1895, eighteen more had been added, two of them occurring during the summer of 1894, after my departure. A ‘wreck-chart’ of the island was prepared by Mr. S. D. Macdonald of Halifax in 1882, and published by the Department of Marine of the Dominion Government.^[4] It has been revised up to 1890, but there are supposed to have been other unknown wrecks far out on the bars, of which there is no evidence save perhaps broken spars or a dead body flung by the breakers high on the sandy beach. Richly does Sable Island deserve the title ‘An Ocean Graveyard,’ and well has it been said, “No other island on this globe can show so appalling a record of shipwreck and disaster!”

One of the most fascinating pages in the history of the island, and one that certainly bears most directly upon the history of our Sparrow, is that which records its gradual demolition by storms and ocean currents. It is now apparently a question of years, not centuries, before the island becomes a submerged bar like those with which it is surrounded or those which extend out for miles from either end. There have been periods when it has melted away with startling rapidity, and then again others during which little or no change has taken place. The western extremity has suffered most, while the eastern has been little affected save perhaps by the fury of the gale that, drifting the sand before it, builds up or pulls down the miniature mountains with surprising rapidity. It has been thought that the whole island has been moving eastward grain by grain, but such a statement has not been fully substantiated. It is the western end and southern shore that have been steadily washing away, and the process goes on more rapidly, the smaller the island becomes, while there is little or no compensatory building up of the eastern end.

Its size prior to 1775 must remain a matter of conjecture. In that year, however, charts compiled from French sources show it to have been no less than forty miles in length and two and one quarter in breadth. In 1799 an Admiralty survey, carefully made, gave the island a length of thirty-one miles and a breadth of two. In 1808 a special survey of the island made it thirty miles in length and two in breadth, with hills from one hundred and fifty to two hundred feet in height, reaching their maximum elevation near the eastern end. In 1815 another chart shows the length to be only twenty-nine miles, and yet we learn that within the four years prior to 1814 no less than four miles of the western end had crumbled into the sea, as proved by the situation of the main station erected in 1801. It was then five miles from the western end. Its removal was necessitated in 1814, in 1820, and in 1833, the sea advancing meantime eleven miles. A survey in 1829 gave a length of only twenty-two miles, while another in 1851 increased this to twenty-three, since which time no survey has been made. Two wooden lighthouses, one at either end, were erected in 1873, the distance between them in a direct line being twenty-one miles, with probably a mile or so of grass-covered hills beyond them at either extremity. In 1882 the sea undermined the western lighthouse, and it was hastily taken down and moved 1218 feet further eastward. In 1888 a second removal became necessary, and this time it was transported nearly two miles eastward (9100 feet SE. by E., ½ E.) to the site it now occupies. Meanwhile the sea has advanced to within about half a mile, and in a very few years will again threaten its destruction.

These figures are derived principally from one of Mr. Macdonald’s interesting papers on Sable Island.^[5] It will be observed that they are somewhat conflicting, but whether this is due to inaccuracies in the surveys, to the difficulty of determining exactly where the ends of the island are, or to an actual movement eastward of the sand, the fact remains that the island is far smaller than it was a century ago.

Regarding the history of the lagoon or lake which has always occupied a large portion of the island, I cannot do better than quote a few lines from the Rev. George Patterson’s excellent and exhaustive paper,^[6] where he says:—

The changes going on in the physical structure of the island appear further from what has taken place in the lake. Some time before the first government establishment was placed on the island there was an opening into it from the north. The superintendent, writing in 1808, says that ‘it is completely shut, and it is difficult to trace where it has been.’ The superintendent in 1826 mentions the same fact, but urges the reopening of it, which he thinks might be accomplished at moderate expense, in which case it would serve as a harbor of refuge for vessels of fifty tons. Some years after a terrific storm caused a similar opening from the south, through which small vessels entered for shelter, but in the year 1836 a similar storm filled it up again, inclosing two American vessels which had taken refuge within.

For some time after the formation of the government establishment on the island, this lake was fifteen miles long, and, though gradually becoming shoal from the material drifting into it, it afforded a very convenient means of transport by boat. The residents largely used it in conveying supplies to the east end, in bringing wood from the same quarter, and wrecked materials to the main station. But during the winter of 1881 a severe gale opened a gulch near the east end, which has so drained it that it is now only eight miles long, and so shallow as to be useless for transport.

The destructive agency of the sea appears farther in the ridge which separates the lake from the sea on the south. Originally it was half a mile wide, with hills upwards of fifty feet in height, now it is a narrow beach, in some places not more than a hundred yards wide and so reduced in height that the sea breaks over it in stormy weather. Should this barrier be removed, the work of demolition will go on more rapidly than ever. (Pp. 43-44.)

The fragments of history here presented have been gathered from many sources, and selected with a view to showing the vicissitudes through which all animal life on the island must have passed. It now remains for me to describe the island as I found it in 1894.