In view of the description given, may one be gay upon the Encantadas? Yes: that is, find one the gaiety, and he will be gay.
— Herman Melville, The Encantadas*
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Galápagos — yours to explore!
*Early navigators often referred to the Galápagos as the Enchanted Islands (las Encantadas in Spanish), not because the islands were beautiful and enchanting, but rather because they were bewitched. Capricious winds and unpredictable currents made navigation around the archipelago extremely difficult; It might take weeks to travel a short distance to a nearby island. The difficult navigation led some early visitors to think the islands were floating. Melville visited the Galápagos aboard the whaler Acushnet towards the end of 1841, just 6 years after Darwin. In 1854 he used that experience to write The Encantadas, or Enchanted Islands, a novella in 10 “sketches,” published in Putnam’s Monthly Magazine in three installments. In 1856 the novella was included in the Piazza Tales, a collection of six short stories by Melville. Each sketch describes some aspect of the Galápagos, generally focusing on the harshness of the islands. The quotation above is the beginning of the second sketch, Two Sides to a Tortoise. The “description given” refers to the first sketch, The Isles at Large. Clearly, Melville did not paint the Galápagos in a flattering manner.
