The Encantadas; or Enchanted Isles
()
About this ebook
Herman Melville
Herman Melville (1819-1891) was an American novelist, poet, and short story writer. Following a period of financial trouble, the Melville family moved from New York City to Albany, where Allan, Herman’s father, entered the fur business. When Allan died in 1832, the family struggled to make ends meet, and Herman and his brothers were forced to leave school in order to work. A small inheritance enabled Herman to enroll in school from 1835 to 1837, during which time he studied Latin and Shakespeare. The Panic of 1837 initiated another period of financial struggle for the Melvilles, who were forced to leave Albany. After publishing several essays in 1838, Melville went to sea on a merchant ship in 1839 before enlisting on a whaling voyage in 1840. In July 1842, Melville and a friend jumped ship at the Marquesas Islands, an experience the author would fictionalize in his first novel, Typee (1845). He returned home in 1844 to embark on a career as a writer, finding success as a novelist with the semi-autobiographical novels Typee and Omoo (1847), befriending and earning the admiration of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Oliver Wendell Holmes, and publishing his masterpiece Moby-Dick in 1851. Despite his early success as a novelist and writer of such short stories as “Bartleby, the Scrivener” and “Benito Cereno,” Melville struggled from the 1850s onward, turning to public lecturing and eventually settling into a career as a customs inspector in New York City. Towards the end of his life, Melville’s reputation as a writer had faded immensely, and most of his work remained out of print until critical reappraisal in the early twentieth century recognized him as one of America’s finest writers.
Read more from Herman Melville
Moby Dick (Complete Unabridged Edition) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Moby Dick Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Consulting Interview Case Preparation: Frameworks and Practice Cases Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSketch-Books - The Collection Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Great Short Works of Herman Melville Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Paradise of Bachelors and The Tartarus of Maids Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Greatest American Short Stories: 50+ Classics of American Literature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Happy Failure: Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Melville Herman: The Complete works (Oregan Classics) (The Greatest Writers of All Time) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBilly Budd, Bartleby, and Other Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Greatest American Short Stories (Vol. 1) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Divine Magnet: Herman Melville's Letters to Nathaniel Hawthorne Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Condensed Moby Dick: Abridged for the Modern Reader Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAmerican Classics (Omnibus Edition) (Diversion Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsClassic Tales of Adventure: Don Quixote, Gulliver's Travels, The Confidence-Man, The Mark of Zorro, and The Three Musketeers Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMoby Dick - classic Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Best American Short Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to The Encantadas; or Enchanted Isles
Related ebooks
The Encantadas Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Encantadas Or Enchanted Isles: Short Story Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Voyage of Captain Popanilla Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHeart of Darkness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Chita: A Memory of Last Island Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsChita (Barnes & Noble Digital Library): A Memory of Last Island Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Voyage of Popanilla Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Voyage of Captain Popanilla Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIn The South Seas Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Sea (La Mer) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Book for the Hammock Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIn The South Seas: "Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant." Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHeart of Darkness - Unabridged Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Boy Slaves Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic: With linked Table of Contents Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Heart of Darkness: Adventure on the Congo River Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHeart of Darkness (Warbler Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBenito Cereno Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHeart of Darkness (Diversion Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHeart of Darkness (Centaur Classics) [The 100 greatest novels of all time - #28] Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGreat Short Works of Herman Melville Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNostromo Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPagan Papers (Barnes & Noble Digital Library) Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Mardi: and a Voyage Thither Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSummer Cruising in the South Seas Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFootprints on the Sea-Shore (From "Twice Told Tales") Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Complete Works of Joseph Conrad Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJava, Facts and Fancies Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHeart of Darkness & other stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Central America Travel For You
Insight Guides Costa Rica (Travel Guide eBook) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Rough Guide to Guatemala (Travel Guide eBook) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Fodor's Essential Costa Rica Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLonely Planet Central America Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLonely Planet Guatemala Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Travel Guide Costa Rica Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNicaragua Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPerfect Phrases in Spanish for Confident Travel to Mexico: The No Faux-Pas Phrasebook for the Perfect Trip Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTico Slang: Costa Rican Spanish One Word at a Time Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBirds of Belize Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Costa Rica Travel Guide Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCut the Crap & Move To Costa Rica: A How-to Guide Based On These Gringos' Experience Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTravel Guide Guatemala Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Frommer's Costa Rica 2018 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Frommer's Belize Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCOSTA RICA TRAVEL GUIDE 2023: The ultimate travel guide with things to see and do, Explore San José. Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Rough Guide to Costa Rica (Travel Guide eBook) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBest Dives of Belize Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Insight Guides Explore Costa Rica (Travel Guide eBook) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMACHU PICCHU:The History of Peru's Lost Inca City Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAcapulco & Southern Pacific Mexico Travel Adventures Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Costa Rica: The Complete Guide: Ecotourism in Costa Rica Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTaste of... Belize: A food travel guide Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCosta Rica: A Traveler's Literary Companion Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHappily Living in Belize 1 First Taste: Happily Living in Belize, #1 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Costa Rica No One Talks About Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTaste of... El Salvador: A food travel guide Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsChasing Neotropical Birds Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lonely Planet Panama Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Life on Roatan Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Reviews for The Encantadas; or Enchanted Isles
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
The Encantadas; or Enchanted Isles - Herman Melville
The Encantadas, or
Enchanted Isles
by
Herman Melville
To the best of our knowledge, the text of this
work is in the Public Domain
.
HOWEVER, copyright law varies in other countries, and the work may still be under
copyright in the country from which you are accessing this website. It is your
responsibility to check the applicable copyright laws in your country before
downloading this work.
The Isles at Large.
Two Sides to a Tortoise.
Rock Rodondo.
A Pisgah View from the Rock.
The Frigate, and Ship Flyaway.
Barrington Isle and the Buccaneers.
Charles’s Isle and the Dog-King.
Norfolk Isle and the Chola Widow.
Hood’s Isle and the Hermit Oberlus.
Runaways, Castaways, Solitaries, Grave-Stones, Etc.
The Isles at Large.
—"That may not be, said then the ferryman,
Least we unweeting hap to be fordonne;
For those same islands seeming now and than,
Are not firme land, nor any certein wonne,
But stragling plots which to and fro do ronne
In the wide waters; therefore are they hight
The Wandering Islands; therefore do them shonne;
For they have oft drawne many a wandring wight
Into most deadly daunger and distressed plight;
For whosoever once hath fastened
His foot thereon may never it secure
But wandreth evermore uncertein and unsure."
"Darke, dolefull, dreary, like a greedy grave,
That still for carrion carcasses doth crave;
On top whereof ay dwelt the ghastly owl,
Shrieking his balefull note, which ever drave
Far from that haunt all other cheerful fowl,
And all about it wandring ghosts did wayle and howl."
Take five-and-twenty heaps of cinders dumped here and there in an outside city lot; imagine some of them magnified into mountains, and the vacant lot the sea; and you will have a fit idea of the general aspect of the Encantadas, or Enchanted Isles. A group rather of extinct volcanoes than of isles; looking much as the world at large might, after a penal conflagration.
It is to be doubted whether any spot of earth can, in desolateness, furnish a parallel to this group. Abandoned cemeteries of long ago, old cities by piecemeal tumbling to their ruin, these are melancholy enough; but, like all else which has but once been associated with humanity, they still awaken in us some thoughts of sympathy, however sad. Hence, even the Dead Sea, along with whatever other emotions it may at times inspire, does not fail to touch in the pilgrim some of his less unpleasurable feelings.
And as for solitariness; the great forests of the north, the expanses of unnavigated waters, the Greenland ice-fields, are the profoundest of solitudes to a human observer; still the magic of their changeable tides and seasons mitigates their terror; because, though unvisited by men, those forests are visited by the May; the remotest seas reflect familiar stars even as Lake Erie does; and in the clear air of a fine Polar day, the irradiated, azure ice shows beautifully as malachite.
But the special curse, as one may call it, of the Encantadas, that which exalts them in desolation above Idumea and the Pole, is, that to them change never comes; neither the change of seasons nor of sorrows. Cut by the Equator, they know not autumn, and they know not spring; while already reduced to the lees of fire, ruin itself can work little more upon them. The showers refresh the deserts; but in these isles, rain never falls. Like split Syrian gourds left withering in the sun, they are cracked by an everlasting drought beneath a torrid sky. Have mercy upon me,
the wailing spirit of the Encantadas seems to cry, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame.
Another feature in these isles is their emphatic uninhabitableness. It is deemed a fit type of all-forsaken overthrow, that the jackal should den in the wastes of weedy Babylon; but the Encantadas refuse to harbor even the outcasts of the beasts. Man and wolf alike disown them. Little but reptile life is here found: tortoises, lizards, immense spiders, snakes, and that strangest anomaly of outlandish nature, the aguano. No voice, no low, no howl is heard; the chief sound of life here is a hiss.
On most of the isles where vegetation is found at all, it is more ungrateful than the blankness of Aracama. Tangled thickets of wiry bushes, without fruit and without a name, springing up among deep fissures of calcined rock, and treacherously masking them; or a parched growth of distorted cactus trees.
In many places the coast is rock-bound, or, more properly, clinker-bound; tumbled masses of blackish or greenish stuff like the dross of an iron-furnace, forming dark clefts and caves here and there, into which a ceaseless sea pours a fury of foam; overhanging them with a swirl of gray, haggard mist, amidst which sail screaming flights of unearthly birds heightening the dismal din. However calm the sea without, there is no rest for these swells and those rocks; they lash and are lashed, even when the outer ocean is most at peace with, itself. On the oppressive, clouded days, such as are peculiar to this part of the watery Equator, the dark, vitrified masses, many of which raise themselves among white whirlpools and breakers in detached and perilous places off the shore, present a most Plutonian sight. In no world but a fallen one could such lands exist.
Those parts of the strand free from the marks of fire, stretch away in wide level beaches of multitudinous dead shells, with here and there decayed bits of sugar-cane, bamboos, and cocoanuts, washed upon this other and darker world from the charming palm isles to the westward and southward; all the way from Paradise to Tartarus; while mixed with the relics of distant beauty you will sometimes see fragments of charred wood and mouldering ribs of wrecks. Neither will anyone be surprised at meeting these last, after observing the conflicting currents which eddy throughout nearly all the wide channels of the entire group. The capriciousness of the tides of