Читать книгу The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism (Vol. 1-4). The History of Sea Voyages, Discovery, Piracy and Maritime Warfare онлайн

45 страница из 418

THE “CHALLENGER” AT JUAN FERNANDEZ.

“The scenery,” writes Lord George Campbell, “is grand: gloomy and wild enough on the dull, stormy day on which we arrived, clouds driving past and enveloping the highest ridge of the mountain, a dark-coloured sea pelting against the steep cliffs and shores, and clouds of sea-birds swaying in great flocks to and fro over the water; but cheerful and beautiful on the bright sunny morning which followed—so beautiful that I thought, ‘This beats Tahiti!’ ” The anchorage of the Challenger was in Cumberland Bay, a deep-water inlet from which rises a semi-circle of high land, with two bold headlands, “sweeping brokenly up thence to the highest ridge—a square-shaped, craggy, precipitous mass of rock, with trees clinging to its sides to near the summit. The spurs of these hills are covered with coarse grass or moss. … Down the beds of the small ravines run burns, overgrown by dock-leaves of enormous size, and the banks are clothed with a rich vegetation of dark-leaved myrtle, bignonia, and winter-bark, tree-shrubs, with tall grass, ferns, and flowering plants. And as you lie there, humming-birds come darting and thrumming within reach of your stick, flitting from flower to flower, which dot blue and white the foliage of bignonias and myrtles. And on the steep grassy slopes above the sea-cliffs herds of wild goats are seen quietly browsing—quietly, that is, till they scent you, when they are off—as wild as chamois.” This is indeed a description of a rugged paradise!