The Time Machine

Visiting Remote Islands: Tristan da Cunha (1934)

2022-11-16T10:30:17+01:00

On the fourth day we saw a dark rocky mass that protrudes from the ocean, and from which there are about 3,000 kilometers to the nearest continent. When the ship approached the mass on the calm sea, we realized it was a whole group of islands and islets, one of which was larger and the others very small.

These islands were discovered at the beginning of the sixteenth century by the Portuguese navigator Captain Tristao D'Acuñha , after whom they are named. The same navigator also discovered some other islands in the Indian Ocean, conquered Socotra for the Portuguese and distinguished himself in the battles in India. Today the islands belong to England.

Only the large island that bears the name of the group is inhabited, and very sparsely so; the others remain completely deserted. And even the big island was completely deserted until Napoleon was brought to the Island of St. Helena. At that time, as well as on Ascension Island, a small garrison was stationed here to prevent the emperor's supporters from using the island as a base to organize his escape. After Napoleon's death, the garrison was withdrawn, but three soldiers remained on the island who were used to life on it and liked it. Later, their wives were also brought there, along with a small group of settlers, so a tiny colony was founded on the island, and it still exists to this day. Currently, the colony has 170 people - men, women and children - who, despite all the scarcity of everything needed for life, are satisfied and none of them thinks of leaving the island. Life would be completely impossible if a ship did not come to the island every two to three years to bring the settlers food and other essentials. But since the island, in the middle of the immense ocean, is exposed to raging winds and storms that last longer here than in other ocean regions, it often happens that the ship cannot land and deliver the goods. In such a case, it cruises for a while, for several days and nights, near the island (because it can not lower anchors in raging seas) waiting for the sea to calm enough to be able to take the cargo ashore in boats. If it becomes obvious that the storm will continue for an indefinite period of time, and the ship does not want to wait long, it turns in the direction of South Africa, or in the direction of Europe, where it has to finish its main business, and leaves the desperate population, stranded on the coast of the island, to wait, without means of subsistence, for another ship, which will come after many months.

Women and children on the island of Tristan da Cunha, 1910 (photo in public domain)

Otherwise, the only food that can be had on the island is fish and some potatoes; fish only at rare intervals between storms, and potatoes when the little land for cultivation yields something to share among the inhabitants. When the food left by the ship runs out, the only hope is fishing. All the inhabitants, both old and young, male and female, catch fish either by going out in a boat from the shore to the open sea, or by casting hooks from the shore, or wading in the shallow water. They also collect seashells from the shores, or by scavenging the coastal rocks, they collect eggs from birds, and then share them among themselves in a brotherly manner. But, when the potatoes fail, the fishing does nothing due to their poor fishing gear, and the food reserves brought by the ship are exhausted, famine and diseases quickly spread across the island.

If it were not for the famine, the islanders would, at least according to socialist concepts, be the most satisfied and happiest people in the world. There is no government on the island; neither tax nor surtax is paid, there is no military service, no money, and no inequality in rights or duties. Complete equality and fraternity, common scarcity or abundance, common troubles, dangers and efforts made in the interest of all, mean that there is no envy or disputes of any kind among the inhabitants. And they like it so much, that to the ever-repeated offers of ship captains to sign up whoever wants to transport them to civilized areas, not a single resident of the island has so far signed up.

Tristan da Cunha 1934, photo from the book.

And yet there is on the island one personage of undisputed authority, whom every inhabitant asks for opinion and advice on every occasion, and who has naturally and imperceptibly distinguished herself as a sort of sovereign of the colony. It is a widow, Frances Repetto, who was married to a settler, originally from Genoa. Everyone on the island listens to her and her son William and she manages everything that is done on the island. When we visited her in her modest house, made from stacked rocks without plaster, with a roof of planks and grass pressed with large rocks and tied with ropes so that the winds wouldn't blow it away, she told us that everyone who lives on the island is happy, contented, loving and helping each other. She, like the other inhabitants of the island, did not even know about the World War, because during the entire war, not a single ship docked there. They also showed us one old woman, ninety-seven years old, Martha Green, who was born on the island and has not left it to this day. Her father was an English soldier who served in the garrison on the island of St. Helena and guarded the entrance to Lonwood, so after the emperor's death he moved to the island of Tristan D'Acuña and started a family there.

The island is rocky, with some arable land and some meadows. There is not a single tree on the island, nor could there be, because it would not be able to withstand the wind. There are some bushes around the residential buildings that the settlers raised as protection against winds and storms. The island is of volcanic origin, with high rocky hills and cliffs rising from the ocean with steep slopes, most of them completely vertical.

On the island there is also a small church made of stacked stones, without a bell tower, and with a bell hung on a pole in front of the building. The Protestant priest Harold Wilde, who willingly agreed to exile on a remote secluded island, serves as priest, teacher, doctor and judge; the latter duty he performs not according to any regulations or common law, but according to common sense and the belief that not a single inhabitant of the island wants even the slightest dispute.

—

Mihailo Petrovic Alas was a Serbian/Yugoslav mathematician and inventor. He was a professor at Belgrade University, an academic, fisherman, writer, publicist, musician, businessman, and traveler. On several scientific expeditions in 1934 and 1935, he visited some of the remotest islands in the Atlantic and Indian ocean, documenting his experiences in a travel journal, later published under the title "Visiting Remote Islands". This excerpt from the book was edited for The Travel Club by Jasna Đurić.

—

Tristan da Cunha is an archipelago of islands of volcanic origin, and the main island, with the same name as the entire archipelago, is the remotest inhabited place in the world (from any land). It lies 2,800 km from South Africa, 2,500 km from the island of St. Helena, and 4,000 km from the Falkland-Malvinas Islands. Today, the island has 245 inhabitants. Administratively, it is an overseas territory of Great Britain. There is still no airport on the island, and the only way to get there is a six-day boat trip from South Africa. Ships visit the island every three to four months.

The Explanation of Sumatra, 1920

2014-07-26T13:42:34+02:00

Sumatra

Now we are carefree, tender and airy.
Let us think: how quiet are, the snowy
peaks of the Urals.

If we get sad over a pale figure,
whom we have lost on some evening,
we know that, somewhere, a little creek,
instead of it, all in red, is flowing!

One love, morning in foreign land,
envelops our soul, gets tighter,
in endless peace of blue seas,
from which the crimson corals glitter,
like, from my distant homeland, cherries.

We wake up at night, smiling dearly,
to the Moon with its bow bent,
caressing the distant hills, tenderly,
and icy mountains, with our hand.

The Explanation of Sumatra

I felt, one day, all the helplessness of our life, and the intricacy of our destiny. I saw that no one goes where they want, and I noticed connections unobserved before. That day, some people from Senegal, and some Annamites, walked past me; I met an old friend of mine, coming back from the war. When I asked him where he was coming from, he replied: from Bukhara!

His mother had died and the neighbors had buried her. Someone had stolen all his furniture, from his house. Not even a bed, he said, do I have now!

And when I asked him how he had traveled here, he told me:

"Over Japan and England, where I got arrested."
"What will you do now?" I asked him. "I don't know. I'm all alone. You know I was engaged. She's gone somewhere. Maybe she wasn't receiving my letters. Who knows where life will throw her? I don't know what to do, maybe get a job in a bank."

All this happened at the station in Zagreb. Later I got on a train and traveled further. The train was crowded, mostly with soldiers, ragged women and many confused people. There wasn't any light and shadows were all that I could see. Little kids were lying down, on the floor, around our feet. Exhausted, I couldn't sleep at all. People all around me were talking, and I noticed that even the voices were somehow heavy and that human talk never sounded like that. Staring at the dark windows, I reminisced the friend of mine describing some snowy peaks of the Ural Mountains, where he had spent a year in a prison camp. He talked, lengthily, in tender voice, about that part of the Urals.

And I felt all that white, infinite silence, there in the distance. I smiled. Many are the places where that man has been! I remembered him telling me about a woman. From his description I only remembered her pale face. He repeated, a couple of times, how pale she was when he last saw her.

In my memory, anxiously, some women's faces, that I had said farewell to, started whirling, some faces I had encountered on ships and trains. That made me gasp, so I went out, into the corridor. The train had just reached the summits of Frushka Gora. Some branches were knocking on the window pane, which was broken.

Through it, the humid, wet, cold scent of trees started entering the train, and I could hear the murmur of a creek. We stopped before a crumbled tunnel.

I wanted to see that creek, that kept gurgling in the darkness, and I had the impression that it was red, and cheerful. My eyes were weary from the lack of sleep, and some weakness, from the long journey, came over me. I thought: look, how there aren't any connections in this world. My friend loved that woman, and she was left alone, in some snow-covered house, in Tobolsk. Nothing can be kept. Even me, so many are the places I've been to.

And yet, here, how cheerfully does this creek flow. It is red and it murmurs. I leaned my head onto the broken window pane. Some soldiers were walking, on the roof, from carriage to carriage. And all those pale faces, and all my sorrow disappeared in the gurgling of that creek in the dark. The train couldn't move on. We had to climb the tunnel at Chortanovci and walk to the other side.

It was cold. I walked, among the crowd of unknown passengers. The grass was damp, so we were sliding slowly, and some were falling. When we finally climbed the hill, underneath we saw the Danube, gray, hazy. All the mist, behind which there was an inkling of a sky, was infinite, endless. Green hills, like islands above ground, were vanishing in the dawn. I was lagging behind.

And my thoughts, still, followed my friend on that journey of which he was telling me with some bitter humor. Blue seas, distant islands, unknown to me, scarlet plants and corals, which I remembered, probably, from geography, kept hurling into my thoughts.

Finally, the peace, the calmness of the dawn, slowly started filling my being. Everything my friend was telling me, and he himself, in his torn, army overcoat, remained inside my brain, forever. All of a sudden I remembered the cities, and the people, that I'd seen coming back from the war. For the first time, I felt some immense change in the world.

On the other side of the tunnel, another train was waiting for us. Even though it was dawning in the distance, in the train it was still completely dark. Weary, I sat in a gloomy corner, all alone. A couple of times I repeated to myself: S u m a t r a, S u m a t r a!

Everything is entangled. They have changed us. I remembered what life was like, before. And I bowed my head.

The train started off with a roar. I was lulled to sleep by the fact that everything was so strange, life, and the great distances within it. Think of all the places our anguish has reached, all the faces we caressed, tired, in foreign lands! Not only me, or him, but so many others as well! Thousands, millions!

I thought: how will my homeland greet me? The cherries must be ripe already, and the villages are full of joy. Look, how even the colours, all the way to the stars, are the same, on the cherries, and on the corals! How everything is connected, in the world. "Sumatra" – I said, again, mockingly, to myself.

Suddenly I trembled. Some unrest in me, that hadn't even reached the consciousness, woke me up. I went out to the corridor. It was cold there. The train stood still in a forest. In one carriage, people were singing. Somewhere, a child was crying. But all those sounds were coming to me as if from a great distance. The morning chill came over my skin.

I also saw the Moon, glistening, and I smiled inadvertently. He is the same everywhere, because he is dead.

I felt all the helplessness of ours, all my sorrow. "Sumatra", I whispered, with a strange air.

But, in my soul, deep inside, despite all the reluctance, I felt infinite love for those faraway hills, snowy mountains, all the way up to the frozen seas. For those distant islands where, maybe, all that we've ever done is now happening. I lost the fear of death. Connections with the world around me. Like in some insane hallucination, I was floating up into those endless, morning mists, to stretch my hand and caress the distant Ural, the seas of India, where all the blush from my face had gone. To caress the islands, the loves, the enamored, pale figures. All the intricacy turned into immense peace and endless consolation.

Later, in a hotel room, in Novi Sad, I put it all into a poem.

Belgrade, 1920.

Translation: Lazar Pascanovic

Karakum, The Black Sand

2012-09-12T12:14:39+02:00

Then we had had rain water; but here there was not a single source that could be turned to account. With unutterable regret our eyes rested on the Oxus, that became more and more remote, and shone doubly beautiful in the last beams of the departing sun...

Author: Armin Vambery (1863)

Old Istanbul

2012-06-06T14:50:48+02:00

As we're soon leaving for Istanbul, here's a couple of old postcards, photos and maps showing various scenes and moments from the life of the city. If you've already been there, you may recognize some of the places, while others have changed completely...

Wonders of the World: photos from 1912

2012-05-23T09:35:15+02:00

A member of our club has dug out a huge book titled "Wonders of the World" from 1912, and was kind enough to scan all the photos. For all we know, this may be the first time these images have ever been digitalized and published on the Internet. Enjoy!

Author: Ernst von Hesse-Wartegg (1912)

Mushroom Hunting in Russia

2011-05-30T11:43:48+02:00

Colin Gerald Dryden Thubron (born 1939) is a British novelist and travel writer. In 1983 he published a book called "Among the Russians", as an account of his long lone journey around Russia in an old Morris Marina car. This is a short extract about mushroom hunting.

An Encounter With Ali Pasha

2011-04-15T18:51:08+02:00

An extract from a letter that Lord Gordon Byron sent to his mother while traveling around the Balkans, in the times of the Ottoman Empire, relating his encounter with Ali Pasha, the governor of Albania.

Natal: A Sermon to the Zulu

2011-02-10T12:12:00+01:00

A sermon that Francis Owen, a British missionary stationed in Natal, delivered to the Zulu king Dingaan and his people in the early 19th century. His words were met by skepticism by the Zulu, who questioned his statements and demanded hard proof for Christian dogmas.

Dahomey: The Women Fetishers

2011-01-14T11:40:09+01:00

A short travel story by Geoffrey Gorer (1905-1985), an English anthropologist and writer. He visited West Africa in 1934, in order to study traditional dances of the region. This is his account of some strange rituals in Dahomey, today's Benin.