{"id":"01KG6YH8FGNHBB7GG7QQK77H0M","cid":"bafkreib2ml63cv2r5aoz3vcptvmr2xuc76mqd45llj44i7mgyoue6pu6je","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":5894,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T07:57:55.413Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 1","source_file":"01KG6YDDF6PTWG4P7JTS5THSTD","start_line":5819,"text":"SKETCH FIRST.\r\nTHE ISLES AT LARGE.\r\n\r\n—“That may not be, said then the ferryman,\r\nLeast we unweeting hap to be fordonne;\r\nFor those same islands seeming now and than,\r\nAre not firme land, nor any certein wonne,\r\nBut stragling plots which to and fro do ronne\r\nIn the wide waters; therefore are they hight\r\nThe Wandering Islands; therefore do them shonne;\r\nFor they have oft drawne many a wandring wight\r\nInto most deadly daunger and distressed plight;\r\nFor whosoever once hath fastened\r\nHis foot thereon may never it secure\r\nBut wandreth evermore uncertein and unsure.”\r\n\r\n\r\n“Darke, dolefull, dreary, like a greedy grave,\r\nThat still for carrion carcasses doth crave;\r\nOn top whereof ay dwelt the ghastly owl,\r\nShrieking his balefull note, which ever drave\r\nFar from that haunt all other cheerful fowl,\r\nAnd all about it wandring ghosts did wayle and howl.”\r\n\r\n\r\nTake five-and-twenty heaps of cinders dumped here and there in an\r\noutside city lot; imagine some of them magnified into mountains, and\r\nthe vacant lot the sea; and you will have a fit idea of the general\r\naspect of the Encantadas, or Enchanted Isles. A group rather of extinct\r\nvolcanoes than of isles; looking much as the world at large might,\r\nafter a penal conflagration.\r\n\r\nIt is to be doubted whether any spot of earth can, in desolateness,\r\nfurnish a parallel to this group. Abandoned cemeteries of long ago, old\r\ncities by piecemeal tumbling to their ruin, these are melancholy\r\nenough; but, like all else which has but once been associated with\r\nhumanity, they still awaken in us some thoughts of sympathy, however\r\nsad. Hence, even the Dead Sea, along with whatever other emotions it\r\nmay at times inspire, does not fail to touch in the pilgrim some of his\r\nless unpleasurable feelings.\r\n\r\nAnd as for solitariness; the great forests of the north, the expanses\r\nof unnavigated waters, the Greenland ice-fields, are the profoundest of\r\nsolitudes to a human observer; still the magic of their changeable\r\ntides and seasons mitigates their terror; because, though unvisited by\r\nmen, those forests are visited by the May; the remotest seas reflect\r\nfamiliar stars even as Lake Erie does; and in the clear air of a fine\r\nPolar day, the irradiated, azure ice shows beautifully as malachite.\r\n\r\nBut the special curse, as one may call it, of the Encantadas, that\r\nwhich exalts them in desolation above Idumea and the Pole, is, that to\r\nthem change never comes; neither the change of seasons nor of sorrows.\r\nCut by the Equator, they know not autumn, and they know not spring;\r\nwhile already reduced to the lees of fire, ruin itself can work little\r\nmore upon them. The showers refresh the deserts; but in these isles,\r\nrain never falls. Like split Syrian gourds left withering in the sun,\r\nthey are cracked by an everlasting drought beneath a torrid sky. “Have\r\nmercy upon me,” the wailing spirit of the Encantadas seems to cry, “and\r\nsend Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my\r\ntongue, for I am tormented in this flame.”\r\n\r\nAnother feature in these isles is their emphatic uninhabitableness. It\r\nis deemed a fit type of all-forsaken overthrow, that the jackal should\r\nden in the wastes of weedy Babylon; but the Encantadas refuse to harbor\r\neven the outcasts of the beasts. Man and wolf alike disown them. Little\r\nbut reptile life is here found: tortoises, lizards, immense spiders,\r\nsnakes, and that strangest anomaly of outlandish nature, the _aguano_.\r\nNo voice, no low, no howl is heard; the chief sound of life here is a\r\nhiss.\r\n\r\nOn most of the isles where vegetation is found at all, it is more\r\nungrateful than the blankness of Aracama. Tangled thickets of wiry\r\nbushes, without fruit and without a name, springing up among deep\r\nfissures of calcined rock, and treacherously masking them; or a parched\r\ngrowth of distorted cactus trees.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 1"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG6YGRZVQF3MKPKE0S9RKGRX","peer_type":"section","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG6YDDF6PTWG4P7JTS5THSTD","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG6YCG626JN4FCG8QK17CQCF","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG6YH8FE9ZJE4FJEMRYB0YNJ","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T07:57:55.568Z","ts":"2026-01-30T07:58:06.210Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}