{"id":"01KG6YHAB7T7AVDAQZP565C6KV","cid":"bafkreif3xcoly6ggh4jkbvqkt344w7ce3sexcmmeykfbpp3t3dopwl23h4","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":7550,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T07:57:55.413Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 1","source_file":"01KG6YDDF6PTWG4P7JTS5THSTD","start_line":7482,"text":"SKETCH NINTH.\r\nHOOD’S ISLE AND THE HERMIT OBERLUS.\r\n\r\n“That darkesome glen they enter, where they find\r\nThat cursed man low sitting on the ground,\r\nMusing full sadly in his sullein mind;\r\nHis griesly lockes long gronen and unbound,\r\nDisordered hong about his shoulders round,\r\nAnd hid his face, through which his hollow eyne\r\nLookt deadly dull, and stared as astound;\r\nHis raw-bone cheekes, through penurie and pine,\r\nWere shronke into the jawes, as he did never dine.\r\nHis garments nought but many ragged clouts,\r\nWith thornes together pind and patched reads,\r\nThe which his naked sides he wrapt abouts.”\r\n\r\n\r\nSoutheast of Crossman’s Isle lies Hood’s Isle, or McCain’s Beclouded\r\nIsle; and upon its south side is a vitreous cove with a wide strand of\r\ndark pounded black lava, called Black Beach, or Oberlus’s Landing. It\r\nmight fitly have been styled Charon’s.\r\n\r\nIt received its name from a wild white creature who spent many years\r\nhere; in the person of a European bringing into this savage region\r\nqualities more diabolical than are to be found among any of the\r\nsurrounding cannibals.\r\n\r\nAbout half a century ago, Oberlus deserted at the above-named island,\r\nthen, as now, a solitude. He built himself a den of lava and clinkers,\r\nabout a mile from the Landing, subsequently called after him, in a\r\nvale, or expanded gulch, containing here and there among the rocks\r\nabout two acres of soil capable of rude cultivation; the only place on\r\nthe isle not too blasted for that purpose. Here he succeeded in raising\r\na sort of degenerate potatoes and pumpkins, which from time to time he\r\nexchanged with needy whalemen passing, for spirits or dollars.\r\n\r\nHis appearance, from all accounts, was that of the victim of some\r\nmalignant sorceress; he seemed to have drunk of Circe’s cup;\r\nbeast-like; rags insufficient to hide his nakedness; his befreckled\r\nskin blistered by continual exposure to the sun; nose flat; countenance\r\ncontorted, heavy, earthy; hair and beard unshorn, profuse, and of fiery\r\nred. He struck strangers much as if he were a volcanic creature thrown\r\nup by the same convulsion which exploded into sight the isle. All\r\nbepatched and coiled asleep in his lonely lava den among the mountains,\r\nhe looked, they say, as a heaped drift of withered leaves, torn from\r\nautumn trees, and so left in some hidden nook by the whirling halt for\r\nan instant of a fierce night-wind, which then ruthlessly sweeps on,\r\nsomewhere else to repeat the capricious act. It is also reported to\r\nhave been the strangest sight, this same Oberlus, of a sultry, cloudy\r\nmorning, hidden under his shocking old black tarpaulin hat, hoeing\r\npotatoes among the lava. So warped and crooked was his strange nature,\r\nthat the very handle of his hoe seemed gradually to have shrunk and\r\ntwisted in his grasp, being a wretched bent stick, elbowed more like a\r\nsavage’s war-sickle than a civilized hoe-handle. It was his mysterious\r\ncustom upon a first encounter with a stranger ever to present his back;\r\npossibly, because that was his better side, since it revealed the\r\nleast. If the encounter chanced in his garden, as it sometimes did—the\r\nnew-landed strangers going from the sea-side straight through the\r\ngorge, to hunt up the queer green-grocer reported doing business\r\nhere—Oberlus for a time hoed on, unmindful of all greeting, jovial or\r\nbland; as the curious stranger would turn to face him, the recluse, hoe\r\nin hand, as diligently would avert himself; bowed over, and sullenly\r\nrevolving round his murphy hill. Thus far for hoeing. When planting,\r\nhis whole aspect and all his gestures were so malevolently and\r\nuselessly sinister and secret, that he seemed rather in act of dropping\r\npoison into wells than potatoes into soil. But among his lesser and\r\nmore harmless marvels was an idea he ever had, that his visitors came\r\nequally as well led by longings to behold the mighty hermit Oberlus in\r\nhis royal state of solitude, as simply, to obtain potatoes, or find\r","title":"Chunk 1"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG6YGBWBP27MZM102JNCMSXJ","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG6YDDF6PTWG4P7JTS5THSTD","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG6YCG626JN4FCG8QK17CQCF","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG6YHAB5EB2WTPCBKB86MDGQ","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T07:57:57.479Z","ts":"2026-01-30T07:58:07.364Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}