I Swiss Family Robinson
By MARGRET WITTMER
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This story of a modern Swiss Family Robinson .
began in July, 1932, when the author, her husband
Heinz, and her 12-year-pld stepson Harry left
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S' mote island in the musterious volcanic chain ol the
Galapagos. Told that their son needed several
years in a sanitarium, the Wittmers decided to
leave civilization and "go back to nature," hoping
the primitive life would restore the boy's health.
The adventures of the Wittmer family begin be
low, condensed from the book "Floreana" by Mar
gret Wittmer, to be published by E. P. Dutton in.
April, 1961. v',;
The cray outlines of the little fishing boat slow
ly faded in the mist lying over the sea, till at
last they disappeared altogether.
She was the boat which had brought us here,
and half an hour before we' had been still aboard
with her skipper and crew. Now we were on our
own, stranded on Floreana, this lonely island. Be
hind us lay. the sea and the shifting mist, above us
. the sky, infinite as the sea and a dismal gray.
Ahead lay the future we had ourselves chosen, our
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.' We turned around, in" silence, our eyes searching
I k v desptely, iot,heftae,boa, There was no sign
& C'b'$eifs& se'a,ad long swallowed
P'';1' moments I imagined
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Heinz and I were alone, for Harry had gone up
the coast a bit with the two dogs. We looked at
each other, my husband and I, knowing without a
word spoken that we were both . thinking the
same thing: there's no going back. We had "burnt
our boats" in the old phrase, or anyhow "our boat"
had gone; and it might be months before another
ship put in here. Even if a ship came, we couldn't
get home on that. The nearest mainland, part of
Ecuador, was 600 miles away. Surely no more
lonely, forlorn, and "dead" place could be imagined
than this island with the lovely name like a flower
In bloom. But we had come to Floreana now, and
there was no going back.
We walked a little way over the gray sand, past
the black blocks of lava, knowing that many before
us had tried to settle on this island, that all of those
former settlers had failed, given up, gone away.
"I think I'll just explore inland a bit," said Heinz.
"You coming?"
"No, I'll stay here," I answered, and watched him
going off through the gently rising bush.
Completely alone, I sat on one of the shelves of
lava, dabbling my feet in the water of the Pacific
Ocean, which stretched away in all its monotonous
vastness. :..,..-:..
. I thought back to all I had read in books about
the islands and about our new home, of which we
were rather timidly taking possession. For a few
myself sitting in my house
book open in front of me. But
then I looked around and saw that this was real
ity: the sea, the shore with its dark boulders, the
two iguanas which waddled past me with only a
curious glance.
Meanwhile, Heinz had returned, and some 50
yards behind me had quickly put up our main tent
in case the rain started again with a tarpaulin
next to it covering our kitchen and stores: crates,
boxes, hampers, sacks and cases, plants we had
brought with us bananas, sugar cane, coffee,
yucca, kamotte-t-all in a jumble together. I de
cided that the big crate of books should be our
table, and I put a tablecloth on it; some of the
other crates would serve as chairs. It was begin
ning to look more comfortable, quite different any
how from those first few minutes when the boat
sailed away.-
We Visit Our Neighbors
"How about getting us something to eat?" Heinz
said. "After that we'll pay our social call."
''Social call?" I asked. "Oh yes, Dr. Ritter."
It was certainly our duty to visit the two people,'
Germans like ourselves, who had been living on
our island for three years now, its only human in
habitants besides us: Dr. Karl Friedrich Ritter and
Frau Dore Strauch. It was their example which
had given us the idea of coming here in the first
place; if they could do it, so could we.
Dr. Ritter was a dentist who suddenly left Ber
lin in 1929 to live out a new "nature philosophy"
on Floreana away from the world which he hated
and despised. He was a vegetarian and intended
to prove that you could attain the age of 140 if
you lived according to nature as interpreted by his
philosophy.
Despite all I had heard, I had a slight shock
when I first saw the former Berlin dentist. Alto
gether he looked rather frightening, and if I had
been on my own I might almost have fled. HU eyes
shifted uneasily as he inspected me and had a
gleam in them which suggested the fanatic. He
was short and thickset, with a mop of untidy black
hair above a deeply wrinkled brow, a broad nose
in a triangular face, with a black mustache.
"Let me show you my garden," I heard Dr.
Ritter telling Heinz. I went over and joined them
and Frau Strauch on a tour of his small domain.
It was nothing more than an allotment, about half
an acre. This was the strip of ground he had
cleared, sown, and planted; his "farm" looked
pretty well cultivated perhaps more so than he
did himself.
For the first time we saw all the things that grew
here: bananas, coconut and date palms, tamarinds,
plums, mangoes, figs, papaws. There was a hen .
house with about 20 chickens squawking away in
it. We found all this wonderful. .
. When we were on our way to Floreana, I had
pictured a romantic South Sea Island, a paradise
of peace and plenty, where work had little place.
The books and press reports we had read in Ger-,
their family on ajemote Pacific Island; here
rivaling the famous castaways of fiction
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many had not warned us adequately that it would
be a Herculean task to "make a living" in our new
home, but Dr. Ritter set us right without discour
aging us. i
The first day on Floreana was ending. Days here,
I knew, were not as long as at home, for we were
almost on the Equator; 12 hours day and 12 hours
night, all through the year. While Heinz and Harry
had been exploring, they had found pirates' caves
which would be our hometill we had built our
own house.
"You must have a look at the caves yourself,"
said Heinz after we left Dr. Ritter's. 'The spring is
simply wonderful! The three caves will do splen
didly for our temporary residence, better anyhow
than this windy tent. When I think of that rain
starting . . ."
So we were to move in the morning, up where
the spring was and the caves. This would solve the
water problem, the all-important one just then,
for there was only a tiny drop left in the water bag.
We Become Cave Dwellers
We slept magnificently in the tent our first night
on Floreana. The tent had a rubber ground sheet,
and the sand on the shore was as soft as any couch.
The next morning we had coffee warmed up
from the evening's brew. Then we washed the cups
in the sea, packed them, and were ready to start
loading for the move. We took only the bare essen
tials bedclothes, some crockery and cutlery, ra
''. .' '
tions and tools. Everything else we left behind:
our ten crates, that is, containing all our posses
sions, carefully packed in waterproof paper to pro
tect them against dampness. We had brought hun
dreds of things, but no furniture; that was some
thing we would have to make ourselves.
The caves had been hollowed out of soft lava
stone which was brownish with some patches of
white basalt. The living-room cave was the size of
a large room and looked like a vault. The walls
must have been finished by pirates' hands, and one
wall even had a fireplace hewn out of it, with a
chimney going through the "ceiling" a thin layer
of lava above the cave. In front of the cave were
papayas and melon trees; this was something else
that was different on Floreana melons grew on
trees, not on the ground as at home.
The cave had two benches hewn out of one wall.
Not exactly comfortable, of course, but at least
something to sit on. I was so tired when I sat
down that I didn't notice at all how extremely
hard they were. I saw, however, that the pirates
had also left some furniture: a table carpentered
. out of old crates and two warped stools. We had
" not expected even this much comfort.
Right in front of the entrance there was a papaya i'
; tree heavy with ripe fruit, and near it bushes with
lemons. The lemons were not important at the '
moment, though; the thing that mattered most was
waterthe spring. Without that, life here would ..
, not be possible at all.'
(Continued)
is the first part
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