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The Seychelles Archipelago Author(s): J. Stanley Gardiner Source: The Geographical Journal, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Feb., 1907), pp. 148-168 Published by: geographicalj Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1776533 Accessed: 04-06-2016 11:18 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers), Wiley are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Geographical Journal This content downloaded from 128.210.126.199 on Sat, 04 Jun 2016 11:18:05 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms ( 148 ) THE SEYCHELLES ARCHIPELAGO.* By J. STANLEY GARDINER, M.A., Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. THE Seychelles archipelago consists of twenty-nine islands, situated about 575 miles to the north of Madagascar, 1500 miles to the south- west of India, 1725 miles from Aden, and 1100 miles from Zanzibar. With the exceptions of Bird and Dennis, they lie towards the centre of a large bank, included within the 50-fathom line, almost within sight of one another, and are of granitic formation, rising into hills, which vary in height with their size. Mahe is the biggest, covering an area of about 53 square miles, and rising to 2993 feet. Praslin is 27 square miles and 1260 feet high, Silhouette 8 square miles and 2473 feet, and La Digue 4 square miles and 1175 feet. The other more important islands are Frigate,t Curieuse, Felicite, East Sister, and North. These have all extensive plantations with considerable labour settlements, while the rest have, for the most part, one or two families, which make a precarious living by fishing, the collection of birds' eggs, etc. They also scrape up a certain amount of guano from the surface of the granite, and sell it to planters in Mahe and elsewhere. La Digue, Praslin, and Mahe differ from the rest in not being the separate estates of private proprietors, but being divided up between many owners, in fact, in alone having peasant proprietors, who acquired rights originally by squatting on the land. They occupy 84 square miles, and are the most fertile part of the group, so that on their economic condition really depends its prosperity. Bird and Dennis islands differ from the rest in being formed of organically produced limestones, thrown up (or upheaved) on the edge of the bank to the north. Their French names, Ile Oiseaux and lie Vaches Marines, show their former peculiarities in being the homes of birds and dugongs. The former have departed, and the latter have been killed off. The best of their guano has been scraped up, and the islands themselves are now being planted with coconuts, the drying of fish being a subsidiary industry. Bird island has a good lighthouse, which marks the passage over the edge of the bank to the north, the channel between the islands being quite free from dangers, 22 miles broad, with over 30 fathoms of water. The group was under Mauritius until 1903, when it was separated and made a distinct Crown colony. It was then given as dependencies, the Amirantes, Desroches, Platte, Alphonse, Providence, St. Pierre, Astove, Cosmoledo, Aldabra, and Assumption, the last two being about * Read at the Royal Geographical Society, November 12,1906. Map, p. 248. This paper deals with the Seychelles in other aspects to the same author's paper in the Geographical Journal, October and November, 1906, pp. 313-332 and 454-471. t This island lies to the south-east of the group, and is not included in the large chart at the end of this number. This content downloaded from 128.210.126.199 on Sat, 04 Jun 2016 11:18:05 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms THE SEYCHELITTES ARCHIPELAGO. 149 80 miles to the west of Cosmoledo and Astove. These are all separate islands or island groups, with the exception of the Amirantes, which includes six inhabited islands-Marie Louise, Poivre, Darros, St. Joseph, Eagle, and African. Thus, in the division, there were included with the Seychelles all the islands towards Madagascar, with the exceptions of Coetivy and Farquhar, which remained attached to Mauritius on account of their proprietors belonging to that island. The former is an outlying island of the Seychelles archipelago, being only 130 miles from Mahe, and Farquhar is almost on the track to Cosmoledo and Astove. Both recruit their labour in the Seychelles, and ultimately must be transferred to its government. A further advantage in such a change would lie in VIEW FROM CHATEAU MARGOT, LOOKING NORTH ALONG THE RIDGE OF MAHI, WITH MORNE BEYCHELLOIS AND TROIS FRERES, the fact that the Seychelles is out of the hurricane zone, whereas their present headquarters is almost in its worst belt. For similar geogra- phical reasons, the Chagos archipelago sooner or later must be attached to the greater land masses either to the north or to the west, to Ceylon or to the Seychelles. Winds, currents, and distances favour the latter, as well as the negro character of its labour. Finally, if one may prophesy, in the process of consolidation which is going on everywhere, East Africa will claim sway over the Seychelles, probably greatly to the advantage of both colonies. The Seychelles may be considered almost unique, in the fact that it has no human history, in that it possessed no regular inhabitants before the advent of Western peoples. It may have been known to This content downloaded from 128.210.126.199 on Sat, 04 Jun 2016 11:18:05 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 150 THE SEYCTHETI,ES ARCHIPELAGO. early Arab traders, but it is altogether unlikely that its existence can ever have been a matter of common knowledge to their navigators. To the Malays it would have been too far south for any wind or current to have shown them of its existence; while, if known to the Arabs, we must conclude that its inhospitable waterless islets and reefs towards Madagascar caused a shunning of the whole of its region and a course right along the African littoral. Yet, the absence of indigenous inhabitants from Mauritius, Chagos, Bourbon, Rodriguez, and Seychelles, not to mention a host of small islets and groups, is an extraordinary fact as compared with the vigorous and dense populations which at some time or other dwelt on nearly every islet in the Pacific ocean. The first white discoverers of islands in the vicinity were un- doubtedly Portuguese navigators, at some period towards the end of the fifteenth century. The Cape of Good Hope was rounded in 1487, and M. A. A. Fauvel has shown that the group first appears on the charts of Alberto Cantino and Nicolas Caneirio in 1502. It is better represented in one of 1520, in which most of the island groups to the north of Madagascar are clearly shown. It suffices to say that it appears on eighteen charts of the sixteenth century. The islands were evidently well known, and must often have been sighted; but it is an extra- ordinary fact that we have, in the first two and a half centuries after their discovery, only one record of any visit.* Silhouette was sighted by one John Jourdain (who left a journal) on January 19, 1609.t The skiff was on the following day sent off to North island; " butt because our men made noe signe of any water we ankored not. Soe the boate retourned and brought soe many land tortells as they could well carrie. Soe we stoode alonge towards the other islands. The tortells were good meate, as good as fresh beefe, but after two or three meales our men would not eate them, because they did looke soe uglie before they weare boyled; and soe greate that eight of them did almost lade our skiffe." Praslin, Mamelle, and other islands were seen, but finally they came to anchor at Port Victoria on January 21, remaining there until the 30th, while they watered and obtained firewood. In particular, Mahe is stated to have had much large and " very firme timber." . "It is a very good refreshing place for wood, water, coker nutts, fish, and fowle, without any feare or danger, except the allagartes; for you cannot discerne that ever any people had bene there before us." Jourdain's shipmates, Jones and Revett, recommend the group for refreshing ships' crews, etc. Both * Vide "L'Archipel des Seychelles; Etude de Cartographie," Revue Fran9aise de I'tranger, etc., t. 17, p. 433, 1893. Also "La Decouvertes des iles Seychelles d'apres des Documents inedits," La Gdographie, Bulletin de la Soeiet6 de Geographie, t. 1, p. 289, 1900, by the same author. t The Journal of John Jourdain. Edited by Wm. Foster, and issued by the Hakluyt Society. Pp. 46-50, 349-350 1905. This content downloaded from 128.210.126.199 on Sat, 04 Jun 2016 11:18:05 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms THE SEYCHELLES ARCHIPELAGO. 151 refer to the large number of almost tame doves, but neither to the crocodiles. Revett mentions "land turtles of so huge a bidgnes which men will thinke incredible; of which our company had small lust to eate of, beinge such huge defourmed creatures and footed with five clawes lyke a beare." The next visit was that of Captain Lazare Picault's expedition in 1742, later by 133 years.

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