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Galápagos Islands or Archipiélago de Colón, group of islands, Ecuador, in the Pacific Ocean, constituting a province of the country, about 1,050 km (650 mi) off the western coast. The archipelago consists of 15 large and several hundred small islands lying on or near the equator. The principal islands are Isabela (English Albemarle), San Cristóbal ( Chatham ), San Salvador (James), Santa María (Charles), and Santa Cruz (Indefatigable). The total land area is 7,844 sq km (3,029 sq mi).

Galápagos Islands

The Galápagos Islands in the Pacific Ocean are a province of Ecuador . Created by volcanic activity, they have flat shorelines with high inland craters. Here, Bartholme Island shows the lava landscape typical of the islands.

Wolfgang Kaehler/ALLSTOCK, INC.[1]

The Land

The islands are volcanic in origin, with level shorelines and mountainous interiors culminating in high central craters, some of which rise to more than 1,520 m (5,000 ft). Several volcanoes are active. The islands are fringed with mangroves; farther inland, although still in coastal regions, where little rain falls, the vegetation consists chiefly of thorn trees, cactus, and mesquite. In the uplands, which are exposed to a heavy mist, the flora is more luxuriant. The climate and the temperature of the waters surrounding the islands are modified by the cold Humboldt Current from the Antarctic.

Flamingo

Colourful flamingos are found in lagoons and lakes in parts of the Galápagos Islands . Flamingos feed on microscopic life that they strain from the water and mud with their sieve-like bills.

F. Schneidermeyer/Oxford Scientific Films[2]

The Galápagos group is noted for its fauna, which includes numerous animals found only in the archipelago and different subspecies on separate islands. Unique to the archipelago are six species of giant tortoise (Spanish, galápago—thus the islands' name). Other reptiles on the islands include two species of large lizards in the iguana family: a burrowing land lizard and an unusual marine lizard that dives into the ocean for seaweed. The islands contain as many as 85 different species of bird, including flamingos, flightless cormorants, finches, and penguins. Sea lions are numerous, as are many different shore fish. Part of the Galápagos is a wildlife sanctuary.

Population and Economy

The islands have a total population of 9,785 (1990), mainly Ecuadorians. The administrative centre is Baquerizo Moreno on San Cristóbal . Vegetables, tropical fruits, and coffee are grown. Fishing for tuna, groupers, and spiny lobsters is important.

History

The islands were uninhabited at the time of their exploration by the Spanish in 1535. During the 17th and 18th centuries they were used as a rendezvous by pirates and buccaneers. British and US warships and whaling vessels landed frequently at the Galápagos in the 19th century. The islands were not settled until after they were annexed by Ecuador in 1832. In 1835 Charles Darwin, travelling on the HMS Beagle, spent six weeks studying the fauna of the Galápagos. His observations furnished considerable data for his Origin of Species. A satellite tracking station has been on the Galápagos since 1967.[3]

Tourists are able not only to see but to touch giant tortoises at the Charles Darwin Station on Santa Cruz , one of the Galápagos Islands . The islands’ unique wildlife, which influenced the thinking of Darwin , now attracts tourists from around the world. The national authorities face the problem of reconciling the immediate benefits of tourism with the need to conserve the islands’ plants and animals for posterity.

Norman Owen Tomalin/Bruce Coleman, Inc.[4]

Frans Lanting/Minden Pictures[5]

Near the end of his five-year voyage in the HMS Beagle, Charles Darwin explored the Galápagos Islands , and discovered great similarities between species of animals (giant tortoises, mocking birds, finches), suggesting links between distinct but similar species. These observations led him towards his masterwork, The Origin of Species. Darwin later edited his journals from the explorations and published them; they were very successful, and as this excerpt suggests, were richly detailed accounts through which the scientist’s abundant enthusiasm and curiosity shine.

Excerpt from Voyage of the Beagle

Chapter XVII

Galápagos Archipelago

SEPTEMBER 15th.—This archipelago consists of ten principal islands, of which five exceed the others in size. They are situated under the Equator, and between five and six hundred miles westward of the coast of America . They are all formed of volcanic rocks; a few fragments of granite curiously glazed and altered by the heat, can hardly be considered as an exception. Some of the craters, surmounting the larger islands, are of immense size, and they rise to a height of between three and four thousand feet. Their flanks are studded by innumerable smaller orifices. I scarcely hesitate to affirm, that there must be in the whole archipelago at least two thousand craters. These consist either of lava or scoriae, or of finely-stratified, sandstone-like tuff. Most of the latter are beautifully symmetrical; they owe their origin to eruptions of volcanic mud without any lava: it is a remarkable circumstance that every one of the twenty-eight tuff-craters which were examined, had their southern sides either much lower than the other sides, or quite broken down and removed. As all these craters apparently have been formed when standing in the sea, and as the waves from the trade wind and the swell from the open Pacific here unite their forces on the southern coasts of all the islands, this singular uniformity in the broken state of the craters, composed of the soft and yielding tuff, is easily explained.

Considering that these islands are placed directly under the equator, the climate is far from being excessively hot; this seems chiefly caused by the singularly low temperature of the surrounding water, brought here by the great southern Polar current. Excepting during one short season, very little rain falls, and even then it is irregular; but the clouds generally hang low. Hence, whilst the lower parts of the islands are very sterile, the upper parts, at a height of a thousand feet and upwards, possess a damp climate and a tolerably luxuriant vegetation. This is especially the case on the windward sides of the islands, which first receive and condense the moisture from the atmosphere.

In the morning (17th) we landed on Chatham Island , which, like the others, rises with a tame and rounded outline, broken here and there by scattered hillocks, the remains of former craters. Nothing could be less inviting than the first appearance. A broken field of black basaltic lava, thrown into the most rugged waves, and crossed by great fissures, is everywhere covered by stunted, sun-burnt brushwood, which shows little signs of life. The dry and parched surface, being heated by the noon-day sun, gave to the air a close and sultry feeling, like that from a stove: we fancied even that the bushes smelt unpleasantly. Although I diligently tried to collect as many plants as possible, I succeeded in getting very few; and such wretched-looking little weeds would have better become an arctic than an equatorial Flora. The brushwood appears, from a short distance, as leafless as our trees during winter; and it was some time before I discovered that not only almost every plant was now in full leaf, but that the greater number were in flower. The commonest bush is one of the Euphorbiaceae: an acacia and a great odd-looking cactus are the only trees which afford any shade. After the season of heavy rains, the islands are said to appear for a short time partially green. The volcanic island of Fernando Noronha , placed in many respects under nearly similar conditions, is the only other country where I have seen a vegetation at all like this of the Galapagos Islands .

The Beagle sailed round Chatham Island , and anchored in several bays. One night I slept on shore on a part of the island, where black truncated cones were extraordinarily numerous: from one small eminence I counted sixty of them, all surmounted by craters more or less perfect. The greater number consisted merely of a ring of red scoriae or slags, cemented together: and their height above the plain of lava was not more than from fifty to a hundred feet; none had been very lately active. The entire surface of this part of the island seems to have been permeated, like a sieve, by the subterranean vapours: here and there the lava, whilst soft, has been blown into great bubbles; and in other parts, the tops of caverns similarly formed have fallen in, leaving circular pits with steep sides. From the regular form of the many craters, they gave to the country an artificial appearance, which vividly reminded me of those parts of Staffordshire, where the great iron-foundries are most numerous. The day was glowing hot, and the scrambling over the rough surface and through the intricate thickets, was very fatiguing; but I was well repaid by the strange Cyclopean scene. As I was walking along I met two large tortoises, each of which must have weighed at least two hundred pounds: one was eating a piece of cactus, and as I approached, it stared at me and slowly walked away; the other gave a deep hiss, and drew in its head. These huge reptiles, surrounded by the black lava, the leafless shrubs, and large cacti, seemed to my fancy like some antediluvian animals. The few dull-coloured birds cared no more for me than they did for the great tortoises.

23rd.—The Beagle proceeded to Charles Island . This archipelago has long been frequented, first by the Bucaniers, and latterly by whalers, but it is only within the last six years, that a small colony has been established here. The inhabitants are between two and three hundred in number; they are nearly all people of colour, who have been banished for political crimes from the Republic of the Equator, of which Quito is the capital. The settlement is placed about four and a half miles inland, and at a height probably of a thousand feet. In the first part of the road we passed through leafless thickets, as in Chatham Island . Higher up, the woods gradually became greener; and as soon as we crossed the ridge of the island, we were cooled by a fine southerly breeze, and our sight refreshed by a green and thriving vegetation. In this upper region coarse grasses and ferns abound; but there are no tree-ferns: I saw nowhere any member of the palm family, which is the more singular, as 360 miles northward, Cocos Island takes its name from the number of cocoa-nuts. The houses are irregularly scattered over a flat space of ground, which is cultivated with sweet potatoes and bananas. It will not easily be imagined how pleasant the sight of black mud was to us, after having been so long, accustomed to the parched soil of Peru and northern Chile . The inhabitants, although complaining of poverty, obtain, without much trouble, the means of subsistence. In the woods there are many wild pigs and goats; but the staple article of animal food is supplied by the tortoises. Their numbers have of course been greatly reduced in this island, but the people yet count on two days’ hunting giving them food for the rest of the week. It is said that formerly single vessels have taken away as many as seven hundred, and that the ship’s company of a frigate some years since brought down in one day two hundred tortoises to the beach.

September 29th.—We doubled the south-west extremity of Albemarle Island , and the next day were nearly becalmed between it and Narborough Island . Both are covered with immense deluges of black naked lava, which have flowed either over the rims of the great caldrons, like pitch over the rim of a pot in which it has been boiled, or have burst forth from smaller orifices on the flanks; in their descent they have spread over miles of the sea-coast. On both of these islands, eruptions are known to have taken place; and in Albemarle , we saw a small jet of smoke curling from the summit of one of the great craters. In the evening we anchored in Bank’s Cove, in Albemarle Island . The next morning I went out walking. To the south of the broken tuff-crater, in which the Beagle was anchored, there was another beautifully symmetrical one of an elliptic form; its longer axis was a little less than a mile, and its depth about 500 feet. At its bottom there was a shallow lake, in the middle of which a tiny crater formed an islet. The day was overpoweringly hot, and the lake looked clear and blue: I hurried down the cindery slope, and, choked with dust, eagerly tasted the water—but, to my sorrow, I found it salt as brine.

The rocks on the coast abounded with great black lizards, between three and four feet long; and on the hills, an ugly yellowish-brown species was equally common. We saw many of this latter kind, some clumsily running out of the way, and others shuffling into their burrows. I shall presently describe in more detail the habits of both these reptiles. The whole of this northern part of Albemarle Island is miserably sterile.

October 8th.—We arrived at James Island : this island, as well as Charles Island , were long since thus named after our kings of the Stuart line. Mr. Bynoe, myself, and our servants were left here for a week, with provisions and a tent, whilst the Beagle went for water. We found here a party of Spaniards, who had been sent from Charles Island to dry fish, and to salt tortoise-meat. About six miles inland, and at the height of nearly 2000 feet, a hovel had been built in which two men lived, who were employed in catching tortoises, whilst the others were fishing on the coast. I paid this party two visits, and slept there one night. As in the other islands, the lower region was covered by nearly leafless bushes, but the trees were here of a larger growth than elsewhere, several being two feet and some even two feet nine inches in diameter. The upper region being kept damp by the clouds, supports a green and flourishing vegetation. So damp was the ground, that there were large beds of a coarse cyperus, in which great numbers of a very small water-rail lived and bred. While staying in this upper region, we lived entirely upon tortoise-meat: the breast-plate roasted (as the Gauchos do carne con cuero), with the flesh on it, is very good; and the young tortoises make excellent soup; but otherwise the meat to my taste is indifferent.

One day we accompanied a party of the Spaniards in their whale-boat to a salina, or lake from which salt is procured. After landing, we had a very rough walk over a rugged field of recent lava, which has almost surrounded a tuff-crater, at the bottom of which the salt-lake lies. The water is only three or four inches deep, and rests on a layer of beautifully crystallized, white salt. The lake is quite circular, and is fringed with a border of bright green succulent plants; the almost precipitous walls of the crater are clothed with wood, so that the scene was altogether both picturesque and curious. A few years since, the sailors belonging to a sealing-vessel murdered their captain in this quiet spot; and we saw his skull lying among the bushes.

During the greater part of our stay of a week, the sky was cloudless, and if the trade-wind failed for an hour, the heat became very oppressive. On two days, the thermometer within the tent stood for some hours at 93 degs.; but in the open air, in the wind and sun, at only 85 degs. The sand was extremely hot; the thermometer placed in some of a brown colour immediately rose to 137 degs., and how much above that it would have risen, I do not know, for it was not graduated any higher. The black sand felt much hotter, so that even in thick boots it was quite disagreeable to walk over it.

Source:Darwin, Charles. Voyage of the Beagle. London : Dent, 1959.[6]

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