The New Crusoe: “Mr. X.” of Galapagos

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 852, 21 December 1929, Page 22

The New Crusoe: “Mr. X.” of Galapagos

Some Hold Russian Exile to be Rasputin « . • Queer Tales from Lonely Places . . Heroic Norwegian Girl Rules Island

Domain . . .

I.' jt—i {—W- -j E sat eating peanuts. 'Ci®| Who was he? He had a story ready to tell the PMMfI! curious. But others on ; Sau Cristobal Island '• mc * - ■ l»*j had a different theory. And still another notion regarding the identity of the Russian hermit, who calls himself Arthur Zeen, is cherished by William Albert Robinson. Mr. Robinson met Zeen when he stopped at San Cristobal during his voyage on the tidy auxiliary ketch Svaap, the story of which he is telling in “The Rudder.” Who is this Zeen, who has worked as a peon in the fields, who now cultivates his little plot and lives in a rude shack? Is he the Russian professional man he claims to be? Or —hush!—is he, as some of the natives whisper, the mysterious monk, Rasputin, who so strangely influenced the Romanoffs? Or is he simply another exiled noble of the old regime, as Mr. Robinson believes? When the latter went to see Zeen, who is a philosopher, a linguist, and enormously well-posted on world affairs, he was sitting at a rough table in his shack. He was eating his evening meal—peanuts, which ho alone raises on the island. When he saw that he had a caller, he fetched another stool and offered Mr. Robinson part of his simple repast. But the nuts were not very good. This mysterious hermit was a tall man and must have been very powerful, we learn as we read on of his past life and his present mode of living: He had blue eyes, one a trifle off centre, and most striking of all, a full red beard, that hid all of his face but the strong high nose. His hair, too, was very long and red about his shoulders, but not unkempt. He might have been 35, or perhaps 55. Even though clothed in pants of patches, and an open jacket which consisted merely of a few pieces of aged fabric held together some! ow, leaving his full chest bare, he carried himself with so much digrity that I might have been talking with a famous governor, or a diplomat of high rank. That he had been a great man pne could tell at a glance. I got from him some of his story, the story he tells people, and • tried to read between the lines to guess what he really was. His story was that he had been a railroad construction engineer in that part of Russia now known as Esthonia, when the Bolsheviks came into power. He left, as he put it, because it was the only thing to do. He went to the west coast of South America, where he worked in the gold mines until enemies found him and made trouble, whereupon he resumed his travels and

somehow' got to the Galapagos, where he has been since. From Senor Cobos, I learned how this cultured gentleman had worked for him in the fields as a peon for several years. Then Cobos provided him with a piece of land of about one hectare (about two and one-half acres), and for quite a while Zeen, as he calls himself, worked three days a week for his food, and the rest of the week building a home and planting his little place. About a year ago he was able to give up working in the fields and make a living from his tiny plantation, where he raises fruit, coffee, taro and other vegetables. It is just enough to supply his wants and allow him to purchase a few necessities from the settlement store at Progreso. We had quite a long talk, and I discovered that Zeen, besides being a philosopher, as he would have to be, was a linguist as well, speaking very distinguished English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, and several Russian dialects. His life, he says, is full, and he refused my offer to send up to him some books and magazines, saying that his waking moments were full, and that any he could spare to reading were given to a magazine, which a friend in Guayaquil sent him from time to time.

On the way home I found myself pondering over this man’s story. The natives in the Galapagos, ready to believe anything, are firmly convinced that Zeen is the Monk Rasputin, eking out an existence there in the solitude of the mountains, far from his enemies, instead of having gone to a cold, wet grave beneath the ice of a river in far-off Russia. There are all the usual stories about his hidden wealth, such stories as seem to be inevitably connected with one who lives a hermiCs life. Ido wonder who he really was. Perhaps his story is true. But for myself I prefer to believe that he is a member of the old Russian aristocracy, escaped from the executioner’s sword and safe in the solitude of the lonely Galapagos. There are other romances on Galapagos, we learn. One relates to the remnant of the band of Norwegians who came in 1926 to settle on the island. Karin, a black-eyed blaick-haired Norwegian girl of 20,

became a friend of Mr. Robinson, who tells us of the colonising project, and of how Karin carries on:

The little group of adventurers emigrated with their all in the treacherous thousand-ton concrete boat which ‘they called Albemarle, from their native land to the far-off Galapagos, there to fail through lack of co-operation and the necessary money to hold out the four or five years

necessary to get things on a paying basis. There were 80 of them, 56 men and the rest women and children, and they brought with them all their possessions, furniture, farming implements, fishing material and even a Ford tractor. Only a few stayed' when the, others gave up. The Albems.rle (y as sold in Panama, but the Norwegians are said to have been cheated out of a goodly part of the money received for it, and the other things were sold to Ecuadoreans, also at a great loss. When the Svaap arrived at San Cristobal there were only 14 of them left, and four of these left on the Cobos schooner that came in a few days later, leaving only ten of the original 80. Karin and her sister Snefrid, who is about the same age but of the true blonde Nordic type, live in a neat little board shack miles back in the mountains ■ with a father who is tired of life and does not count in the picture at all, and an . equally worthless brother, who spends his time dreaming of the cities and wishing he were away from this lonely island. There, high in the mountains above Progreso, with only a mysterious hermit near by, and the nearest neighbour miles away, the girl Karin tills the land with a handful of cut-throat peons with their great knives and matchetes. She dies about, tiny gun in her pocket to be sure, and with a bit of a swagger to carry it off, ruling over the little plantation. She knows all about' each crop, croons over her chicks, and carefully caresses her first jasmine blossoms and roses. Here, surrounded by solitude and hardships, Karin, completely and utterly feminine—beautiful in fact—writes for herself her “Romance Pictures” as she calls them in her broken English,, and a bit of poetry, and reads the classics. Her little board shack in the clouds is the most incongruous spot in all the Galapagos. On Dictator, recently captured, but the finest horse on the island, she rides out straight, and proud over her little domain. What mixture of bloods can have produced such a person is hard to imagine. She is not brave —the word is too futile—she is heroic. -