The Un-Discovered Islands

by Malachy Tallack

  By the terms of the treaty, the western border of the country was marked by the Mississippi River, and the southern by the 31st parallel, and by a series of smaller rivers, separating it from Spanish-held Florida. In the north, things were more complicated, both geographically and politically, and most of the second article was concerned with defining the border as it meandered from the coast of Maine westward through the Great Lakes.

  According to the text, the line ran through the middle of Lake Ontario, Lake Erie and Lake Huron. Beyond that, it went ‘through Lake Superior northward of the Isles Royal[e] and Phelipeaux, to the Long lake; thence through the middle of the said Long lake and the water communication between it and the Lake of the Woods’. So far, so clear.

  Though the declared intention of the Treaty of Paris was to secure ‘perpetual peace and harmony’ and to ensure that ‘all disputes which might arise in future on the subject of the boundaries of the said United States may be prevented’, it achieved no such thing. Disputes were inevitable, and they continue right up to the present day (Machias Seal Island and North Rock in the Gulf of Maine are even now claimed by both the USA and Canada).

  Perhaps the first major test for the border, however, occurred thirty years after it was drawn, when Britain and the US once again went to war. That three-year conflict, beginning in 1812, did not result in any boundary changes, but it did highlight the need for more clarity, particularly in the north. Consequently, after the war two commissioners were given the task of surveying and marking the border between Lake Huron and the Lake of the Woods – one of the regions in which clarification was deemed to be necessary. This turned out to be a more difficult task than expected.

  When the surveys were carried out in the early 1820s, problems were found with the wording of the original treaty. For one thing, it was not at all clear what was meant by the ‘Long lake’. Was it one of the many long lakes in the area? And if so, which one? Or else did it refer to an elongated inlet of Lake Superior, or even a river that had been incorrectly denoted? Nobody was sure.

  Another problem, equally baffling, was that the surveyors were unable to find one of the islands mentioned in the treaty. Though the position of the border within the lake was unaffected, the failure to locate Isle Phelipeaux must nevertheless have been a surprise and a cause for concern. At the very least, it showed that a new chart was needed for the north of the country.

  The map that had been used during the negotiations in Paris, forty years previously, was the best and most detailed one available at the time. First published in 1755, it was known as the Mitchell Map; and though a superb piece of cartography, and certainly one of the most important maps in American history, it did contain a number of errors. John Mitchell, who produced the map, did not invent Isle Phelipeaux, but it was undoubtedly an invention. His source for the Great Lakes region was another map, of eleven years earlier, by the French geographer Jacques-Nicolas Bellin. But Bellin too was innocent.

  Finding the culprit in this cartographical fraud might have proved impossible, had it not been for the fact that the guilty party had gone too far. On further exploration of the area it was discovered that there was not one but four fictional islands in Lake Superior, and in the end it was their names that gave the game away. Alongside Isle Phelipeaux were the equally non-existent isles of Pontchartrain, Maurepas and St Anne – names which all pointed in a very particular direction.

  Phelipeaux (or, more correctly, Phélypeaux) was the surname of Jean-Frédéric, secretary of state for maritime affairs in France from the 1720s up until the end of the 1740s. As well as a politician, Phélypeaux was also a count, whose estates were Pontchartrain and Maurepas. The family’s patron saint, rather predictably, was Anne.

  Naming islands, rivers, mountains and other geographical features after rich men back home was a popular activity among explorers. After all, there are few things such men appreciate more than flattery, and when someone is looking for money to fund future travels such considerations become important.

  As it happens, Jean-Frédéric Phélypeaux did indeed patronise foreign exploration, and among the recipients of his generosity was Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix, a Jesuit priest, historian and traveller, who had spent time in the Great Lakes region in the 1720s, and who worked for the French crown trying to find a route to the Pacific. The clinching detail that ties Charlevoix to this particular fraud is his book, A History of New France. It was for that book, published in 1744, that Bellin’s map, on which the islands first appeared, was commissioned.

  That they later turned out to be fictional mattered little, for by the time the fraud was uncovered all those involved were dead. The border complications resulting in part from the lies of Charlevoix and the errors of Bellin and Mitchell were resolved in the Webster–Ashburton Treaty, which was signed in August 1842. The islands of Phelipeaux, Pontchartrain, Maurepas and St Anne then disappeared from the map forever.

  Javasu

  ISLANDS ARE USUALLY discovered by those who leave their homes and sail in search of land and adventure. They are found by those who go looking. But on one occasion, it was the island that came looking for people, arriving in the shape of a mysterious woman in a black turban.

  It was the evening of Thursday, 3rd April 1817, in the village of Almondsbury, near Bristol. On the doorstep of a cottage stood a woman of about twenty-five, who had just knocked on the door. In addition to her turban, she wore a black dress with a frill at the neck, and a red and black shawl around her shoulders. She had a pair of leather shoes and woollen socks, and had clean, soft hands, like those of someone unused to work. It seemed she was looking for a place to spend the night, but the words she spoke were not English. They were, in fact, entirely unrecognisable.

  On the supposition that the woman might be a vagrant, or even a spy, she was taken first to the overseer of the poor and then to the house of Samuel Worral at Knole Park. Mr Worral was the local magistrate, and he also employed a servant who could speak several European languages. But the servant, when called to assist, was equally puzzled. He could make nothing of what the woman said. Without any papers or belongings, and without a language that could be understood, she was a blank person, a nobody. And had it not been for the intervention of Mr Worral’s wife, her fate would most likely have been prison or deportation. But for now, she was lucky.

  In this woman, so far devoid of an identity, Elizabeth Worral saw a mystery she wanted to unravel, and over the coming days she began to piece together such clues as could be uncovered. These did not amount to much. The woman’s name, it seemed, was Caraboo. At least that was the word she used while pointing to herself. Images of China were met with recognition, as was furniture imported from that country (though she did not appear to be Chinese). Many of the woman’s habits, too, were rather odd. She seemed reluctant to sleep in a bed, preferring the floor; she drank only tea and water, and would not eat meat; she recited prayers with one hand covering her eyes. Beyond that, though, little could be learned.

  To begin with, there were those who doubted that Caraboo was as foreign as she seemed. The incongruence between her European features and her exotic language and behaviour were a particular source of puzzlement. So too was her sudden appearance in the village. But as the search for answers continued, and as well-travelled and knowledgable guests were invited to interrogate the woman, there was, finally, a breakthrough. A Portuguese man called Manuel Eynesso came to meet Caraboo. He had spent time in the Far East, and as a consequence was able to identify her speech as a mixture of Sumatran dialects. Though he was not fluent in the language, Eynesso gave a basic translation of her story. She was, he said, a woman of some importance – a princess, perhaps – who had been kidnapped from her home on the island of Javasu in the East Indies, then transported to England against her will. Furnished with this information, another man was found who had more intimate knowledge of the region from which she had come. He conversed with Caraboo on several occasions, then provided the Worrals with a
detailed description of her background.

  According to this account, Caraboo’s mother was from Malaysia and her father, though white in complexion, was from China. He was a powerful man, to whom the people of Javasu would kneel in deference. Of the island itself she explained that the waters around it were very shallow, so that large vessels were unable to approach. This, presumably, was the reason it was thus far unknown in the West. Of the goods produced there, she named cassia, rice and white pepper. The seas surrounding Javasu, she said, were home to flying fish.

  Thereafter, the Worrals’ guest was made especially welcome at Knole Park. She was, after all, an Oriental princess. And with that role now established, Caraboo delighted her hosts and their numerous visitors with strange behaviour. She made bows and arrows, and could fence with great skill; she wore feathers in her hair and played a tambourine; she danced outlandishly and swam naked. Her fame spread. A portrait was painted, showing her in a white turban and flowing, golden gown. Newspapers published the story, together with the picture. And that was her undoing.

  Princess Caraboo is often described as a hoaxer and a fraud, but that is not entirely fair. Though she was recognised in the newspaper by a former landlady, and thereafter exposed as Mary Willcocks, from Witheridge in Devon, the identity she had assumed was not of her own making; it was bestowed upon her. Mary was a poor and restless woman. She had been forced to give up a child the previous year, and the child had then died. She had spent time travelling with Romani travellers, from whom she learned some of her vocabulary. And though clearly intelligent, she was also undoubtedly disturbed. Her refusal to speak English was, in part, a kind of withdrawal from the world. She did not seek fame, nor did she cheat the Worrals out of money or possessions. She came to them against her will and tried more than once to escape.

  Mary’s story, in virtually every detail, was provided by others – by Manuel Eynesso and by the second man (who was unnamed in contemporary accounts). Both men most likely assumed that Mary was indeed a foreigner, and that she would therefore be unable to comprehend or contradict their inventions. Elizabeth Worral longed for an exotic solution to the mystery of Caraboo, and that’s precisely what they gave her. Mary, in turn, just played up to the role. She listened in to the words of those who thought she could not understand, and she adjusted her behaviour accordingly. She found herself in the midst of a society obsessed with the Oriental, and she reflected that obsession back at them. She became a kind of mirror.

  Following the embarrassing revelation of her real identity, Mary was sent to the United States in the company of three chaperones chosen by Mrs Worral. She was greeted there as a celebrity. Seven years later she returned to England and tried, for a time, to live off her now fading fame. But it didn’t last. She began to wander again, in Spain and in France, before marrying and finally settling in Bristol. She died there, aged 75, in 1864, and is buried in the city in an unmarked grave. Javasu was never heard of again.

  Onaseuse

  ON PAGE FIVE OF the Literary Gazette, published in London on 12th February 1825, a brief notice gave details of a discovery in the South Pacific. Tucked between a paragraph on the use of Chinese costumes in French theatre and the announcement of an invention that allowed people to breathe while in dense smoke, were the following words:

  New Island—Captain Hunter, of the merchant-vessel Donna Carmelita, is stated, in the New South Wales’ Journals, to have discovered a new island in the Southern Ocean, in July last. The latitude is 15 degrees 31’S. and longitude 176 degrees 11’E.

  The notice went on to explain that the crew of the Donna Carmelita ‘had friendly intercourse with the King and natives’, who, it stated, ‘do not seem to differ from the South Sea Islanders, already known to navigators’.

  As it happened, the Literary Gazette was out of date. The discovery of Onaseuse, as it was called, had in fact been made two years previously, on 20th July 1823. The journal’s brief outline of the story also failed even to hint at the extraordinary level of detail about the island and its inhabitants with which Captain Hunter had furnished the world’s media.

  Phantom islands are rarely explored, for obvious reasons. But this one was. And the information recorded by captain and crew demonstrated beyond any doubt that Onaseuse was not a case of mistaken identity. There were no other known islands in this region (around 250km northwest of Fiji), and certainly none that matched the descriptions given by those onboard the Donna Carmelita.

  In the Asiatic Journal of May 1824, the chief officer’s record of the discovery was published, together with Captain Hunter’s. It explained how, in the early afternoon, the crew had landed on the island, which was ‘fruitful and very populous’, and been met there by a group of natives. Given that they had never seen Europeans before, the locals were remarkably welcoming. One came quite willingly onboard the ship, bringing them ‘refreshments’, including meat and plantains.

  Some of the men then went ashore and were taken to meet the king of the island, who was called ‘Funafooah’. We went without weapons, wrote the chief officer, ‘as it would make them have more confidence in us’. He went on:

  Most of them were armed with war clubs, with short round heads, some with spears from 24 to 40 feet long, afterwards I saw some much longer. A great number of women, many of whom carried two spears, as I judged for the use of the men.

  Despite this abundance of weaponry, there was no sign of aggression from either side. (Though one cannot help but wonder how useful a 40-foot spear would be anyway, other than to decorate a tall tale.)

  The relaxed conviviality of this first contact went on, according to the report, with the king and chief officer exchanging a variety of gifts with one another. Funafooah and his brother were presented first with white shirts, which they wore, seemingly delighted. In return, they offered ‘a hog, a basket of yams and bananahs and cocoa-nuts’.

  Next, ‘I made him a present of a looking glass, which seemed to surprise them greatly; it went from the King to the Queen, and from her all round, every one taking a look at it, and then touching the crown of their heads with it, that ceremony they performed with every little thing given them. He took a shell from his neck and gave it me.’

  While this extended ritual of gift-giving was fascinating enough, the elements of the story that aroused most interest among anthropologists were those describing the islanders’ physical features. There were, for instance, the red, circular tattoos that many of the women had inscribed on their arms, and the fact that most wore shells as ornaments, and had some kind of white paste smeared on top of their hair.

  But of particular interest was the observation that ‘all the women and men had their little fingers cut off at the second joint on the left hand, and the women had their cheek bones perforated, and the blood smeared round about an inch; I suppose the mark of beauty.’ This kind of self-mutilation had never been recorded anywhere else, so it was not surprising that others were keen to visit the island again, to learn more about these unusual people.

  The problem was, nobody could find it. Numerous attempts were made to relocate Onaseuse throughout the nineteenth century, but it was never seen again. Which begs the obvious question: was it ever there in the first place?

  According to the chief officer, the island ‘was entirely composed of lava, in some places, almost a metal’, which leaves open the possibility that it may have been destroyed in a volcanic explosion, some time after that initial visit. If so, it would not be the first such disappearance in the South Pacific. But there is something not quite right about this explanation. The detail seems rather too convenient and deliberate, as though the chief officer knew, as he wrote it, that such an excuse would be necessary. As though he knew that Onaseuse was going to disappear.

  The story of this island, with its warlike-yet-friendly natives, and their familiar-yet-extraordinary appearance, is suspicious. This region was well travelled by the early nineteenth century, and no other report of an island in this area was ever recorded
. It is within the bounds of possibility that Onaseuse – or Hunter Island, as the captain renamed it – did exist. But more likely is that the captain and his crew, eager to make names for themselves, invented every last detail.

  Crocker Land

  ROBERT PEARY DID NOT always tell the truth. That much is certain. For most of the twentieth century he was believed to be the first man to reach the North Pole, in April 1909, with his companion Matthew Henson and four Inuit assistants. After a very public and very nasty campaign, his rival Dr Frederick Cook’s claim to have got there one year earlier was dismissed, and Peary took the title. But doubts over his account continued to niggle, and in the 1980s the British explorer Wally Herbert was asked to settle the matter. He was given access to diaries and records from the expedition, and spent three years examining the evidence. Herbert concluded that, though he may have been close, Peary never made it to the Pole.

  Whether or not the American knew he had failed is impossible to say, but if he did lie it would not have been the first time. He had form. On a previous journey in the north, Peary claimed to have sighted land beyond Axel Heiberg Island, at around 83 degrees north, which he called Crocker Land. It was a canny choice of name. George Crocker was one of Peary’s financial backers, from whom he wished to squeeze some cash to fund his next expedition. Flattery, he thought, would do the trick.