The Islanders Read Free

worldwide map. Until comparatively recently no attempt on this mammoth task has been made. You will read about the modern efforts in this gazetteer. Maybe they will enlighten you, as they have enlightened me, although not by much.
    The present-day cartographers use low-level aerial photography of the highest visual quality, but again because of the gravitational anomalies it has proved impossible to send out these pilotless aeroplanes in any planned or consistent way. The results are haphazard and random and it will be many years before anything approaching a definitive atlas of our world is produced. Until then the picture remains unclear and everyone continues to meander around in a way that is typical of islanders.
    The dream-state of the Archipelago, which is what we islanders most respond to, and least wish to see changed, seems likely to continue without interference for a long time to come.
    We are not at war because we have no disputes. We do not spy on each other because we are trusting and incurious. We travel short distances because we can see other islands around where we live and our ambitions are satisfied by going there. We rarely travel long distances for the same general reason. We invent gadgets and leisure activities and pastimes without purpose, because that is what we like to do. We paint and draw and sculpt, we write adventurous and fantastic literature, we speak in metaphors and we designate symbols, we act out the plays of our forefathers. We brag about our past glories and we hope for a better life ahead. We love conversation and sitting around, good food and passionate affairs, standing on beaches, swimming in the warm seas, drinking ourselves into contentment, sitting under the stars. We start making things then forget to finish them. We are articulate and talkative, but we only quarrel for the excitement of it. We are guilty of self-indulgence, irrational behaviour, illogical arguments, sometimes indolence, a musing state of mind.
    Our palette of emotional colours is the islands themselves and the mysterious sea channels that churn between them. We relish our sea breezes, our regular monsoons, the banks of piling clouds that dramatize the seascapes, the sudden squalls, the colour of the light reflecting from the dazzling sea, the lazy heat, the currents and the tides and the unexplained gales, and on the whole prefer not to know whence they have come, nor whither they are destined.
    As for this book, I declare that it will do no harm.
    It is in fact to be commended. It is a typical island enterprise: it is incomplete, a bit muddled and it wants to be liked. The unidentified writer or writers of these brief sketches have an agenda which is not mine, but I do not object to it.
    I did not write this book, although there have already been rumours that I did. This is the moment to aver that there is no truth in the rumours. I am in fact sceptical of the whole enterprise while liking it a great deal.
    The book is arranged in alphabetical order and it is intended that it should be read in that order. However, as most people are supposedly expected to use it as a work of reference, or as a travel guide, then the order in which the articles have been placed is completely irrelevant. I do maintain, though, that few will be able to ‘use’ this book in the way it is presumably intended, so the alphabet is as good a basis as any from which to start.
    One of the reasons for its lack of usefulness is something the reader should be warned about. Not every entry here is strictly factual. I found it surprising that in some cases the islands are described not by their physical characteristics, but by narratives concerning events that took place on them or people who did something while there. There is always a lot to be said for indirect truth, for metaphors, but if you are looking up a hotel in which you might wish to reserve a room, you probably do not want to read instead a biography of the proprietor. There is