WHERE CURRENTS RIP 53 



besides sections of palm trunks and a cocoanut in 

 the husk — all rotten, all alive with living creatures 

 catching a ride. During my stay, I made a list 

 of thirty-eight species of trees, plants and seeds, 

 and of thirty-two of whose identification I could 

 be reasonably certain, not a single one is to be 

 found in an exhaustive list of the flora of the 

 Galapagos. Either this marvellous Current Rip is 

 a recent phenomenon, dependent in some way 

 upon the inexplicable shifting or absence of the 

 true Humboldt Current, or its course, beyond 

 where I could see it, was deflected. Both, indeed, 

 may have been true, but of the former I have no 

 means of judging. To anticipate our movements, 

 I may state that after remaining and studying the 

 rip for two full days and nights, I followed it for 

 several score miles, and, as I shall narrate, saw it 

 turn steadily northward, until, at 2° 8' North 

 Latitude, and 86° 4' West Longitude it was 

 headed west by north, by one-quarter north. If 

 it only maintained this direction it would clear the 

 northernmost island of the main group of the 

 Galapagos by one hundred and fifty miles, and 

 even the most northern of all, the isolated speck 

 of Culpepper, would be a full hundred miles south 

 of the influence of this log-rolling current wall. 

 So, at least from this angle, my theory is still 

 perfectly tenable. 



Four large sharks loitered around the ship in 

 most deliberate fashion, and there was a wild 

 scurry for harpoons. John Tee- Van, descending 

 to the pulpit, brandished one of the weapons to 



