Galapagos Islands Landscapes in Herman Melville's "The Encantadas or The Enchanted Isles," Illustrated with Scenic Photographs from Ecuador's archipelago made famous by Charles Darwin

Galapagos Islands Landscapes in Herman Melville's "The Encantadas or The Enchanted Isles," Illustrated with Scenic Photographs from Ecuador's archipelago made famous by Charles Darwin Review

Tour the Galapagos Islands with world-famous author Herman Melville !
 
Discover . . .
  ~  "a ceaseless sea" lashing "a fury of foam" . . .
  ~  volcanic landscapes, rock-bound and stark . . .
  ~  thickets of "distorted cactus trees" . . .
  ~  "screaming flights of unearthly birds" . . .
  ~  "mouldering ribs" of wrecked vessels . . .
  ~  the hiss of "outlandish" iguanas . . .
  ~  souls of wicked sea captains transformed into giant tortoises . . .
       . . . all visions of the bewitched  "Enchanted Isles."
 
Melville's first glimpse of the Galapagos Islands came as a young seaman on the whaler Acushnet out of New Bedford, Massachusetts. Years later, after the failure of his novel Moby-Dick, he tried to regain his lost popularity with the reading public by writing a series ten of magazine sketches recalling this visit to the Galapagos Islands. He called his series "The Encantadas or The Enchanted Isles."
 

This selection from the longer work, In the Galapagos Islands with Herman Melvilleincludes:
 
  ~ "Sketch First. The Isles at Large," the first of Melville's ten sketches, in which he explores the landscape of this volcanic archipelago as an introduction to its unique and exotic world.
 
  ~ Moses Michelsohn's striking photographs (in color in all apps except the Kindle reader itself) illustrating Melville's text.
 
  ~Lynn Michelsohn's introduction to Melville's work. 
 
  ~ a Bonus Section of Moses Michelsohn's scenic Galapagos Island landscape and seascape photographs not included in the longer work.
 
We hope you enjoy your visit to the Galapagos Islands!
 
 
About the Authors
 
Herman Melville wrote "The Encantadas," like Moby-Dick and "Billy Budd," by drawing on his shipboard experiences in the South Seas as a young man.
 
Lynn Michelsohn has written such diverse books as Roswell, Your Travel Guide to the UFO Capital of the World! and Gullah Ghosts: Stories and Folktales from the Carolina Lowcountry. Her longstanding interests in both the Galapagos Islands and Herman Melville led to this work.
 
Like Melville, biologist and wildlife photographer Moses Michelsohn found tortoises on the Galapagos Islands fascinating but tree frogs in Ecuador, Costa Rica, and the southeastern United States remain his primary research interest.