Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/St Paul (2.)

ST PAUL, a remarkable volcanic island which, along with the island of New Amsterdam, is situated in the Indian Ocean about midway between Africa and Australia, a little to the north of the ordinary route of the steamers from Plymouth (via Cape Town) to Adelaide. Its exact position as determined by the Transit of Venus Expedition in 1874 is 38° 42′ 50″ S. Lat. and 77° 32′ 29″ E. Long. Though the distance between the two islands St Paul and New Amsterdam is only 50 miles, they belong to two separate eruptive areas characterized by quite different products; and the comparative bareness of St Paul is in striking contrast to the dense vegetation of New Amsterdam. St Paul is 1$\scriptstyle {\frac {1}{2}}$ miles long from north-west to south-east and its coast-line is estimated at 5 nautical miles. In shape it is almost an isosceles triangle with a circle inscribed tangentially to the north-east side,—the circle (3940 feet in diameter) being the volcanic crater which previous to 1780 formed an inland lake, but which, since the sea broke down its eastern barrier, has become practically a land-locked bay entered by a narrow but gradually widening passage not quite 6 feet deep. The highest ridge of the island is not more than 820 feet above the sea. On the south-west side the coasts are inaccessible. According to M. Vélain, the island originally rose above the ocean as a mass of rhyolithic trachyte similar to that which still forms the Nine Pin rock to the north of the entrance to the crater. Next followed a period of activity in which basic rocks were produced by submarine eruptions—lavas and scoriæ of anorthitic character, palagonitic tuffs, and basaltic ashes; and finally from the crater, which must have been a vast lake of fire like those in the Sandwich Islands, poured forth quiet streams of basaltic lavas. The island has been rapidly cooling down in historic times. Dr Gillian (Lord Macartney’s visit, 1793) mentions spots still too warm to walk on where no trace of heat is now perceptible; and the remarkable zone of hot subsoil extending westwards from the crater has lost most of the more striking characteristics recorded by Hochstetter in 1857, though it is still easily distinguished by its warmth-loving vegetation,—Sphagnum lacteolum and Lycopodium cernuum.

The general flora of the island is exceedingly meagre. If we leave out of view the potato, carrot, parsley, cabbage, &c., introduced by temporary inhabitants, the list comprises Umbelliferæ, 1; Compositæ, 2; Plantaginaceæ, 2; Cyperaceæ, 2; Graminaceæ, 2; Lycopodiaceæ, 1; ferns, 2; and from 35 to 40 species of mosses and lichens. The only plants really abundant are an Isolepsis nodosa (Cyperaceæ) and one or two grasses. None of the trees (oak, apple, mulberry, pine, &c.) introduced at different periods have succeeded. The cabbage, which grows pretty freely in some parts, shows a tendency to become like the Jersey variety. The pigs mentioned by Hochstetter have died out; but goats, cats, rats, and mice continue to flourish,—the cats, which feed mainly on birds and fish, living in apparent amity and in the same holes with the rats. House-flies, bluebottles, slaters, &c., literally swarm. But nothing is so characteristic of St Paul as the multitude of its sea-fowl,—albatrosses, petrels of many kinds, puffins, penguins, &c. The neighbouring waters teem with life, and, while the various genera of the seal family are no longer a source of wealth, a number of vessels (50 to 80 tons) from the Mascarene Islands still yearly carry on the fisheries off the coasts, where Cheilodactylus fasciatus (in shoals), Latris hecateia (cabot or poisson de fond), and Mendosoma elongatum afford a rich harvest. The stories told about gigantic sea creatures were curiously confirmed by the Venus Expedition finding on the shore a Cephalopod (since named Mouchezis sancti pauli) which measured upwards of 22 feet from the end of its body to the tip of its longest arm.

The island now known as New Amsterdam was probably that sighted on 18th March 1522 by the companions of Magellan as they sailed back to Europe under the command of Sebastian del Cano; and in 1617 the Dutch ship “Zeewolf” from Texel to Bantam discovered the island which, instead of the name “Zeewolf” then bestowed on it, soon after began to be called on the charts St Paul. The designation “New Amsterdam” is derived from the vessel in which Van Diemen sailed between the islands in 1633. The first navigator to set foot on St Paul was Willem van Vlaming in 1696. Lord Macartney spent a day exploring it in 1793, his guide being a marooned Frenchman, Captain Péron, whose narrative of his sojourn from 1st September 1792 to 16th December 1795 is a document of great value (Mémoires du Capitaine Péron, vol. i., Paris, 1824). In 1843 the governor of Reunion took possession of the islands with a detachment of marines,—seal-catching and the fisheries having attracted to them a considerable floating population. In June 1871 the British frigate “Megæra” was wrecked at the mouth of the crater and most of the 400 souls on board had to reside on the island for upwards of three months. Landing on 23rd September 1874, a French Transit of Venus expedition remained on St Paul till 8th January 1875, and a visit of much importance was paid to New Amsterdam.

See Vélain, Description géol. de la presqu’île d’Aden, des îles de la Réunion, de St Paul, &c. (Paris, 1878), and his papers in Archives de la zoologie experimentale, 1877, and in Comptes Bendus, Acad. des Sc., 1875; Sauvage on the fishes in Arch. Zool. Exp., 1879–80.