Explore "David Goes Voyaging" by David Binney Putnam on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
These islands were first called the Islands of Tortoises, and they have been known for a hundred years or more. There are about sixty of them and they are located mostly on or south of the equator six hundred miles off the coast of Ecuador to which country they belong. They are volcanic islands with lava rock and dry sandy dust. Very little else except cactus or scrubby bushes grows on most of them.
Our first landing was at Seymour Island, April fourth. This is a small flat island just off Indefatigable, one of the bigger islands 3,000 feet high. There is lots of cactus and prickly bushes on the steeper part of Seymour, but near the shore the rocks are bare and black and very hard, where we saw our first sea lions lying about sunning themselves just out of touch of the waves.