Galapagonistics

SATAN CAME TO EDEN--Dore Strauch--Harper ($3 ).

The Galapagos Islands, 500 miles off the coast of Ecuador, were well-known to the old U. S. whalers; Darwin found there one more piece of evidence for his big theory; but modern newspaper readers first became aware of them when William Beebe landed there (1923), reported huge lizards, other peculiar fauna. Two years ago they flashed into the news, with a dramatic mystery no Sunday-feature writer could have bettered. A free-love back-to-nature colony on the little island of Flo-reana, peeped at and reported from time to time by curious yacht-trippers, had come to a boil, exploded. Two corpses had been found on a neighboring island. "The Empress of Floreana" and her No. 1 lover had disappeared (TIME, Dec. 3, 1934). Of the couple who had been the original settlers the man had mysteriously died. Last week U. S. readers could peruse the tale (ghosted) of the woman survivor whose narrative did not pretend to tell the whole truth but did present a connected, first-hand account of these Gala-pagonistics.

Dore Strauch, a Berliner of advanced ideas unhappily married to a conservative husband, fell in love with a Berlin doctor, also married, also unconventional. Dr. Ritter's dream was to get away from it all, live a Rousseauistic life on an uninhabited island. They broke the news to their respective mates (whom they unsuccessfully tried to bring together, in compensation), collected their gear and set off for Floreana. According to Dore Strauch. it is not true that they had all their teeth pulled before they left.* Dr. Ritter had had his out some time before, and for a different reason: she foolishly left hers in. later had to have them pulled by the doctor with crude instruments, without anesthetics. When they got to Floreana they found their carefully packed boxes did not contain several handy necessities. They took no gun, very few matches, no lamps, no camera. They intended to do a lot of reading and contemplating, but found they had little time for such things. Clearing the ground, building their "house" (an open-sided shack), working in their garden, fighting mosquitoes, cockroaches, grasshoppers, ants, marauding wild boars, wild dogs left them few waking moments. ''The chronicle of those [first] weeks reads to me now like another Book of Job. One misery was hardly overcome before another, and a worse, arrived." But gradually, painfully they got settled. Then the visitors began to arrive.

First was Yachtsman E. F. McDonald Jr. They were glad to see him. because they were short of medicine and supplies. But his radioed report attracted a storm of publicity to their hideout; next came copycatting settlers; then the journalists. One family came with an expectant mother, because they knew Dr. Ritter would be able to help her confinement. Most of the "settlers" were only visitors, but one fine day, when Dore and Dr. Ritter had been three years on Floreana. Satan herself arrived in their homespun Eden. She came in the guise of a German baroness of dubious antecedents, uncertain age and still more ambiguous behavior. With her she brought several devoted men-followers. The Baroness soon had them all by the ears. She and Dore hated each other at sight, while Dr. Ritter held philosophically aloof. The Baroness called herself Empress of Floreana, planned to build a hotel and make the island into ''a sort of Miami.''

As the situation grew more tense. Dore felt the outcome would be grisly. Principal cause for alarm was the jealousy between Lorenz, cast-off lover of the Baroness, and Philippson. the present incumbent. Sure enough, one day Dore heard a scream. Next time she saw Lorenz he told a cock-&-bull tale of the Baroness and Philippson's hurried departure from the island. Neither of them was seen again. Dore was sure Lorenz had murdered them, burnt their bodies. Then Lorenz, in a hurry to get away, went off in a small boat with a Norwegian fisherman. Their sun-shriveled corpses were afterwards discovered on a nearby island; they had apparently died of starvation and thirst. With the disturbers of their peace gone. Dore and Dr. Ritter heaved a sigh of relief. But the tale was not yet complete. One night, in spite of their vegetarian predilections, they dined on a chicken that had been acting sick. In a few hours Dr. Ritter was dead. Dore buried him. got herself aboard the next visiting yacht, went back to Germany for good.

*Another rumor she does not contradict: that the false sets were made of stainless steel.

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