Just Like Paradise

THE ENCHANTED ISLANDS (280 pp.)--Ainslie and Frances Conway--Putnam ($3.50).

To tabloid readers with long memories, the Galapagos were the home of a lady known as Baroness Eloise, whose favorite costume was a pair of silk panties and a pearl-handled pistol. In 1934 she vanished with the latest of her seedy lovers and has not been sighted since--much to the chagrin of Sunday-supplement editors. Since her day the archipelago has been popularly regarded, at least by tabloid readers, as a lovers' Eden, with hibiscus and orchids everywhere and acquiescent beauty under every bush. But U.S. Army & Navy men who were stationed during the war on dry, red-dusty Seymour Island know better. So do Ainslie and Frances Conway of California, who homesteaded on Santiago and Floreana Islands before the war.

The Conways, who still confess to enchantment, put the case with good sense and good nature: Santiago, Floreana and a few of the other Galapagos are all right for hardy folk, but eager escapists and romantics had better stay away. The Conways went there in the first place (1937) because they were almost broke. Drawing their last $500 from the bank, they bought passage and groceries, eventually found themselves with 13-c- left. On Santiago, their fondest neighbors were a convict and an assortment of rats, wild pigs and wild goats. On Floreana the neighbors were mostly wild cattle, which bred and bellowed in the wild lemon jungles, ate so many lemons that they made themselves sick.

Also on Floreana were the Wittmers--contemporaries of the Baroness--a German family who had lived there since 1932. The Wittmers were the island's upper crust: their house had cement flooring. The Conways never rose so high in the social scale, but managed to survive and even enjoy life for four years in a dirt-floored hut.

After their return to California and civilization, they had a letter from Frau Wittmer. "My dear friends," she wrote, "before you come back to the Galapagos, do it overthink one hundred times." Having overthought it, the Conways went back last winter, are now ensconced again on their favorite island, Santiago. They remembered the raptures of a friend: "Santiago air is cool and fresh, it rains plenty, and everywhere are pigs. Here is a pig, there is a pig, under every tree is a pig! It is just like paradise."

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