The Islanders

statistic of that sort seems to be what matters to the kind of people who compile books like this one. They refer to it from time to time by the technically accurate description of gazetteer, because what we have here is a long list of names of islands.

It is however an incomplete island gazetteer, something which the compilers would be the first to admit. Logically, one can easily understand that if every island in the Dream Archipelago were to be listed by name in a book, the result would be of such immense size, and so full of trivial information, that it would have little practical use.

The same argument against usefulness may be made for an incomplete list, of course, compounded by the unarguable fact that an incomplete listing of anything reveals that a selection has been made, and any act of selection is of course political. So here we have partiality added to triviality, and they have made a book of it all while maintaining the conceit that a gazetteer is apolitical.

This is a conundrum I do not propose to solve for the no doubt industrious gazetteers who have produced this book, but it did lead me to try to find out, if only for my own amusement, what is the total number of islands in this world of ours.

There are many different reference books about the Dream Archipelago and I have several of them on my shelf. All the books make guesses about numbers, and all of those guesses differ from each other. Some authorities say there are hundreds of islands, but they count only the large or important ones. Others say there are thousands, but they are vague about how they define an island, and confuse island groups with individual islands. A few of these experts, by including half-submerged rocks and parts of reefs, say there are hundreds of thousands, and hint at even more.

After much browsing I reached the conclusion that the only thing the experts do agree on is that there are a great many islands.

Approximately twenty thousand of the islands appear to have names, but even this is uncertain. Some islands are organized in large administrative groups and known by collective names, or they are distinguished only by ordinal numbers. Others are in groups which are not named, while the islands in those unnamed groups, or some of them, are individually named. Other islands stand alone, and of these many are named but many more appear not to be.

Then there is the problem of the profusion of island patois.

Nearly all the islands have local names as well as the ‘official’ names that appear on the map. (Or they would do, if there were any maps. I shall return to this shortly.) Sometimes, there are two or more alternative patois names, some of which are based on physical features of the island, but most of which are not. Where attempts have been made to standardize the nomenclature, further confusion has been created. Confusion is standard and normal, I’m afraid.

For instance, there is a group of islands called the Torquils, or the Torquil Group, or (occasionally) the Torquil Islands. They are situated at approximately 45°E, in the broad subtropical zone south of the Equator. The Torquils are apparently well known, much visited, famous for their beaches and lagoons. All the main Torquil islands have ferry ports, and the largest has a civil airport. The overall population at the most recent census was in excess of half a million people. There is no doubt that these islands exist and are well known by many people, other than the residents. The main text of this book, with its concern to provide as much information and detail as possible, makes several references to them. The Torquils therefore appear to be real, or at least really there.

However, it seems possible that there is another name for this group of islands, which is the Torquis, or the Torqui Group. As I’m accustomed to dealing with clumsy editorial work, I assumed at first that one name might be a mis-spelling of the other. However, the Torquils are said to have the patois name which means EVENING WIND, while the Torquis are said to have a patois meaning of SERENE DEPTHS. So many variables occur! How much is lost in translation from one patois to another, or in the oral traditions on which so much island lore is based?

To someone like me, who has not visited the Torquils or the Torquis and never will, there does not seem to be much that distinguishes one group from the other. They even appear to be in the same general area, or at least have similar coordinates. I suppose many people will assume they are one and the same.

I was willing to make a similar assumption until to my astonishment I discovered there was yet another group of islands, these called the Torquins, which might of course be a further mis- spelling.

My reference books are more or less in agreement that there are one hundred and fifteen named islands in the Torquins, seventy-two named and twenty-three unnamed islands in the Torquils, and fifty-eight identified islands in the Torquis. However, in those allegedly separate island groups there are at least five islands in each with the same name, some of those have minor variations in spelling and a few appear to have been recently renamed in an attempt to capitalize on the presumed fortunes of somewhere else.

Some of the ones with the same or similar names have longitude and latitude references which are identical, or almost so, which would appear to be objective evidence that they are one and the same, until we discover that the Torquins and the Torquis, at least, are on opposite sides of the world, and that the Torquis and the Torquins are emphatically located in the northern hemisphere while the Torquils are just as firmly positioned in the south.

If the reader is at this point feeling muddled or mystified, let me reassure him or her that I am in the same state. I also suspect that many of these so-called experts who have written reference books have been just as bewildered by it all, and over the years have passed down their imbroglio for someone else to sort out.

The gazetteer does make an honourable effort to clarify this sort of problem, although as far as I am concerned it is a mystery on which I wish to spend no more time.

So I gladly join the general consensus of scholars and admit or declare that the Dream Archipelago contains a great many islands, and leave it at that.

But where exactly are they and how do they lie in relation to each other?

There are no maps or charts of the Dream Archipelago. At least there are no reliable ones, or comprehensive ones, or even whole ones.

There are thousands of charts which have been drawn up locally, mainly to enable navigation for fishing vessels and the inter-island ferries, but most of these are crudely drawn and graphically incomplete. They concentrate on depths of channels, hidden rocks and guyots, tidal passages, reefs, safe havens, coves, lighthouses, sandbanks, and so on. They show locally known prevailing winds. All this is plainly vernacular in origin, based on the seagoing experiences of local men and women, which is as it should be but is of absolutely no use to a global consideration of the whole Archipelago.

The problems of mapping the Dream Archipelago are well understood. High-altitude aerial cartography is more or less impossible because of the distortion caused by the temporal gradients. These gradients, impossible for me to explain here (there is an attempt later in the book), exist in every part of the world except at the magnetic poles. Even within a few degrees of those poles, which of course are in frozen land areas, the variations in what can be observed or photographed make reliable charting inconsistent and therefore unfeasible.

The only solution would be for mapping to be conducted on a scientific or consistent basis, concentrating on small or local areas, drawn at ground level or from an extremely low altitude, then combined by some central authority so as to produce a comprehensive worldwide map. Until comparatively recently no attempt on this mammoth task has been made. You will read about the modern efforts in this gazetteer. Maybe they will enlighten you, as they have enlightened me, although not by much.

The present-day cartographers use low-level aerial photography of the highest visual quality, but again because of the gravitational anomalies it has proved impossible to send out these pilotless aeroplanes in any planned or consistent way. The results are haphazard and random and it will be many years before anything approaching a definitive atlas of our world is produced. Until then the picture remains unclear and everyone continues to meander around in a way that is typical of islanders.

The dream-state of the Archipelago, which is what we islanders most respond to, and least wish to see changed, seems likely to continue without interference for a long time to come.

We are not at war because we have no disputes. We do not spy on each other because we are trusting and incurious. We travel short distances because we can see other islands around where we live and our ambitions are satisfied by going there. We rarely travel long distances for the same general reason. We invent gadgets and leisure activities and pastimes without purpose, because that is what we like to do. We paint and draw and sculpt, we write adventurous and fantastic literature, we speak in metaphors and we designate symbols, we act out the plays