An excellent collection of documents concerning Ochsner & Gil, a company formed to better exploit the natural resources of Isabela Island in the Galapagos. The volume not only provides valuable information on the island at that time but the fate of the company touches on the ongoing efforts of Ecuador to safeguard their sovereignty over the islands, which were annexed only when news of the impending visit of HMS Beagle reached Ecuador in 1832.
The California Academy of Science’s expedition to the Galapagos in 1905-06 had a staff of eight from the departments of Zoology, Entomology, Conchology, Botany, Geology and Palaeontology. They spent a full year on the islands, making a comprehensive biological and scientific survey of the archipelago. While only having the two-masted schooner, Academy, at their disposal, the Expedition was able to bring together a far larger and “more varied assemblage of specimens than was collected perhaps by the sum total of all the previous expedition to these islands” (Williams). It also brought about the friendship of American geologist Washington Henry Ochsner and Ecuadorian entrepreneur, Antonio Gil.
Presumably buoyed by the success of the expedition, and Gil’s land holdings on Albermarle [Isabela] Island (which included 8,000 head of cattle), the two men sought to establish a company, Ochsner & Gil, which would improve transport between Isabela and the mainland so as to better effect the sale of cattle and well as crops and sulphur. Ochsner was provide the capital investment, including an 800 ton steamer, while Gil provided the goods. Net profits were to be split equally.
This volume - a compilation of maps, letters, and photographs - comprises documents, including a signed contract, concerning the establishment of the company. Many of the letters were written by members of the California Academy of Science, who provide information on the quality of the natural resources and their potential for economic exploitation. We also learn much about the running of the island itself under Don Antonio Gil. At the time, Isabela only had around 300 inhabitants (it’s only about 3,000 as of today). Ochnser himself describes the inhabitants of Gil’s colony as “a fairly good type of the South American … in blood mostly of the Andean Indian with, of course, an admixture of the Spanish blood.” These plantation workers are “practically slaves, due to the peculiar Ecuadorian law which provides that any employee who is in debt to his employer must remain with the employer until his debt is discharged.“
The “Proposed Operations” of the transport company are outlined in the 1916 letter, but receive far more detailed and definite treatment—including prospective customers and projected profits—in his letter of January 17th, 1917, which was written after an inspection of the islands undertaken in the late summer of 1916 with the company’s primary investor, Capt. Isaac N. Hibberd. The volume as a whole was evidently compiled by W. B. Sayers, working from the Merchants Exchange Building in San Francisco, in collaboration with Ochsner.
The frontispiece map is a detail from a larger chart and shows the Galapagos Islands enclosed within a red pencil square off the coast of Ecuador, with much of North and South America also shown. The other maps, clipped from a different chart, are bound facing typed descriptions of the areas shown. These are augmented with ink and watercolour indications of “Open or Grassy Zone[s],” “Forest[s],” “Transition[s],” and “Barren or Dry Zone[s].” A few additional points of interest, including “Orange Lemon Groves” on Santa Maria and “Plantations and Gardens” and “Sulphur” on Albemarle, are also indicated in ink.
Accompanied with lengthy captions, the photographs show cattle country in the Galapagos, with “the evening fog … just beginning to come in” and cattle dotting the fields; in the morning “when the fog has lifted” at the border between the “bushy” and “grassy” zones (“In a day’s journey, in clear weather, scores - even hundreds - of such pictures might be taken”); “A view of a young steer and cow at close quarters” (“His legs and the ridge of his back are of a deep dunn color and the rest of the body is a coal black”); two mounted cowboys (“the vagueros [sic] has just driven a series of bunches of cattle, numbering in the aggregate about 1600 head”).
The activity of the company was reported in The South American, tellingly under the title of “More Trouble with Galapagos.” A steamer, Witasboro, loaded with lumber, barbed wire and machinery, was sent to Guayaquil to pay customs and obtain permission to unload on Isabela. However, the governor of Guayaquil refused permission on the basis that there were no ports on the island and that Oschner and Gil wasn’t registered in Ecuador. According to The South American the governor, channelling the feelings of the local press, declined permission on the basis that the company “merely a ruse of American interests to secure control of the islands and eventual sovereignty over them.” Indeed, all of the legal documents here concerning the company were carried out in San Francisco.
Anon., “More Trouble with Galapagos” in The South American, Vol. V, No. 11, (September, 1917), p.13; Williams, F.X., “Expedition of the California Academy of Sciences to the Galapagos Islands, 1905-1906 …” in Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences, Vol. 1, Fourth series, 1911, p.292.
