FIRST WATCH 6 A. M. PRIME
DODO – 1680 – Raphus cucullatus
Sir Thomas Herbert – 1629
Some Yeares Travaile,
Mauritius
First, here and here only is generated the Dodo, which for shape and rareness may antagonize the Phoenix of Arabia: her body is round and fat, few weigh less than fifty pound, are reputed of more for wonder then for food. Her visage darts forth melancholy, as sensible of Nature’s injurie in framing so great a body to be guided with complementall wings, so small and impotent, that they serve only to prove her a bird. The halfe of her head is naked seeming couered with a fine vaile, her bill is crooked downwards, in midst is the thrill, from which part to the end tis of a light greene, mixt with pale yellow tincture; her eyes are small and like to Diamonds, round and rowling; her clothing downy feathers, her traine three small plumes, short and inproportionable, her legs suting to her body, her punces sharpe, her appetite strong and greedy.
Sir Thomas Herbert was appointed by King Charles I to the first English ambassadorial mission to the court of the Shah of the Persian Empire. This mission (1627-29) was an attempt to negotiate a silk trade route (bypassing the Ottoman Turkish Empire) through lands and waters controlled by the Persians. It was on his return journey – via India and Africa – that Herbert’s ship The Hart stopped in Mauritius and he wrote this first account of the Dodo in English.
The Dodo was the world’s largest member of the pigeon family: a giant flightless dove the weight of two large domestic turkeys. The Portuguese were the first Europeans to briefly encounter the Dodo in 1507, but the Dutch were the first to record its existence in 1581, and name it Dodoor because it resembled a gigantic version of the Dutch Little Grebe or Dodaers, meaning “plump-arse.” Sometimes called the “Devil’s Chicken,” the Dodo’s desirability as food for sailors varied with the seasons. When fruit was abundant, it was succulent, but during the lean season, the flesh was very tough and ill-tasting.
The claim that “dodo” is derived from the Old Portuguese duodo meaning “fool” appears to be without foundation. A more recent theory suggests the name was simply imitative of its 2-note pigeon-like call: “doo-doo.” The Dodo’s reputation as a creature “unfit” for survival seems odd considering its evolution and survival over five million years; or twice as long as humans have existed.
WHITE DODO – 1770 – Victorianis imperialis
James Tatton – 1631
Voyage of Captain Carleton,
Reunion
There is a store of Land-fowl, both small and great, plenty of Doves, great Parrots and such like; and a great fowl of the bigness of a Turkey, very fat, and so short-winged that they cannot fly, being white, and in a manner tame; and so are all other fowles, as having not been troubled or feared with shot.
Dodos were originally believed to have inhabited all three of the Mascarenes: those remote Indian Ocean islands of Mauritius, Rodriguez and Reunion. Fought over by the Portuguese, Dutch, French and British, Rodriguez was eventually successfully colonized by the French East Indian Company. An island with an area of just 110 sq. km., it was inhabited by 60,000 plantation slaves. Like all the Mascarenes, Reunion originally had no land mammals and virtually no predators, but was rapidly invaded by feral cats, dogs, rats, monkeys, pigs and goats, all of whom fed on the indigenous species. The result has been that virtually all of the Mascarenes’ endemic animal species and nearly half of its endemic plant species are either endangered or extinct.
Just as the Dodo is on the Mauritius coat of arms, the White Dodo has become the emblematic bird of Reunion. Indeed, in the 1990’s the national television network adopted it as the hero of a major animated television series. However, recent archaeological excavations have proved that the legendary White Dodo of Reunion was not a Dodo at all.
It was, in fact, a White Flightless Ibis – Threskiornis solitarius – which became extinct in 1770. This large white flightless bird of Reunion was related to the Sacred Ibis of Egypt. A remarkable and unique species, but it was not a member of the Rhaphidae family of the Mauritius Dodo and the Rodriguez Solitaire.
DODO – 1680 – Raphus cucullatus
Sir Hamon L’Estrange – 1638
L’Estrange Diaries,
London, England
Upon a street there was a house near Lincoln Fields where I discovered the picture of a strange fowle hung out upon a clothe. Upon paying for entry, there I saw on display a great fowl, bigger than the largest Turkey Cock, but stouter and thicker and of a more erect state. The keeper called it a Dodo, and in the end of a chimney in the chambers there lay a heape of large pebble stones, whereof hee gave it many in our sight, some as big as nutmegs and the keeper told us she eats them conducing to digestion.
Sir Hamon L’Estrange was an English theologian who while walking in central urban London stopped at a house to examine a live captive Dodo. L’Estrange’s interest in the Dodo may also have been provoked by Herbert’s account. His Some Yeares Travaile was a popular book of the day.
Curiously, upon its demise, this Dodo was acquired as a stuffed exhibit by John Tradescant (creator of Charles II’s “physics garden”) for his “cabinet of curiosities.” This was eventually integrated with the collection of the antiquarian Jacob Ashmole to form the basis of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Here, the world’s only intact Dodo was kept, until the deteriorating specimen was accidentally incinerated, although fortunately the head and one foot were rescued. The excavations of the dry swamp bed of the Mare Aux Songes in Mauritius resulted in the discovery of numerous new skeletal remains of Dodos in 1865; and in 2005.
Still one might argue that there is a phoenix-like aspect to this story, as this famous specimen in Oxford was the inspiration for the creation of Lewis Carroll’s fictional Dodo in his Alice in Wonderland (1865). The Dodo was a private joke the author shared with Alice about himself. Carroll (a.k.a. Charles Dodgson) suffered from stuttering, and often introduced himself as Mr. Do-Do-Dodgson.
The Dodo was the subject of a number of paintings by European artists: most notably Roeland Savery’s iconic bird of 1626. However, the Mughul artist, Mansur of Naggash – in the court of the Emperor Jehangir in Goa – created the most well-observed painting of a Dodo drawn from life, sometime between 1610 to 1624.
SOLITAIRE DODO – 1780 – Pezohaps solitarius
Francois Leguat of Bresse – 1708
A New Voyage to the East Indies,
Rodriguez
The Females are wonderfully beautiful, some fair, some brown; I call them fair, because they are the colour of fair Hair. They have a sort of Peak, like a Widow’s upon their Beak, which is of a dun colour. No one feather is straggling from the other. The Feathers on their Thighs are round like shells at one end, and being there very thick, have an agreeable effect. They have two Risings on the Craws, and Feathers are whiter there than the rest, which lively represents the fine bosom of a Beautiful Woman. They walk with so much stateliness and good Grace, that one cannot help admiring and loving them.
During the reign of Louis XIV, Francois Leguat was forced to flee to Holland; where in 1691, along with other prominent Huguenots, he was persuaded to attempt to establish a new French Protestant Refuge Colony in the “New Eden” of Reunion. They were promised two ships to service the colony of L’ile Eden, but instead they found themselves on a single small frigate that deserted them on Rodriguez Island.
After two years in the failed Rodriguez colony, Leguat and the others escaped on a small boat to Mauritius, and were imprisoned by the Dutch both in Mauritius and Batavia for several years. At the age of 70 the wandering Leguat found sanctuary in London, and published his Voyages – 1689-98 in French, English and Dutch editions. Leguat’s account of his harrowing desert island adventures included descriptions of the Dodo that were entirely at odds with any previous tales; however, they have proved to be extremely accurate. Leguat recorded their mating rituals. Noting that these birds mated for life, he also remarked how they were far from passive when it came to protecting their young.
The Solitaire was the intelligent, beautiful Cinderella of the Dodo (Raphidae) family. Nonetheless, these characteristics did not save it from sharing the fate of its less charming cousin. Nor did it save at least two dozen other indigenous Mascarene species (pigeons, parrots, rails, tortoises, snakes, and skinks) from extinction.
LA MARE AUX SONGES
Dodo – 1680
The first ships appear off these shores
Just as Galileo’s telescope reveals
The dry seas of the moon
Now, we dig and search for relics: a beak or a bone
Of a creature that will be nevermore forever
Something in the Dodo’s foolish Mona Lisa smile
Provoked Mogul artists and Dutch masters
And provokes us still, as we discover
A human skull with an equally enigmatic grin
Next to the bones of this flightless giant dove
It is impossible to stave off thoughts
Of our own eventual eclipse
How will we be seen: tragic or comic?
Hubristic, or an evolutionary mistake?
In what arid sea and by whom will our relics be found
When our monuments crumble away?
I try to imagine Alexander or Ozymandias
But instead, as darkness falls
On the edge of this dry “Sea of Dreams”
The moon with the bone-white face of Pagliacci
Looms up before me
Only then do I recall his murdered wife
Columbina, meaning “Dove”
And hear: “Le commedia e finita!”
God’s judgement, delivered in Caruso’s terrible
Perfect voice