American Geographical Society

Portugal's Other Kingdom: The Algarve by Dan StanislawskiReview by: Raymond E. CristGeographical Review, Vol. 54, No. 1 (Jan., 1964), pp. 148-149Published by: American Geographical SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/213049 .

Accessed: 09/05/2014 16:40

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

American Geographical Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toGeographical Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.78.108.40 on Fri, 9 May 2014 16:40:58 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

rapidly in recent years with the studies of such zoologists as Archie Carr in the Caribbean andJohn Hendrickson in Sarawak, it has remained for a geographer to make a careful search of the literature and disclose the pattern of a symbiosis between turtle and man that stretches around the equatorial oceans of the world. After a summary of turtle ecology, a description of the varying cultural attitudes toward use of turtles and their eggs, and a scanning of the development of commercial trade, James Parsons has exerted his main effort toward a historical survey of the principal turtling grounds of the world. The results are summarized in an endpaper map that shows the principal and secondary nesting beaches ofChelonia mydas, both former and present, and its principal feeding grounds. These lie almost entirely within the 20? centigrade ocean-surface isotherm for the coldest month. The verbal descriptions on which the map is based assemble in some sixty pages of text and in a bibliography of 246 titles the essential facts and sources on the turtle-man relationship. Areas of interest range round the world from Aldabra and Kenya to Burma and Borneo, from the Great Barrier Reef to the Hawaiian chain, from the Galapagos to Lower California, and from Ascension Island and the Cape Verde Islands to the last West Indian nesting grounds at Aves Island and Tortuguero in northeasternmost Costa Rica.

A short chapter is devoted to two ancillary aspects of turtle lore. The often-doubted custom among primitive peoples of fishing for turtle by use of remoras or suckerfish has been well documented in four widely separated parts of the world-East Africa (where a sizable part of the world's present commercial production derives from this mode of fish-

ing), the South China Sea, northern Australia, and the Caribbean-but nowhere between these points. Independent invention? An ancient dispersion over the tropical oceans? This distribution should add fuel to the simmering discussion over ancient oceanic diffusion to the Americas. The freshwater turtlery of South American rivers is also described because it resembles the turtlery of salt water both in turtle habits and in disastrous human exploitation of a vulnerable animal resource.

The future of the green turtle remains in doubt. Subjected to increasing pressure, exter- minated on many of its former nesting beaches, exhibiting nonetheless an amazing viability, Chelonia may well go the way of the bison and the dodo. Conservation measures under way in Costa Rica and Sarawak may help turn the tide. Although much remains to be learned about the green turtle, its preservation, as in most other aspects of conservation, is not a technical but a social problem.

In addition to Parsons' skill and persistence in uncovering a remarkable array of refer- ences on the subject, not to mention his enviable facility with the language, one must com- ment on the particularly handsome format of the book. More than fifty fine photographs and a total of five maps add much to a pleasant layout and attractive type faces and cover. It is rare to find a book that commends itself alike to the scholar, the interested layman, and the esthete.-EDWIN DORAN, JR.

PORTUGAL'S OTHER KINGDOM: The Algarve. By DAN STANISLAWSKI. xiv and 273 pp.; maps, diagrs., ills., bibliogr., index. University of Texas Press, Austin, 1963. $5.75. 9 x 6 inches.

This volume on the picturesque Algarve is descriptive geography at its best. The physical setting, man and his works, and their divers interrelationships are vividly, even poetically,

rapidly in recent years with the studies of such zoologists as Archie Carr in the Caribbean andJohn Hendrickson in Sarawak, it has remained for a geographer to make a careful search of the literature and disclose the pattern of a symbiosis between turtle and man that stretches around the equatorial oceans of the world. After a summary of turtle ecology, a description of the varying cultural attitudes toward use of turtles and their eggs, and a scanning of the development of commercial trade, James Parsons has exerted his main effort toward a historical survey of the principal turtling grounds of the world. The results are summarized in an endpaper map that shows the principal and secondary nesting beaches ofChelonia mydas, both former and present, and its principal feeding grounds. These lie almost entirely within the 20? centigrade ocean-surface isotherm for the coldest month. The verbal descriptions on which the map is based assemble in some sixty pages of text and in a bibliography of 246 titles the essential facts and sources on the turtle-man relationship. Areas of interest range round the world from Aldabra and Kenya to Burma and Borneo, from the Great Barrier Reef to the Hawaiian chain, from the Galapagos to Lower California, and from Ascension Island and the Cape Verde Islands to the last West Indian nesting grounds at Aves Island and Tortuguero in northeasternmost Costa Rica.

A short chapter is devoted to two ancillary aspects of turtle lore. The often-doubted custom among primitive peoples of fishing for turtle by use of remoras or suckerfish has been well documented in four widely separated parts of the world-East Africa (where a sizable part of the world's present commercial production derives from this mode of fish-

ing), the South China Sea, northern Australia, and the Caribbean-but nowhere between these points. Independent invention? An ancient dispersion over the tropical oceans? This distribution should add fuel to the simmering discussion over ancient oceanic diffusion to the Americas. The freshwater turtlery of South American rivers is also described because it resembles the turtlery of salt water both in turtle habits and in disastrous human exploitation of a vulnerable animal resource.

The future of the green turtle remains in doubt. Subjected to increasing pressure, exter- minated on many of its former nesting beaches, exhibiting nonetheless an amazing viability, Chelonia may well go the way of the bison and the dodo. Conservation measures under way in Costa Rica and Sarawak may help turn the tide. Although much remains to be learned about the green turtle, its preservation, as in most other aspects of conservation, is not a technical but a social problem.

In addition to Parsons' skill and persistence in uncovering a remarkable array of refer- ences on the subject, not to mention his enviable facility with the language, one must com- ment on the particularly handsome format of the book. More than fifty fine photographs and a total of five maps add much to a pleasant layout and attractive type faces and cover. It is rare to find a book that commends itself alike to the scholar, the interested layman, and the esthete.-EDWIN DORAN, JR.

PORTUGAL'S OTHER KINGDOM: The Algarve. By DAN STANISLAWSKI. xiv and 273 pp.; maps, diagrs., ills., bibliogr., index. University of Texas Press, Austin, 1963. $5.75. 9 x 6 inches.

This volume on the picturesque Algarve is descriptive geography at its best. The physical setting, man and his works, and their divers interrelationships are vividly, even poetically,

148 148

This content downloaded from 195.78.108.40 on Fri, 9 May 2014 16:40:58 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEWS

described. So also are the outcroppings of the cultural sedimentary strata deposited over the millennia by successive waves of Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Greeks, Romans, Visigoths, and Muslims; through it all the Algarve, like China, has tended to absorb its conquerors. We are increasingly associated internationally with peoples such as the Algarvians, of the so-called underdeveloped lands, yet our experiences and techniques do not equip us to com- municate easily with them; it is difficult for us to realize, to quote Professor Stanislawski, that "when people are living next to the boundary of minimum subsistence, gambling may mean extinction."

The United States has become more and more a land of pep pills and tranquilizers; there is overcapacity to produce commodities and undercapacity to consume them domesti-

cally; the population is so affluent that it can afford in a few months to make Metrecal a way of life. For the people of this country it is hard to understand those who live out their lives in frugal economics, yet "one must know the economic context to understand why a Mediterranean farmer insists upon planting a grain and perhaps other things beneath his trees. He.. .must have a second or even a third crop on his land as a crutch upon which to lean in case of failure of the first. Whereas we may think of specialization, trade, and surplus saved as the answer to that problem, he has no surplus and has had long experience with

shabby governments, poor and frequently obstructed transport, taxation that can be con- fiscatory, and a long list of other conditions that lead him to the very sensible conclusion that if he doesn't create his own security he will have none."

Where water is available, the syenite slopes of the Monchique area present a spectacular cultural landscape-the product of the toil of scores of generations-of flat-floored terraces supported by high, carefully constructed walls of dry-stone masonry. A wall ten feet high may support a terrace floor less than ten feet wide. Yet "construction of terraces, tanks, canals, connecting paths, and innumerable other smaller necessities of this intensive agri- culture cannot be justified within conventional economics. Much of the construction is done by small owners and their families in spare time, and for this work there can be no estimate of cost. . .Terraces are still being built at costs as high as two thousand dollars an acre. Many men-perhaps all-who invest cash in such construction have no exact idea as to costs, nor do they have precise knowledge as to the size of their properties." But the difficulty of finding productive property for sale and the urge for prestige and security in the ownership of land make men invest in terrace construction where possible.

Fishermen cling to their profession, a way of life, in spite of its hazards and its meager returns; they are literally lost when there is no fishing, and many beg rather than try to do something else-and this in what we like to call an underdeveloped part of the world where, in the words of President Bourguiba, "dignity before bread is a basic principle." It is to be hoped that as the pressures on the Algarvians of the modern North European industrial society increase, the Algarve will be able, as it has been to some extent in the past, to accept change on its own terms and on the basis of its own predilections.

This beautifully illustrated volume is a brilliant, imaginative, perceptive piece of writing. The facts are all there, and an analytical and philosophical thread is run through them. This is the kind of detailed field research indicated for much of the world, and it is to be hoped that the results of such investigations will be written up in as fascinating a style as Professor Stanislawski's.-RAYMOND E. CRIST

149

This content downloaded from 195.78.108.40 on Fri, 9 May 2014 16:40:58 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions