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Near the midpoint of our ten-day cruise of the Galapagos, our small ship paid a call to the island of Floreana. We snorkeled at the romantically named Devil's Crown, sharing sea space with reef sharks, golden rays, and myriads of fish.

Back aboard our yacht, a guide/naturalist regaled us with stories of the island's earliest settlers. The first was an Irishman, stranded in 1807, who raised potatoes and vegetables and bartered them with passing buccaneers and whalers in exchange for supplies consisting mostly of iquor. In the 1830s came a German dentist and his woman. The dentist pulled all of his own and his partner's teeth-to prevent tooth decay. A supply ship provided him with a set of metal teeth, which he and his partner shared.

Then came a pistol-packing, whip-wielding woman who called herself a baroness. With her were two paramours and a young Ecuadorian factotum she had enlisted in Guayaquil. They patched together a dwelling from sheet metal left behind by a Norwegian group, who ten years earlier had failed in an attempt to establish a fish cannery on the island. The baroness envisioned construction of a luxury hotel that would cater to millionaire yachtsmen.

These four lived a life of drunken orgies and violence, described in print by their neighbor, Margret Wittmer, whose offspring still live on the island. Rolf Wittmer, owner of the boat on which our group was touring, was born to Margret in a cave of Floreana. The dentist assisted at the birth.

Relations among the island's settlers were strained. The baroness stole supplies from her neighbors, demanded as entertainment physical combat among members of her two competing lovers, proclaimed herself Empress (or sometimes Queen) of the Galapagos, went nude, and bathed in the island's only fresh water supply. One of her entourage confided that the woman was no aristocrat but a dancer and actress.

In 1934 the baroness disappeared after supposedly embarking with her currently favorite lover on a visiting yacht bound for Tahiti. No one else had information of such a yacht. Her body and that of her lover were never found. Suspicion of murder fell on both the Wittmer family and the bogus baroness's rejected lover-the one who was physically smaller and came out second-best in the combats. He soon left Floreana by boat .The man was found dead on the nearby island of Marchena, apparently the victim of thirst and starvation.

The German dentist, a self-proclaimed vegetarian, died of food poisoning brought on by eating

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