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Arriving at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the deranged Patrick Watkins was the first in a long line of colonists to FLOREANA . As the sixth-largest island in the Galapagos (173 square kilometres), and just some 50km south of Santa Cruz, it was favoured as a potential colony for its good supply of fresh water up in the hills and tortoise meat. General Villamil began Ecuador's first official colony on the islands, the "Asilo de Paz" ("Haven of Peace"), using convict labour in 1832. He gave up after five years, handing the settlement over to the brutal Colonel Jose Williams, who kept a pack of vicious dogs to keep his unruly subjects at bay. The Haven of Peace soon acquired the nickname of the Kingdom of the Dogs, but the hounds weren't protection enough and Williams fled the island for his life after a rebellion in 1841. Almost thirty years later, Jose de Valdizan sought to rekindle the ill-fated venture, but after eight years his desperate settlers took to arms and fought each other. Valdizan and several others were killed, and the settlement fell apart. All this human interference has not been without effect on Floreana: its tortoise population is extinct, and the Charles mockingbird has been so severely predated by feral cats that it's now only found on the islets Enderby and Campeon off its northeastern shore. Today, there's a small settlement on the western coast of the island, PUERTO VELASCO IBARRA , which is home to fewer than a hundred people. There's just one place to stay , the Pension Wittmer (tel 05/520150; $5-9), run by Margret Wittmer, one of the protagonists of the Galapagos affair . As well as providing meals for her guests, she'll autograph copies of her best-selling book Floreana , her account of the murky goings-on of the 1930s. The INGALA boat sets sail from Puerto Ayora for Floreana every other Wednesday at 8am and returns early the following morning.
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