the shore. The horrors of his situation were augmented during the dark by superstitious alarms. Amid the murmur of the waves he could fancy he heard howlings and whistlings, as of spirits in the air if he turned his head to the black and wooded masses behind him, they seemed peopled and in motion; and as he again turned it to the shore, phantoms stalked past. Often he cursed himself for the folly of the resolution which had brought him here; often, in the frenzy of fear, he would start up with the horrible determination of suicide; but a rush of softer feeling would come, and then he became calm. At length this gentler state of mind grew habitual; thoughts and impressions which had been familiar to him in childhood again came up; and the years which he had spent with brawling and ferocious shipmates, in the lawless profession of a privateer, were swept out of his memory like a disagreeable dream.

With the return of equanimity, Selkirk began to consider the means of rendering his residence on the island endurable. It was the month of October-a season corresponding in that locality to the middle of spring with us-and all was blooming and fragrant. The possibility of starving was not one of the horrors which his situation presented; and when he recovered calmness of mind sufficient to take a view of his solitary domain, he found himself in the midst of plenty. Besides the fish and seals which swarmed round the shores of the island, there were innumerable fruits and vegetables in the woods, among which was the never-failing cabbage-tree; and hundreds of goats skipped wild among the hills. Almost all the means of ordinary physical comfort were within his reach; and he had only to exert his strength and ingenuity to make the island yield him its resources. How he proceeded to do this; the various shifts and devices which he fell upon to supply his wants, and to add gradually to his store of comforts; the succession of daily steps and contrivances by which, in the course of four years and a half, he raised himself from comparative helplessness to complete dominion over the resources of his little territory; and, along with this, the various stages which his feelings went through, from the agony and stupefaction of the first night which he spent on the island, to the perfect freedom and happiness which he ultimately attained-we have not sufficient materials to be able to describe in detail. It is needless to say that the matchless narrative of Defoe is almost entirely a fiction, so far as the details of his hero's daily life in the desert island are concerned. Alexander Selkirk did not display such a genius for mechanical contrivances as Robinson Crusoe, or at least if he did, no record of his contrivances has been preserved. The island was not visited by cannibal savages, as is the case in the romance; no faithful Friday appeared to cheer the hours of the solitary; nor is there any journal preserved from which we learn whether ever such an incident occurred as the discovery of the mysterious foot-print in the sand. All these ornaments of the story

the world owes to Defoe, whose object was not to write the history of Selkirk, or any other known castaway, but to describe, by the force of imagination, the life of an ideal hero on an ideal desert island. At the same time, there is no doubt that Defoe's narrative fills up our conception of Selkirk's long residence in his island with details such as must actually be true; and at all events there is a correspondence in some points between it and Selkirk's own account of his manner of life, furnished after his return to England to Sir Richard Steele and others, through whom it was made public. The particulars of this narrative, so far as it extends, we proceed to relate.

The stores which Selkirk had brought ashore consisted, besides his clothing and bedding, of a firelock, a pound of gunpowder, a quantity of bullets, a flint and steel, a few pounds of tobacco, a hatchet, a knife, a kettle, a flip-can, a Bible, some books of devotion, and one or two concerning navigation, and his mathematical instruments. Such were the few implements and substances from the great civilised world which Selkirk had to help him in the task of subduing to his own convenience so many square miles of earth and wood. Yet, in the possession of that small package, what strength lay in his hands, and how superior was he to the savage children of nature! Within the small compass of his chest was wrapped up the condensed skill and wisdom of ages, the ingenuity and industry of hundreds of men who had long gone to their graves. The flint and steel, the firelock, the gunpowder, the knife and hatchet, what power over nature was there not compact in these articles !—the mathematical instruments, of what knowledge were they not the symbols! -and, above all, the Bible, and the books which accompanied it, what wealth of conversation, what health of spirit, did they not bring with them!

The first object that occupied his attention, besides the daily supply of such food as was necessary for his subsistence, was the construction of a dwelling to serve him as a shelter from the weather. Selecting a spot at some distance from the beach, he cut down pimento-wood, and in a short time built a hut in which he could reside. To this he afterwards added another. They were both constructed during the first eighteen months of his residence; but the task of improving them, and adding to their neatness, was a constant occupation to him during his stay on the island. The larger of his two huts, which 'was situated near a spacious wood, he made his sleeping-room, spreading the bedclothes he had brought with him upon a frame of his own construction; and as these wore out, or were used for other purposes, he supplied their places with goat-skins. The smaller hut, which he had erected at some distance from the other, was used by him as a kitchen, in which he dressed his victuals. The furniture was very scanty, but consisted of every convenience his island could afford. His most valuable article was

the pot or kettle he had brought from the ship to boil his meat in ; the spit was his own handiwork, made of such wood as grew upon the island; the rest was suitable to his rudely constructed habitation. The pimento-wood, which burns very bright and clear, served him both for fuel and candle. It gives out an agreeable perfume when burning. He obtained fire, after the Indian method, by rubbing two pieces of pimento-wood together until they ignited. This he did, as he was ill able to spare any of his linen for tinder, time being of no value to him, and the labour rather an amusement!'* The necessity of providing for his wants had the effect of diverting his thoughts from the misery of his situation; yet every day, for the first eighteen months, he spent more or less time on the beach, watching for the appearance of a sail upon the horizon. At the end of that time, partly through habit, partly through the influence of religion, which here awakened in full force upon his mind, he became reconciled to his situation. Every morning after rising he read a portion of Scripture, sang a psalm, and prayed, speaking aloud, in order to preserve the use of his voice. He afterwards remarked that, during his residence on the island, he was a better Christian than he had ever been before, or would probably ever be again. He at first lived much upon turtles and crawfish, which abounded upon the shores-his powder, with which he could shoot the goats of the island, having soon been exhausted: but afterwards he found himself able to run down the goats, whose flesh he either roasted or stewed, and of which he kept a small stock, tamed, around his dwelling, to be used in the event of his being disabled by sickness. One of the greatest inconveniences which afflicted him for the first few months was the want of salt; but he gradually became accustomed to this privation, and at last found so much relish in unsalted food, that, after being restored to society, it was with equal difficulty that he reconciled himself to take it in any other condition. As a substitute for bread, he had turnips, parsnips, and the cabbage-palm, all of excellent quality, and also radishes and water-cresses. When his clothes were worn out, he supplied their place with goat-skins, which gave him an appearance much more uncouth than any wild animal. He had a piece of linen, from which he made new shirts by means of a nail and the thread of his stockings; and he never wanted this comfortable piece of attire during the whole period of his residence on the island. Every physical want being thus gratified, and his mind soothed by devotional feeling, he at length began positively to enjoy his existence-often lying for whole days in the delicious bowers which he had formed for himself, abandoned to the most pleasant sensations.

Among the quadruped inhabitants of the isle were multitudes of rats, which at the first annoyed him by gnawing his feet while asleep.

*Howell's Life of Selkirk.

of giving up all connection with it. It was not till some time afterwards, however, that he resolved finally to do so.

Leaving Le Grand on the 28th, the vessels continued their voyage southwards; passed the Falkland Isles on the 29th of December, and were encountered by such a storm in rounding Cape Horn, that they lost sight of each other on the 4th of January 1704. They did not fall in with each other again till the 10th of February, when the St George, anchoring at the island of Juan Fernandez, after a tedious voyage along the coasts of Patagonia and Chili, found that the Cinque Ports had been waiting there for her three days. 'We anchored,' says Funnel, 'in the great bay, in thirty-five fathoms. At this island we wooded, watered, and refitted our ships, giving them a heel, to clean their sides as low as we could, which took up much time, and occasioned both companies to be much on shore. In this island there are abundance of cabbage-trees, which are excellent, though small. The cabbage-tree, which is a species of palm, has a small straight stem, often ninety or a hundred feet long, with many knots or joints, about four inches asunder, like a bamboo cane. It has no leaves, except at the top, in the midst of which the substance called cabbage is contained. The branches of this tree are commonly twelve or thirteen feet in length; and at about a foot and a half from the tree the leaves begin, which are about four feet long, and an inch and a half broad-the leaves growing so regularly that the whole branch seems one entire leaf. The cabbage when cut out from among the roots of the branches, is usually a foot long, and six inches in diameter, and as white as milk. From the bottom of the cabbage there spring out several large bunches of berries, like grapes, each bunch being five or six pounds weight. The berries are red, and about the size of cherries, each having a large stone in the middle, and the pulp tastes like that of haws. On the island we saw also the sea-lion, which is so called, as I suppose, because he roars somewhat like a lion, and his head has also some resemblance to that animal, having four large teeth in front, all the rest being short, thick, and stubbed. Instead of feet and legs, he has four fins, the two foremost serving him, when he goes ashore, to raise the fore-part of the body, and he then draws the hind-part after him. The two hinder fins are of no use on land, but only in the water. The animal is very fat; for which reason we killed several of them, from which we made a tun of oil for our lamps, and while at this island, made use of it also for frying our fish. They have short light-coloured hair when young, becoming sandy when old. Their food is fish, and they prey altogether in the water, but come on land to sleep, when five, six, or more of them huddle together like swine, and will often lie still three or four days if not molested. They are much afraid of men, and make off as fast as they can into the water. If hard pressed, they will turn about, raising their bodies on their fore-fins, and face you with their mouths

wide open; so that we used to clap a pistol to their mouths and fire down their throats. Sometimes five or six of us would surround one of these monsters, each having half a pike, and so prick him dead, which commonly was the sport of two or three hours.'* Selkirk little thought, while cutting the branches of the cabbage-trees, and hunting sea-lions with Funnel and the other sailors on the beach of Juan Fernandez, that in a short time this island was to be his solitary home.

The life of comparative idleness which the crews of the two ships were leading on the island was not favourable to good-humour or harmony, especially as, hitherto, they had not succeeded in attaining the object of their expedition. The sailors of the Cinque Ports quarrelled with their captain, Stradling; and the dispute at length ran so high, that forty-two men, or more than two-thirds of the crew, went ashore, and threatened to remain. Whether Selkirk, who, as sailing-master, was next in rank to Stradling on board the Cinque Ports, was one of those who revolted, is not ascertained; but the sequel renders it probable that he was. At length Dampier succeeded in reconciling the sailors with their captain, order was restored, and matters went on as usual.

On the 29th of February, the idle crews were roused to activity by the sight of a sail. In their hurry to give chase, they left behind them one of their boats, their anchors, a quantity of oil, and other materials, and, what was more alarming, five sailors and a negro, who happened to be straggling in a part of the island distant from the beach at the time when the sail was seen. Bearing out to sea, they found the strange ship to be a Frenchman of thirty guns. After a long pursuit they came up with her next day, and engaged her very close, the St George keeping her broadside to broadside for seven hours. A gale then sprang up, and the Frenchman escaped, disappointing the privateers of their expected booty. Nine of the St George's men had been killed, and many more wounded in the action. The crews were, nevertheless, exceedingly anxious to continue the chase; but Dampier opposed them, saying it was not worth while, and 'they did not need to care for merchantmen, as he could get them a prize of £500,000 any day of the year.' They therefore returned, in no very good humour, to Juan Fernandez, which they came in sight of on the 3d of March. To their surprise, they found two French vessels at anchor off the island, each of thirty-six guns: a sight which made them glad to sheer off, leaving the boat, the anchors, the oil, and the six sailors to their fate. It afterwards appeared that the Frenchmen, on landing, had taken possession of all the stores they found on the island, and made prisoners of four of the six men, the other two managing to conceal themselves.

*Funnel's Narrative.