Chapter 10

THE SICK LANDED--ALEXANDER SELKIRK*--SEALS AND SEA-LIONS.

(*Note. Alexander Selkirk (1676 to 1721) was an adventurous sailor who joined Dampier's privateering expedition to the South Seas in 1703. He quarrelled with his captain, Stradling, and requested to be landed on the uninhabited island of Juan Fernandez. He immediately repented of his request, and begged to be taken off; but his prayers were disregarded, and he remained on the island from September, 1704, until he was picked up in 1709 by Dampier's new expedition. An account of his adventures was published, which apparently gave Defoe his idea of Robinson Crusoe.)

We were now extremely occupied in sending on shore materials to raise tents for the reception of the sick, who died apace on board. But we had not hands enough to prepare the tents for their reception before the 16th. On that and the two following days we sent them all on shore, amounting to a hundred and sixty-seven persons, besides at least a dozen who died in the boats on their being exposed to the fresh air. The greatest part of our sick were so infirm that we were obliged to carry them out of the ship in their hammocks, and to convey them afterwards in the same manner from the waterside to their tents, over a stony beach. This was a work of considerable fatigue to the few who were healthy; and therefore the Commodore, with his accustomed humanity, not only assisted herein with his own labour, but obliged his officers, without distinction, to give their helping hand.

The excellence of the climate and the looseness of the soil render this place extremely proper for all kinds of vegetation; for if the ground be anywhere accidentally turned up, it is immediately overgrown with turnips and Sicilian radishes; and therefore, Mr. Anson having with him garden seeds of all kinds, and stones of different sorts of fruits, he, for the better accommodation of his countrymen who should hereafter touch here, sowed both lettuces, carrots, and other garden plants, and set in the woods a great variety of plum, apricot, and peach stones. And these last, he has been informed, have since thriven to a very remarkable degree; for some gentlemen, who in their passage from Lima to old Spain were taken and brought to England, having procured leave to wait upon Mr. Anson to thank him for his generosity and humanity to his prisoners, some of whom were their relations, they in casual discourse with him about his transactions in the South Seas, particularly asked him if he had not planted a great number of fruit-stones on the island of Juan Fernandez; for they told him their late navigators had discovered there numbers of peach trees and apricot trees, which being fruits before unobserved in that place, they concluded them to be produced from kernels set by him.

ALEXANDER SELKIRK.

Former writers have related that this island abounded with vast numbers of goats; and their accounts are not to be questioned, this place being the usual haunt of the buccaneers* and privateers who formerly frequented those seas. And there are two instances--one of a Mosquito Indian, and the other of Alexander Selkirk, a Scotchman, who were left by their respective ships, and lived alone upon this island for some years, and consequently were no strangers to its produce. Selkirk, who was the last, after a stay of between four and five years, was taken off the place by the Duke and Duchess privateers, of Bristol, as may be seen at large in the journal of their voyage. His manner of life during his solitude was in most particulars very remarkable; but there is one circumstance he relates which was so strangely verified by our own observation that I cannot help reciting it. He tells us, among other things, as he often caught more goats than he wanted, he sometimes marked their ears and let them go. This was about thirty-two years before our arrival at the island. Now it happened that the first goat that was killed by our people at their landing had his ears slit; whence we concluded that he had doubtless been formerly under the power of Selkirk. This was indeed an animal of a most venerable aspect, dignified with an exceeding majestic beard, and with many other symptoms of antiquity. During our stay on the island we met with others marked in the same manner, all the males being distinguished by an exuberance of beard and every other characteristic of extreme age. But the great numbers of goats, which former writers described to have been found upon this island, are at present very much diminished. For the Spaniards being informed of the advantages which the buccaneers and privateers drew from the provisions which goats' flesh here furnished them with, they have endeavoured to extirpate the breed, thereby to deprive their enemies of this relief. For this purpose they have put on shore great numbers of large dogs, who have increased apace, and have destroyed all the goats in the accessible part of the country; so that there now remain only a few among the crags and precipices where the dogs cannot follow them.

(Note. 'The buccaneers.' The name "buccaneer" originally meant one who dried or smoked flesh on a "boucan," a kind of hurdle used for this purpose by the natives of Central and South America. The English, French, and Dutch smugglers who, in spite of the monopoly so jealously guarded by the Spaniards (see Introduction above) traded in the Caribbean seas, used to provision at St. Domingo largely with beef, jerked or sun-dried on the boucans. These men formed an organised body, under a chief chosen by themselves, and, under the name of the buccaneers, were for three-quarters of a century the terror of the Spaniards. In 1655 they were powerful enough to give material assistance to the English fleet which conquered Jamaica. In 1671 they raised a force of 2,000 men, marched across the isthmus, and besieged and took Panama; their success, as usual, being marked by horrible atrocities. In 1685 a Spanish fleet of fourteen sail, which had been fitted out to put them down, found ten buccaneer ships in the bay of Panama, but dared not give them battle. The war between France and England after 1688 dissolved the alliance between the French and English buccaneers; and the last conspicuous event in their history was the capture of Cartagena in 1697. Soon after this date they disappeared as an organised body, though for many years members of the band remained as pirates in the South Seas.)

Goats' flesh being scarce, we rarely being able to kill above one a day, and our people growing tired of fish (which abounds at this place), they at last condescended to eat seals, which by degrees they came to relish, and called it lamb. But there is another amphibious creature to be met with here, called a sea-lion, that bears some resemblance to a seal, though it is much larger. This, too, we ate, under the denomination of beef. In general there was no difficulty in killing them, for they were incapable either of escaping or resisting, their motion being the most unwieldy that can be conceived, their blubber, all the time they were moving, being agitated in large waves under their skins. However, a sailor one day being carelessly employed in skinning a young sea-lion, the female from which he had taken it came upon him unperceived, and getting his head in her mouth, she with her teeth scored his skull in notches in many places, and thereby wounded him so desperately that though all possible care was taken of him, he died in a few days.