The islanders at Juan Fernandez entertained with Yankee doughnuts--The
beauties of Robinson Crusoe's realm--The mountain monument to
Alexander Selkirk--Robinson Crusoe's cave--A stroll with the children
of the island--Westward ho! with a friendly gale--A month's free
sailing with the Southern Cross and the sun for guides--Sighting the
Marquesas--Experience in reckoning.
The _Spray_ being secured, the islanders returned to the coffee and
doughnuts, and I was more than flattered when they did not slight my
buns, as the professor had done in the Strait of Magellan. Between
buns and doughnuts there was little difference except in name. Both
had been fried in tallow, which was the strong point in both, for
there was nothing on the island fatter than a goat, and a goat is but
a lean beast, to make the best of it. So with a view to business I
hooked my steelyards to the boom at once, ready to weigh out tallow,
there being no customs officer to say, "Why do you do so?" and before
the sun went down the islanders had learned the art of making buns and
doughnuts. I did not charge a high price for what I sold, but the
ancient and curious coins I got in payment, some of them from the
wreck of a galleon sunk in the bay no one knows when, I sold afterward
to antiquarians for more than face-value. In this way I made a
reasonable profit. I brought away money of all denominations from the
island, and nearly all there was, so far as I could find out.
[Illustration: The house of the king.]
Juan Fernandez, as a place of call, is a lovely spot. The hills are
well wooded, the valleys fertile, and pouring down through many
ravines are streams of pure water. There are no serpents on the
island, and no wild beasts other than pigs and goats, of which I saw a
number, with possibly a dog or two. The people lived without the use
of rum or beer of any sort. There was not a police officer or a lawyer
among them. The domestic economy of the island was simplicity itself.
The fashions of Paris did not affect the inhabitants; each dressed
according to his own taste. Although there was no doctor, the people
were all healthy, and the children were all beautiful. There were
about forty-five souls on the island all told. The adults were mostly
from the mainland of South America. One lady there, from Chile, who
made a flying-jib for the _Spray_, taking her pay in tallow, would be
called a belle at Newport. Blessed island of Juan Fernandez! Why
Alexander Selkirk ever left you was more than I could make out.
[Illustration: Robinson Crusoe's cave.]
A large ship which had arrived some time before, on fire, had been
stranded at the head of the bay, and as the sea smashed her to pieces
on the rocks, after the fire was drowned, the islanders picked up the
timbers and utilized them in the construction of houses, which
naturally presented a ship-like appearance. The house of the king of
Juan Fernandez, Manuel Carroza by name, besides resembling the ark,
wore a polished brass knocker on its only door, which was painted
green. In front of this gorgeous entrance was a flag-mast all ataunto,
and near it a smart whale-boat painted red and blue, the delight of
the king's old age.
I of course made a pilgrimage to the old lookout place at the top of
the mountain, where Selkirk spent many days peering into the distance
for the ship which came at last. From a tablet fixed into the face of
the rock I copied these words, inscribed in Arabic capitals:
/*[4]
IN MEMORY
OF
ALEXANDER SELKIRK,
MARINER,
*/
/#
A native of Largo, in the county of Fife, Scotland, who lived on
this island in complete solitude for four years and four months. He
was landed from the <i>Cinque Ports</i> galley, 96 tons, 18 guns, A. D.
1704, and was taken off in the <i>Duke</i>, privateer, 12th February,
1709. He died Lieutenant of H. M. S. <i>Weymouth</i>, A. D. 1723,[A]
aged 47. This tablet is erected near Selkirk's lookout, by
Commodore Powell and the officers of H. M. S. <i>Topaze</i>, A. D. 1868.
#/
[A] Mr. J. Cuthbert Hadden, in the "Century Magazine" for July, 1899,
shows that the tablet is in error as to Selkirk's death. It should be
1721
The cave in which Selkirk dwelt while on the island is at the head of
the bay now called Robinson Crusoe Bay. It is around a bold headland
west of the present anchorage and landing. Ships have anchored there,
but it affords a very indifferent berth. Both of these anchorages are
exposed to north winds, which, however, do not reach home with much
violence. The holding-ground being good in the first-named bay to the
eastward, the anchorage there may be considered safe, although the
undertow at times makes it wild riding.
I visited Robinson Crusoe Bay in a boat, and with some difficulty
landed through the surf near the cave, which I entered. I found it dry
and inhabitable. It is located in a beautiful nook sheltered by high
mountains from all the severe storms that sweep over the island, which
are not many; for it lies near the limits of the trade-wind regions,
being in latitude 35 1/2 degrees. The island is about fourteen miles
in length, east and west, and eight miles in width; its height is over
three thousand feet. Its distance from Chile, to which country it
belongs, is about three hundred and forty miles.
Juan Fernandez was once a convict station. A number of caves in which
the prisoners were kept, damp, unwholesome dens, are no longer in use,
and no more prisoners are sent to the island.
The pleasantest day I spent on the island, if not the pleasantest on
my whole voyage, was my last day on shore,--but by no means because it
was the last,--when the children of the little community, one and all,
went out with me to gather wild fruits for the voyage. We found
quinces, peaches, and figs, and the children gathered a basket of
each. It takes very little to please children, and these little ones,
never hearing a word in their lives except Spanish, made the hills
ring with mirth at the sound of words in English. They asked me the
names of all manner of things on the island. We came to a wild
fig-tree loaded with fruit, of which I gave them the English name.
"Figgies, figgies!" they cried, while they picked till their baskets
were full. But when I told them that the _cabra_ they pointed out was
only a goat, they screamed with laughter, and rolled on the grass in
wild delight to think that a man had come to their island who would
call a cabra a goat.
[Illustration: The man who called a cabra a goat.]
The first child born on Juan Fernandez, I was told, had become a
beautiful woman and was now a mother. Manuel Carroza and the good soul
who followed him here from Brazil had laid away their only child, a
girl, at the age of seven, in the little churchyard on the point. In
the same half-acre were other mounds among the rough lava rocks, some
marking the burial-place of native-born children, some the
resting-places of seamen from passing ships, landed here to end days
of sickness and get into a sailors' heaven.
The greatest drawback I saw in the island was the want of a school. A
class there would necessarily be small, but to some kind soul who
loved teaching and quietude life on Juan Fernandez would, for a
limited time, be one of delight.
On the morning of May 5, 1896, I sailed from Juan Fernandez, having
feasted on many things, but on nothing sweeter than the adventure
itself of a visit to the home and to the very cave of Robinson Crusoe.
From the island the _Spray_ bore away to the north, passing the island
of St. Felix before she gained the trade-winds, which seemed slow in
reaching their limits.
If the trades were tardy, however, when they did come they came with a
bang, and made up for lost time; and the _Spray_, under reefs,
sometimes one, sometimes two, flew before a gale for a great many
days, with a bone in her mouth, toward the Marquesas, in the west,
which, she made on the forty-third day out, and still kept on sailing.
My time was all taken up those days--not by standing at the helm; no
man, I think, could stand or sit and steer a vessel round the world: I
did better than that; for I sat and read my books, mended my clothes,
or cooked my meals and ate them in peace. I had already found that it
was not good to be alone, and so I made companionship with what there
was around me, sometimes with the universe and sometimes with my own
insignificant self; but my books were always my friends, let fail all
else. Nothing could be easier or more restful than my voyage in the
trade-winds.
I sailed with a free wind day after day, marking the position of my
ship on the chart with considerable precision; but this was done by
intuition, I think, more than by slavish calculations. For one whole
month my vessel held her course true; I had not, the while, so much as
a light in the binnacle. The Southern Cross I saw every night abeam.
The sun every morning came up astern; every evening it went down
ahead. I wished for no other compass to guide me, for these were true.
If I doubted my reckoning after a long time at sea I verified it by
reading the clock aloft made by the Great Architect, and it was right.
There was no denying that the comical side of the strange life
appeared. I awoke, sometimes, to find the sun already shining into my
cabin. I heard water rushing by, with only a thin plank between me and
the depths, and I said, "How is this?" But it was all right; it was my
ship on her course, sailing as no other ship had ever sailed before in
the world. The rushing water along her side told me that she was
sailing at full speed. I knew that no human hand was at the helm; I
knew that all was well with "the hands" forward, and that there was no
mutiny on board.
The phenomena of ocean meteorology were interesting studies even here
in the trade-winds. I observed that about every seven days the wind
freshened and drew several points farther than usual from the
direction of the pole; that is, it went round from east-southeast to
south-southeast, while at the same time a heavy swell rolled up from
the southwest. All this indicated that gales were going on in the
anti-trades. The wind then hauled day after day as it moderated, till
it stood again at the normal point, east-southeast. This is more or
less the constant state of the winter trades in latitude 12 degrees
S., where I "ran down the longitude" for weeks. The sun, we all know,
is the creator of the trade-winds and of the wind system over all the
earth. But ocean meteorology is, I think, the most fascinating of all.
From Juan Fernandez to the Marquesas I experienced six changes of
these great palpitations of sea-winds and of the sea itself, the
effect of far-off gales. To know the laws that govern the winds, and
to know that you know them, will give you an easy mind on your voyage
round the world; otherwise you may tremble at the appearance of every
cloud. What is true of this in the trade-winds is much more so in the
variables, where changes run more to extremes.
To cross the Pacific Ocean, even under the most favorable
circumstances, brings you for many days close to nature, and you
realize the vastness of the sea. Slowly but surely the mark of my
little ship's course on the track-chart reached out on the ocean and
across it, while at her utmost speed she marked with her keel still
slowly the sea that carried her. On the forty-third day from land,--a
long time to be at sea alone,--the sky being beautifully clear and the
moon being "in distance" with the sun, I threw up my sextant for
sights. I found from the result of three observations, after long
wrestling with lunar tables, that her longitude by observation agreed
within five miles of that by dead-reckoning.
This was wonderful; both, however, might be in error, but somehow I
felt confident that both were nearly true, and that in a few hours
more I should see land; and so it happened, for then I made the island
of Nukahiva, the southernmost of the Marquesas group, clear-cut and
lofty. The verified longitude when abreast was somewhere between the
two reckonings; this was extraordinary. All navigators will tell you
that from one day to another a ship may lose or gain more than five
miles in her sailing-account, and again, in the matter of lunars, even
expert lunarians are considered as doing clever work when they average
within eight miles of the truth.
I hope I am making it clear that I do not lay claim to cleverness or
to slavish calculations in my reckonings. I think I have already
stated that I kept my longitude, at least, mostly by intuition. A
rotator log always towed astern, but so much has to be allowed for
currents and for drift, which the log never shows, that it is only an
approximation, after all, to be corrected by one's own judgment from
data of a thousand voyages; and even then the master of the ship, if
he be wise, cries out for the lead and the lookout.
Unique was my experience in nautical astronomy from the deck of the
_Spray_--so much so that I feel justified in briefly telling it here.
The first set of sights, just spoken of, put her many hundred miles
west of my reckoning by account. I knew that this could not be
correct. In about an hour's time I took another set of observations
with the utmost care; the mean result of these was about the same as
that of the first set. I asked myself why, with my boasted
self-dependence, I had not done at least better than this. Then I went
in search of a discrepancy in the tables, and I found it. In the
tables I found that the column of figures from which I had got an
important logarithm was in error. It was a matter I could prove beyond
a doubt, and it made the difference as already stated. The tables
being corrected, I sailed on with self-reliance unshaken, and with my
tin clock fast asleep. The result of these observations naturally
tickled my vanity, for I knew that it was something to stand on a
great ship's deck and with two assistants take lunar observations
approximately near the truth. As one of the poorest of American
sailors, I was proud of the little achievement alone on the sloop,
even by chance though it may have been.
I was _en rapport_ now with my surroundings, and was carried on a vast
stream where I felt the buoyancy of His hand who made all the worlds.
I realized the mathematical truth of their motions, so well known that
astronomers compile tables of their positions through the years and
the days, and the minutes of a day, with such precision that one
coming along over the sea even five years later may, by their aid,
find the standard time of any given meridian on the earth.
To find local time is a simpler matter. The difference between local
and standard time is longitude expressed in time--four minutes, we all
know, representing one degree. This, briefly, is the principle on
which longitude is found independent of chronometers. The work of the
lunarian, though seldom practised in these days of chronometers, is
beautifully edifying, and there is nothing in the realm of navigation
that lifts one's heart up more in adoration.