"The Isle of Pines" was Neville's fifth publication, issued nine years
after his fourth, a political tract: "Shuffling, Cutting and Dealing
in a Game of Picquet" Like most titles of the day, that of "The Isle of
Pines" did not fail in quantity. It was repeated word for word, except
the imprint, on the first page of the text. Briefly, the relation
purports to have been written by an Englishman, George Pine, who at the
age of twenty shipped as book-keeper in the India Merchant, which sailed
for the East Indies in 1569.
Having rounded the Cape of Good Hope and [37]being almost within sight
of St. Lawrence's Island, now Madagascar,{1} they encountered a great
storm of wind, which separated the ship from her consorts, blew many
days, and finally wrecked the vessel on a rocky island. The entire
company was drowned except Pine, the daughter of his master, two
maid-servants, and one negro female slave. They gathered what they could
of the wreckage, and Pine and his companions lived there in community
life, a free-love settlement By the four women he had forty-seven
children, and in his sixtieth year he claimed to have 565 children,
grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. It was from one of his
grandchildren that the Dutch ship received the relation. Apart from the
title-page, the entire tract is occupied by the story of George Pine,
from whom the island took its name. In 1667, or ninety-eight years after
Pine was wrecked, the Dutch captain estimated that the population of the
island amounted to ten or twelve thousand persons. Methuselah, with his
years to plead for him, might boast of such breeding, but in ordinary
man it is too near the verminous, the rat, the guinea-pig, and the
rabbit, to be pleasant.
1 It was the Island of St. Laurence of James Lancaster's
Voyage, 1593. Hakluyt, Principall Navigations, vi. 401.
The publication must have attracted attention at once, for before
the end of July Neville put forth a second part, "A New and further
Discovery of The Isle of Pines," which purported to be the relation of
the Dutch captain to whom the history of Pines had been confided. It is
an unadorned story such as might have been gathered from a dozen tales
in Hakluyt or Purchas, and is interesting only in giving the name of
the [38]Dutch captain--Cornelius Van Sloetton--and the location of
the supposed island--longitude 76° and latitude 20°, under the third
climate--which places it to the northeast of Madagascar. Almost
immediately after the publication of the second part it was combined
with the first part, as already described, and published late in July
or early in August Cornelius Van Sloetton, as he signed himself in the
second part, became Henry Cornelius Van Sloetten in the combined issue.