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.