Crusoe's Island; a bird-hunter's story

Front matter

LIBRARY

UNITED STATES BUREAU OF EDUCATION,

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR.

Introduction To The Home Beading Book Seeies By The Editor

The new education takes two important directions — one of these is toward original observation, requiring the pupil to test and verify what is taught him at school by his own experiments. The information that he learns from books or hears from his teacher's lips must be assimilated by incorporating it with his own experience.

The other direction pointed out by the new education is systematic home reading. It forms a part of school extension of all kinds. The so-called " University Extension " that originated at Cambridge and Oxford has as its chief feature the aid of home reading by lectures and round-table discussions, led or conducted by experts who also lay out the course of reading. The Chautauquan movement in this country prescribes a series of excellent books and furnishes for a goodly number of its readers annual courses of lectures. The teachers' reading circles that exist in many States prescribe the books to be read, and publish some analysis, commentary, or catechism to aid the members.

Home reading, it seems, furnishes the essential basis of this great movement to extend education viii CRUSOE'S ISLAND.

beyond the school and to make self -culture a habit of life.

Looking more carefully at the difference between the two directions of the new education we can see what each accomplishes. There is first an effort to train the original powers of the individual and make him self -active, quick at observation, and free in his thinking. Next, the new education endeavors, by the reading of books and the study of the wisdom of the race, to make the child or youth a participator in the results of experience of all mankind.

These two movements may be made antagonistic by poor teaching. The book knowledge, containing as it does the precious lesson of human experience, may be so taught as to bring with it only dead rules of conduct, only dead scraps of information, and no stimulant to original thinking. Its contents may be memorized without beine; understood. On the other hand, the self -activity of the child may be stimulated at the expense of his social well-being — his originality may be cultivated at the expense of his rationality. If he is taught persistently to have his own way, to trust only his own senses, to cling to his own opinions heedless of the experience of his fellows, he is preparing for an unsuccessful, misanthropic career, and is likely enough to end his life in a madhouse.

It is admitted that a too exclusive study of the knowledge found in books, the knowledge which is aggregated from the experience and thought of other people, may result in loading the mind of the pupil with material which he can not use to advantage.

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION. i x

Some minds are so full of lumber that there is no space left to set up a workshop. The necessity of uniting both of these directions of intellectual activity in the schools is therefore obvious, but we must not, in this place, fall into the error of supposing that it is the oral instruction in school and the personal influence of the teacher alone that excites the pupil to activity. Book instruction is not always dry and theoretical. The very persons who declaim against the book, and praise in such strong terms the self -activity of the pupil and original research, are mostly persons who have received their practical impulse from reading the writings of educational reformers. Yery few persons have received an impulse from personal contact with inspiring teachers compared with the number that have received an impulse from such books as Herbert Spencer's Treatise on Education, Rousseau's Emile, Pestalozzi's Leonard and Gertrude, Francis W. Parker's Talks about Teaching, G. Stanley Hall's Pedagogical Seminary. Think in this connection, too, of the impulse to observation in natural science produced by such books as those of Hugh Miller, Faraday, Tyndall, Huxley, Agassiz, and Darwin.

The new scientific book is different from the old. The old style book of science gave dead results where the new one gives not only the results, but a minute account of the method employed in reaching those results. An insight into the method employed in discovery trains the reader into a naturalist, an historian, a sociologist. The books of the writers above named have done more to stimulate original research on the

X CRUSOE'S ISLAND.

part of their readers than all other influences combined.

It is therefore much more a matter of importance to get the right kind of book than to get a living teacher. The book which teaches results, and at the same time gives in an intelligible manner the steps of discovery and the methods employed, is a book which will stimulate the student to repeat the experiments described and get beyond these into fields of original research himself. Every one remembers the published lectures of Faraday on chemistry, which exercised a wide influence in changing the style of books on natural science, causing them to deal with method more than results, and thus to train the reader's power of conducting original research. Robinson Crusoe for nearly two hundred years has stimulated adventure and prompted young men to resort to the border lands of civilization. A library of home reading should contain books that stimulate to self -activity and arouse the spirit of inquiry. The books should treat of methods of discovery and evolution. All nature is unified by the discovery of the law of evolution. Each and every being in the world is now explained by the process of development to which it belongs. Every fact now throws light on all the others by illustrating the process of growth in which each has its end and aim.

The Home Reading Books are to be classed as follows :

First Division. Natural history, including popular scientific treatises on plants and animals, and also de-

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION. xi

scriptions of geographical localities. The branch of study in the district school course which corresponds to this is geography. Travels and sojourns in distant lands ; special writings which treat of this or that animal or plant, or family of animals or plants ; anything that relates to organic nature or to meteorology, or descriptive astronomy may be placed in this class.

Second Division. Whatever relates to physics or natural philosophy, to the statics or dynamics of air or water or light or electricity, or to the properties of matter ; whatever relates to chemistry, either organic or inorganic — books on these subjects belong to the class that relates to what is inorganic. Even the so-called organic chemistry relates to the analysis of organic bodies into their inorganic compounds.

Third Division. History and biography and ethnology. Books relating to the lives of individuals, and especially to the social life of the nation, and to the collisions of nations in war, as well as to the aid that one gives to another through commerce in times of peace ; books on ethnology relating to the manners and customs of savage or civilized peoples ; books on the primitive manners and customs which belong to the earliest human beings — books on these subjects belong to the third class, relating particularly to the human will, not merely the individual will but the social will, the will of the tribe or nation ; and to this third class belong also books on ethics and morals, and on forms of government and laws, and what is included under the term civics or the duties of citizenship.

xii CRUSOE'S ISLAND.

Fourth Division. The fourth class of books includes more especially literature and works that make known the beautiful in such departments as sculpture, painting, architecture and music. Literature and art show human nature in the form of feelings, emotions, and aspirations, and they show how these feelings lead over to deeds and to clear thoughts. This department of books is perhaps more important than any other in our home reading, inasmuch as it teaches a knowledge of human nature and enables us to understand the motives that lead our fellow-men to action.

To each book is added an analysis in order to aid the reader in separating the essential points from the unessential, and give each its proper share of attention.

W. T. Haeeis.

Washington, D. C, November 16, 1896.

PKEFACE

The various haps and mishaps herein related occurred at a time so remote that now, in retrospection, they appear to me like the doings of some one else, or at least of my own in another state of existence ; for I was then nineteen years younger than at the moment of penning these lines. The world was all before me, mine but to conquer, and alluring Hope was ever beckoning me on from one achievement to another.

My exploration of Crusoe's isle was not altogether fortuitous, since I had it in mind for many years and had already equipped myself for the attempt by previous endeavor in related fields. Sent out to make an ornithological investigation of the Lesser Antilles, under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution, I found myself at the termination of my labors craving new worlds to conquer and a wider range of observation. Then occurred to me the dream of my youth, my determination to search out the truth respecting a hero of my earlier years, one Robinson Crusoe, mariner, who, it appeared to me, had long lain under a xiv CKUSOE'S ISLAND.

cloud of misrepresentation — that is, he had been confounded with one Alexander Selkirk, and the scenes of their respective adventures somehow most woefully mixed.

It was not from a desire, whether laudable or otherwise, to rehabilitate either one of these worthies, nor to set myself up as a meddlesome iconoclast, that I undertook to disentangle the woof of fiction from the warp of truth. It was, in fact, nothing less than a love of adventure and an excuse for indulging in it, that led me to dwell alone in an island, remote from home and friends. The love for adventure was born in me ; the excuse was necessary to placate the outraged sensibilities of the staid community in which my boyhood had been passed, where any departure from prescribed custom was frowned upon and any yielding to sentiment severely reprobated.

However that may have been, and however ready others will be to proscribe me for having invaded the sacred precincts of the past, I would call attention to the fact that I have not sought to destroy any preconceived idol of the popular mind, only to restore it to its proper niche !

In a word, ever since Defoe gave to the world his inimitable creation, Robinson Crusoe, his readers (and there have been millions of them) have persisted in locating the chief character of the immortal work in a different part of the world from that which the author intended.

Not that it makes any great difference ; but since I happened to have discovered the truth (or in com-

PREFACE. xv

mon with a few others to have perceived it), I deem it desirable to publish the fact. As proof of my statement that Crusoe's island lies north of the equator, instead of to the south of it, the following pages are offered in evidence.

And in these pages I proffer a description of the veritable island in which Robinson Crusoe lived his lonely life, the scene of his wreck, his cave, his hower, his Man Friday ; the birds and trees he saw or ought to have seen, together with a narrative of the author's own experience in the wilderness of Tobago.

Various quotations from Crusoe have been used, which, together with the internal evidence of the book itself, seem to show conclusively that the island of his exile was not Juan Fernandez in the Pacific Ocean, but Tobago in the Caribbean Sea, not far distant from the north coast of South America.

In very truth, if the vessel in which Crusoe was wrecked had sailed only a little farther to the northward, and if he himself had but lived a little later (say a century or so), he might have been claimed as a fellow-citizen, by the inhabitants of our great commonwealth, the prototype of which he founded on his island, in his latter years.

Frederick A. Ober.

New York, October, 1S07.

CONTENTS,

CHAPTER

I. — HOW I FOUND THE ISLAND

IT. — Enemies ashore and afloat .

III. — First day in the forest IV. — The King of the Woods V. — Jacamars, parrots, and trogons VI. — Some queer and troublesome neighbors VII. — How I caught a Tartar VIII. — My happy family .

IX. — JUMBO-JOCKO AND THE COCKERRICOS

X. — My friends Pomona and Ceres

XI. — MY HOME ON THE HILLTOP

XI T. — Home of the humming birds XIII. — The maxakixs' aerial dance

XIV. — I LIGHT THE FRAGANT FIRE

XV. — Trees of the tropical forest XVI. — All about Crusoe's Man Friday XVII. — Treed by wild peccaries

XVIII. — JlMCRACK AND THE JUMBIES .

XIX. — The devotion of Thomas Ned XX. — A visit to the world outside XXI. — The fatness of the earth .

XXII. — After the hurricane .

XXIII. — Thomas Ned finds a pearl op price

Index

x v i i

PAGE 1

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Scarborough, capital of Tobago

Map of South America

The shipwreck .

Approach to Tobago

My hut on the beach

The " gray ghost " .

Crusoe, as described by himself

Nest of the cassican

The crested cassican

A forest pool .

The jacamar

The Tobago trogon .

Royal trogon of Mexico

Reading by the fireflies' light

An army of ants

Parrots of Tobago .

A pair of agoutis

The tropic bird

The cockerrico .

Jumbo- Jocko, the great boa

Cacao tree and fruit

Cassava cakes out to dry

Pineapple plants

Sicklebill humming bird

Fr ontispiece

PAGE

PAGE

Dancing manakins 119

Scissorstails 124

Wrens fighting a whipsnake 128

Griigru palms 134

Native huts and trees 138

Distant view of Tobago 141

Crusoe rescues " Friday " ....... 143

Caribs of the West Indies ....... 146

Carib implements of stone 148

A group of Caribs . 151

Young Carib girl . . . . ... . . . 153

A Carib " thunderbolt " 155

Treed by the peccaries 1G1

Gathering cocoanuts ........ 183

Noosing the iguana 189

An Obeah charm ......... 192

Crusoe's ship — from his own book 205

Man-o'-war Bay, Tobago ........ 207

The armadillo 216

Carib arrowroot mill 225

A fish for a fishhook 228

Remoras and shark 230

Bird-spider and lizard 232

In the devilfish's coils 240

The grave beneath the palms 243

Appendix

Map showing Crusoe's voyages (date 1719) .... 246

Portrait of Robinson Crusoe, taken 1719 .... 252

Title-page of Crusoe, third edition 257

Title-page of Selkirk's narrative 263

CBUSOE'S ISLAND.

Chapter I. How I Found The Island

A statement of the case — Where Crusoe was wrecked — Cradled on a reef — The coast of Tobago — Left alone on shore.

There is one period of my life which I call my "Crusoe year," because it was owing to suggestions from Robinson Crusoe that I enjoyed its rich and varied experiences. It all came about through my desire to know more of the island in which Crusoe had his wonderful adventures. That was something which the author of the book seemed to have left out — just where it was situated ; yet it was the very thing that interested me most.

And when I was a boy I resolved that if I ever grew up to be a man, and had as much as fifty or a hundred dollars, I would make a voyage and determine for myself where he was located after the shipwreck ; where he made his bower, and his cave, and kept his flocks of goats ; and above all, where he first met " Man Friday," and who Man Friday was.

It came to pass that, after I had attained to man's estate, I found myself possessed of somewhat more

l than a hundred dollars ; and then I concluded to make my voyage, and see where all those interesting things took place ; even though the events narrated occurred more than two hundred years ago. That doesn't matter ; the world has always had boys in it, and, I fancy, they have always been pretty much the same. That is, they liked good, hearty adventure, liked to be out of doors, and wanted to see a bit of the world.

Well, to cut short a story that otherwise might be made very long, I finally found myself aboard a small schooner, bound for the islands of Barbados and Trinidad. The master of the vessel was an old friend of mine, Captain Larcom, who in his youth used to sail from Salem to the East Indies, when our commercial marine was more flourishing than it is at the present. He had amassed a little fortune through his long years at sea, and was virtually on the retired list ; but he now and then took a sea trip, just to keep his hand in, as he expressed it.

He and I used to play checkers together during the long winter evenings at home, and in the intervals of the game we would discuss his voyages and adventures. I at last ventured to tell him of my strong desire to visit Crusoe's island, and he was much interested.

" But, you know," he said, " it will be a long and expensive voyage, away round the Horn to the coast of Chili, and the island of Juan Fernandez ; it will take a lot of time and money."

" Yes," I replied rather dubiously ; " but I don't want to go to Juan Fernandez, but to Tobago, in the Caribbean Sea."

" You do ? What do you want to go there for ? "

" Because that is Crusoe's island."

" Nonsense, boy ; Crusoe's island is Juan Fernandez, in latitude 30° and some minutes south of the equator; while Tobago is only 11° north — right at our doors, as one might say."

" Well, captain, I don't want to contradict you, but you are making the same mistake everybody else has made for nearly two hundred years. You have confounded Robinson Crusoe with Alexander Selkirk, when they are two entirely different individuals, no more alike than you and 1 are."

" Do you mean to say that Defoe didn't steal his story from Selkirk ? I was always told that he did. If he didn't where did he get it ? "

" Where did he get it ? Perhaps from the old navigators who had lived before him, and had published accounts of their voyages, such as Drake the Sea King, Sir Walter Raleigh, and many others, who sailed to the West Indies and coasted the Spanish Main."

" That sounds all right ; but it'll take pretty strong evidence to make me believe that Tobago is the island, even if Juan Fernandez isn't. I'll tell you what I'll do : I'm going down to Trinidad next month, after a cargo of asphalt, and if you'll prove to me that Tobago was the island Crusoe lived on, I'll take you there for nothing."

I was overjoyed at this, for I had made my position secure, and knew that I could convince the captain of the truth of it. And I did it from the Crusoe book itself, as follows : " You will remember that Crusoe, when a young man, ran away to sea, was shipwrecked, captured by the savage Moors, with whom he lived as a captive two years or so on the coast of Africa, and then escaped and finally arrived at the Brazils. Here he lived about four years as a planter, at the end of which time he set out for Africa again in quest of slaves. It is with this latter voyage that his real adventures begin, for it ended in shipwreck and led to his long period of seclusion on the island in question.

" They had not been out long when, the storm abating a little — to quote directly from Crusoe's own journal — ' The Master made an observation as well as he could, and found that he was in about 11° of north Latitude, so that we were gotten beyond the coast of Guiana, and beyond the river Amazones, towards the River Oroonoque (Orinoco) commonly called the Great Eiver.' "

" Bless my stars ! " said the captain, when I read this to him, " that does look like Tobago. But go on ; I'm anxious to see where he fetched up."

" ' So we chang'd our course, and steer 1 d away N. W. by W., in order to reach some of the English Islands ; but a second Storm came upon us and drove us so out of the way of all humane Commerce, that, had all our lives been saved, as to the Sea, we were rather in danger of being devour' d by the Salvages, than of ever returning to our own country. In this distress, one of our Men, early in the Morning, cry'd "Land!" and we had no sooner ran out of the Cabbin to look, in the hopes of seeing whereabouts in the World we were, but the Ship struck upon a Rock, and in a moment, her motion being stopp'd, the Sea broke over her in such a manner that we expected we should all have perish'd immediately.' ' ;

" That is clever enough," assented the captain, " and the latitude they were in leaves Juan Fernandez out of the question, for it lies more than 40° to the southward of their last position.' 1

Passing over the events attendant upon the landing of Crusoe, and his dismal moralizings, I turned to the page where we tind him, after having in a measure recovered from his disaster, setting out on a tour of exploration.

" ' When I pass'd the Yale where my Bower stood, I came within view of the Sea, and, it being a clear Day, I fairly descried Land — whether an Island or a Continent, I could not tell ; but it lay very high, at a very great distance.'

" And later, when he had a companion in the faithful ' Friday,' he says : ' I ask'd him how far it was from our Island to the Shore, and whether Canoes were not often lost. And he told me there was no danger, — no Canoes ever lost ; but that a little way out to Sea there was a Wind and a Current, always one way in the Morning, and another in the Afternoon. This I understood to be no more than the sets of the Tyde, as going out and coming in ; but I afterwards understood it to be occasioned by the great draught and. reflux of the mighty River Oroonoque, in the mouth or gulph of which our Island lay. And the Land which I perceiv'd was the great Island of Trinidad, on the north point of the mouth of the River.' "

" That's enough, my boy," said the kind old captain, " you needn't read any more, for your case is proven. You've convinced me that the island is really Tobago, for there isn't any other in that latitude, off the mouth of the Orinoco, from which the island of Trinidad can be seen. I'll take you there, as I said. I would have done so, anyway, as it won't be much out of my way ; only, the currents along Tobago coast are very strong, and may cause me trouble."

Thus it was that we made the voyage together, starting in the month of January, crossing the Gulf Stream and the Sargasso Sea, touching at the island of Barbados, and finally bringing in sight the object of my quest one evening, just as the sun went down.

The first officer pointed out to me a long black cloud, which he said was Tobago, promising to be close upon it in the morning, adding that he envied me the fun I'd have when I got on shore. And that night I could not sleep, thinking of " the fun I'd have " on the morrow.

And it was as well I could not, for a little after midnight a sudden and terrible shock threw me out of my bunk and upon the floor, where for a time I lay bewildered. Another still heavier blow, which thrilled the good schooner through from stem to stern, brought back my scattered senses, and I groped my way out of the cabin and scrambled to the deck. There I saw my dear old captain clinging to the wheel, maintaining his post nobly, though dashed from port to starboard every time a wave came in. Looking over the side, I saw that we were surrounded by breakers, with great white-crested rollers hurrying upon us from every direction.

A great crash announced a new disaster ; a tremendous wave rolled over the stern, unshipped the rudder, and knocked the helmsman flat on deck, where for a moment he lay groaning. I ran, raised him in my arms, and supported him ; he was so dazed that he reeled like a drunken man. But, notwithstanding the severe shock he had received, as soon as he looked about him lie uttered a cry of joy. For that last great wave had thrown the vessel over the reef of coral and into a sheltered harbor. We were floating in calm water, for the moment as safe as though tied up to the dock at home. An anchor was let go and the pumps tried, which soon showed that no leak had started, the only damage being to the unshipped rudder.

The captain consulted with his officers, and it was decided that the rudder could be rigged with chains until Trinidad was reached, where the vessel could be overhauled. It was then explained to me that the vessel had been caught by one of those strong currents from the Orinoco, which had drifted her in upon Tobago shore before the helmsman and the watch were aware of their peril.

Daylight revealed our position, close under the shadow of a high promontory, right abreast a deep bay with white, sandy beach. An exclamation of delight burst from me as I saw the beauties of that tropic strand unfolded in the brightening dawn. This was the island I had sought ; more beautiful than any dream of mine, at last it lay before me !

At first the captain would not hear of my going ashore alone, for there was no house in sight, no evidence whatever of the presence of human beings. But I finally convinced him that this was the very thing I desired ; that I had come here to live a life of seclusion ; to dwell apart from men after the manner of my great predecessor, Crusoe. So he finally yielded, gathered together my " traps," added to my scant

HOW I FOUND THE ISLAND.

stores a barrel of beef and " hard tack,"' put them all in the boat, and himself accompanied me to the little beach lying between the great cliffs which broke out of the dense forest.

Then he took me aside for a little talk. It does not matter what he said ; but our eyes were a trifle moist as he turned to go, and the pressure of his big hand remained in mine long after he had disappeared. Then I sat down beneath a palm and tried to get familiar with a new feeling of loneliness, as a last farewell was shouted to me, and a projecting promontory hid the last flock of sail from sight.

I had been taken at my word, and left alone. At length my dream was realized, and my feet pressed the soil of Tobao-o, the island of Crusoe's adventures.

CHAPTEK II.

ENEMIES AS HOKE AND AFLOAT.

My hut of palm spathes — The deadly manchineels — How I caught fish without hook or net — The morning bath in the bay — Approaching danger — The great gray ghost of a shark.

After the ship had disappeared behind the point, it was a long while before I could collect my thoughts and prepare for action. But as I had no shelter for the coming night, I had no time to lose, if I did not wish to sleep exposed upon the sands. Material for shelter was close at hand, for I found a lot of straight poles, cast up by the waves, and these served as uprights for the support of a thatch of palm leaves, with which the beach was strewn.

Selecting a spot beneath the palms on the bank of a stream, I drove the poles into the sand, and soon had the four sides of my hut in place. Over this skeleton I tacked strips of canvas, covering them with the palm leaves. Above them I placed a layer of the great spathes of the mountain palm, some of which were from six to eight feet long and two feet broad ; they were curved like Spanish tiles, and formed excellent roofing material. I connected the poles by crosspieces, and covered them with leaves ; and in a

ENEMIES ASHORE AND AFLOAT.

few hours I had a shelter sufficient for protection from the night air and from the sun by day.

Out of some rough boards which I found on the beach I made a floor. Into one corner of my hut I then rolled a barrel of beef, into another one of pork, while the cracker and ammunition boxes formed good substitutes for chairs and tables. Bracing the corner posts of two ends of the hut with stakes, I swung my hammock from the eaves ; and there I was, prepared