Crusoe's Island: A Ramble in the Footsteps of Alexander Selkirk. Browne John Ross

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СКАЧАТЬ back into the valley, we beheld mountains stretching up to a hundred different peaks, the sides covered with woods and fields of golden-colored oats, and the ravines fringed with green banks of grass and wild flowers of every hue. A stream of pure spring water rippled down over the rocks, and wound through the centre of the valley, breaking out at intervals into bright cascades, which glimmered freshly in the warm rays of the sun; its margins were fringed with rich grass and fragrant flowers, and groves of myrtle overhung the little lakelets that were made in its course, and seemed to linger there like mirrored beauties spell-bound. Ridges of amber-colored earth, mingled with rugged and moss-covered lava, sloped down from the mountains on every side and converged into the valley, as if attracted by its romantic beauties. Immense masses of rock, cast off from the towering cliffs by some dread convulsion of the elements, had fallen from the heights, and now lay nestling in the very bosom of the valley, enamored with its charms. Even the birds of the air seemed spell-bound within this enchanted circle; their songs were low and soft, and I fancied they hung in the air with a kind of rapture when they rose out of their sylvan homes, and looked down at all the wondrous beauties that lay outspread beneath them.

      Some of us scattered off into the woods of myrtle, or lay down by the spring in the pleasant shade of the trees, and bathed our faces and drank of the cool water; others went up the hill-sides in search of peaches, or gathered seeds and specimens of wild flowers to carry home. Too happy in the change, after our gloomy passage round Cape Horn, I rambled up the valley alone, and dreamed glowing day-dreams of Robinson Crusoe. Of all the islands of the sea, this had ever been the paradise of my boyish fancy. Even later in life, when some hard experience before the mast had worn off a good deal of the romance of sea-life, I could never think of Juan Fernandez without a strong desire to be shipwrecked there, and spend the remainder of my days dressed in goatskins, rambling about the cliffs, and hunting wild goats. It was a very imprudent desire, to be sure, not at all sensible; but I am now making a confession of facts rather out of the common order, and for which it would be useless to offer any excuse. Pleasant scenes of my early life rose up before me now with all their original freshness. How well I remembered the first time I read the surprising adventures of Robinson Crusoe! It was in the country, where I had never learned the worldly wisdom of the rising generation in cities. Indeed, I had never seen a city, and only knew by hearsay that such wonderful places existed. My father, after an absence of some weeks, returned with an illustrated volume of Crusoe, bound in cream-colored muslin (how plainly I could see that book now!), which he gave me, with a smiling admonition not to commence reading it for two or three years, by which time he hoped I would be old enough to understand it. That very night I was in a new world – a world all strange and fascinating, yet to me as real as the world around me. How I devoured each enchanting page, and sighed to think of ever getting through such a delightful history. It was the first book beyond mere fairy tales (which I had almost begun to doubt), the first narrative descriptive of real life that I had ever read. Such a thing as a doubt as to its entire truthfulness never entered my head. I lingered over it with the most intense and credulous interest, and long after parental authority had compelled me to give it up for the night, my whole soul was filled with a confusion of novel and delightful sensations. Before daylight I was up again; I could not read in the dark, but I could open the magic book and smell the leaves fresh from the press; and before the type was visible I could trace out the figures in the prints, and gaze in breathless wonder upon the wild man in the goatskins.

      The big tears stood in my eyes when I was through; but I found consolation in reading it again and again; in picturing out a thousand things that perhaps De Foe never dreamt of; and each night when I went to bed I earnestly prayed to God that I might some day or other be cast upon a desolate island, and live to become as wonderful a man as Robinson Crusoe. Yet, not content with that, I devoted all my leisure hours to making knife-cases, caps, and shot-pouches out of rabbit-skins, in the faint hope that it would hasten the blissful disaster. Years passed away; I lived on the banks of the Ohio; I had been upon the ocean. Still a boy in years, and more so perhaps in feeling, the dream was not ended. I gathered up drift-wood, and built a hut among the rocks; whole days I lay there thinking of that island in the far-off seas. A piece of tarred plank from some steam-boat had a sweeter scent to me than the most odorous flower; for, as I lay smelling it by the hour, it brought up such exquisite visions of shipwreck as never before, perhaps, so charmed the fancy of a dreaming youth. Well I remembered, too, the favored few that I let into the secret; how we went every afternoon to a sand-bar, and called it Crusoe's Island; how I was Robinson Crusoe, and the friend of my heart Friday, whom I caused to be painted from head to foot with black mud, as also the rest of my friends; and then the battles we had; the devouring of the dead men; the horrible dances, and chasing into the water; and, above all, the rescue of my beloved Friday – how vividly I saw those scenes again!

      Years passed on; I was a sailor before the mast. Alas! what a sad reality! I saw men flogged like beasts; I saw cruelty, hardship, disease, death in their worst forms; so much I saw that I was glad to take the place of a wandering outcast upon the shores of a sickly island ten thousand miles from home, to escape the horrors of that life. Yet the dream was not ended. Bright and beautiful as ever seemed to me that little world upon the seas, where dwelt in solitude the shipwrecked mariner. In the vicissitudes of fortune, I was again a wanderer; impelled by that vision of island-life which for seventeen years had never ceased to haunt me, I cast all upon the hazard of a die – escaped in an open boat through the perils of a storm, and now – where was I? What pleasant sadness was it that weighed upon my heart? Was all this a dream of youth; was it here to end, never more to give one gleam of joy; was the happy credulity, the freshness, the enthusiasm of boyhood gone forever? Could it be that this was not Crusoe's Valley at last – this spot, which I had often seen in fancy from the banks of the Ohio, dim in the mist of seas that lay between? Did I really wander through it, or was it still a dream?

      And where was the king of the island; the hero of my boyish fancy; he who had delighted me with the narrative of his romantic career, as man had never done before, as all the pleasures of life have never done since; where was the genial, the earnest, the adventurous Robinson Crusoe? Could it be that there was no "mortal mixture of earth's mould in him;" that he was barely the simple mariner Alexander Selkirk? No! no! Robinson Crusoe himself had wandered through these very groves of myrtle; he had quenched his thirst in the spring that bubbled through the moss at my feet; had slept during the glare of noon in the shade of those overhanging grottoes; had dreamed his day-dreams in these secluded glens.

      Here, too, Friday had followed his master; the simple, childlike Friday, the most devoted of servants, the gentlest of savages, the faithfullest of men! Blessing on thee, Robinson, how I have admired thy prolific genius; how I have loved thee for thine honest truthfulness! And blessings on thee, Friday, how my young heart hath warmed toward thee! how I have laughed at thy scalded fingers, and wept lest the savages should take thee away from me! * * *

       CHAPTER VI.

      THE VALLEY ON FIRE

      There was a sudden rustling in the bushes.

      "Hallo, there!" shouted a voice. I looked round and beheld a fellow-passenger, a strange, eccentric man, who was seldom known to laugh, and whose chief pleasure consisted in reducing every thing to the practical standard of common sense. He was deeper than would appear at first sight, and not a bad sort of person at heart, but a little wayward and desponding in his views of life.

      "You'll catch cold," said he; "nothing gives a cold so quick as sitting on the damp ground."

      "True," said I, smiling; "but recollect the romance of the thing."

      "Romance," rejoined the sad man, "won't cure a cold. I never knew it to cure one in my life."

      "Well, I suppose you're right. Every body is right who believes in nothing but reality. The hewer of wood and the drawer of water gets more credit in the world for good sense than the unhappy genius who affords pleasure to thousands."

      "So he ought – he's a much more useful man."

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