DESERT SHORES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 99, 29 April 1933, Page 10 (Supplement)

DESERT SHORES.

CRUSOES AND THEIR STRAITS.

RECORDS OF CASTAWAYS,

(By EEL GORDON'.) A small item in the overseas news the other day described the finding on a lonely ifiland near the Straits of Magellan of a veritable real-life "Robinson 5 Crusoe," in the shape of a sailor, clad in goat skins and deprived of the power of speech by solitude, who had been cast away for a considerable time. The story was one that must have appealed to those whose commonsense had previously prevented them from taking Defoe's famous classic with any other°condimcnt than a grain of salt. Actually, however, there have been many real-life "Crusoes," as was pointed out recently in a book by that wellknown nautical writer Stanley Rogers. Defoe himself obtained the backbone of his epic from'the experiences of a conteinporary, Andrew Selkirk, who, in 1704, was castaway on the _ island of Juan Fernandez, in the Pacific, about 400 miles from Valparaiso. When Selkirk was* found after four and a half years' of solitude, like the modern sailor, he also was clad in goat skins, and was temporarily bereft of his speech. A curious aspect of Selkirk's exile was that during it he" developed immense physical powers, and when hunting the wild goats, that were his only meat, would outstrip them with his naked feet, pursue them down precipices even, and slay them with his hands alone. As the captain of the ship which found him said: "We had a bulldog which we sent along with him and with several of our swiftest runners, but Selkirk outstripped them all, both dog and men, captured the goats and brought them to us on his back." This prototpye of "Robinson Crusoe" stated on his return to London that -*jhe first few months of his solitude were the worst. Many times he meditated suicide, and for days lay about in a coma; but after a while his native resource —he was a Scotsman —reasserted itself, and he found relief from his .melancholia in endeavouring to make comfort out of the barrenness of his island. In 1720, a year after "Robinson Crusoe," a book appeared in London called "The Voyages, Dangerous Adventures and Imminent Escapes of Captain Richard Falconer." In this was told the story of yet another desert island castaway, almost a contemporary of Selkirk's.' He was, however, of somewhat a different stamp, more educated if less resourceful, and the months he spent on an island near Jamaeia were terrible ones, in which he had only unpalatable rats and sea birds for food, and scrub bushes growing in shifting sand for shelter. The narrative of his sufferings is interspersed with long sermons on the lessons of solitude. The early eighteenth century seems to have been a breeding ground for Crusocs. In 1723 yet another English sailor was abandoned on *a lonely island. This was Philip Aehton, who was castaway on Ruatan Island, near Honduras. He was exiled for nine months, unhappy ones, for although Ruatan was a fertile island, with an abundant flora, many animals, and even snakes, the effort to preserve himself from the attacks of these latter, and from the attention of numerous poisonous insects, nearly drove the lonely man to distraction. When eventually he was found he could only crawl down to the water's edge to meet his rescuers. All castways, however, have not been lonely. Again at the beginning of the eighteenth century, in 1710, fourteen men, the remnants of the crew of the galley Nottingham, were cast ashore on the rocky knoll, Boon Island, off the east coast of the United States. There they suffered the pangs of starvation, and considerable privation as the result of extreme cold. Their number was considerably reduced when they were rescued only a few months later. In the short time of their suffering, however, they had been forced to turn cannibal, and eat the body of one of their members who had died: And these were not the only ; Crusoes who were forced to the last resort to preserve themselves. In 1700 a Frenchman and woman—Pierre Viaud and Madame La Couture—cast ashore off Florida, murdered their negro slave and ate him before eventually finding safety, after many months of lonely privation. The list of real-life Crusoes is not exhausted by those already mentioned. It is a long list, beginning long ago in the

time wlien man first ventured across lonely seas in cockle-shell ships, and ending, as was revealed in the news the other day, in this advanced era when it would bo thought that man's mastery over Nature was complete. The length of the list, however, proves indisputably thei old adage that truth is stranger than fiction. ' 14