CRUSOE’S ISLAND

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19766, 14 February 1927, Page 5

CRUSOE’S ISLAND

WHERE WAS IT. i FACT AND FANCY , Tobago, often called “Robinson Cm- . soe’s island,” is only a few hour’s ; journey by sea from Trinidad, and is reached by a well-fitted Government- : owned steamer, which makes the return trip weekly. There are two Crusoe’s islands (writes the West Indies correspondent of “The Times”), one of fact the other of fancy. It is said that Defoe took as the basis of his romance' the story of a sailor who spent many years of loneliness on the island of Juan Fernandez, and, weaving much other material into it, gave Robinson Crusoe to the world. In the process he altered the scene of the story and laid it in Tobago. That Tobago is the place Defoe had in his mind is clear from the I book. In chapter 111., in which the shipwreck and the incidents leading up to it are described, Crusoe relates that i the leaking ship “was upon the coast of Guiana, or the north part of Brazil, beyond the River Amazon. towards that of the River Oroonoque, commonly called the Great River.” He goes on to say:—“We resolved to stand away for Barbados,” and “steered away N.W. by W., in order to reach some of our English islands.” Whilst the ship was following this course the storm which wrecked it broke. That fixes the general position of the island. In chapter XV. Defoe is more particular still, for he gets his bearings from Man Friday, and says that he learned from him that the great currents in the ocean that had been ?o serious a peril to him were “occasioned by the great draft and reflux of the mighty River Oroonoko, in the mouth or gulf of which river, as I found afterwards, our island lay; and that this land, which I perceived to be W. and N.W., was the great island Trinidad, on the north point of the month of the river.” There is a difficulty here, it is true; ' Trinidad is not north or north-west nf i Tobago, but south-west of it. The ' mistake, however, matters little, bej cause the narrative is fiction, and so • far as we know Defoe had never been jin Caribbean waters himself. The geoj graphical knowledge of that day, too, • was inexact.