Robinson Crusoe, on the contrary, was shipwrecked,
and escaped by swimming to a desolate
island not laid down upon the maps. Juan
Fernandez is in the Pacilic Ocean, about thirty-four
degrees, or more than two thousand miles,
south of the Equator, and four hundred miles
from the south-west coast of South America.
Let us now see where Robinson Crusoe's island
is situated.

Robinson Crusoe relates that he had been
living for some years as a planter in Brazil,
and, being " straitened " for want of slaves,
was induced to go on an expedition to the
opposite coast of Africa for the purpose of
procuring negroes. From San Salvador or Bania,
on the east coast of Brazil, " we set sail," he
says, "standing away to the northward upon
our own coast, with design to stretch over to
the African coast." After encountering a severe
hurricane, " being in the latitude of twelve
degrees eighteen minutes, a second storm came,
which earned the ship far away to the westward,
and drove us so out of the very way of all human
commerce, that, had all our lives been saved as
to the sea, we were rather in danger of being
devoured by savages, than ever returning to our
own country. In this distress, the wind still
blowing very hard, one of our men, early in the
morning, cried out, Land! and we had no sooner
ran out of the cabin to look out, in hopes of
seeing whereabouts in the world we were, but
the ship struck upon a sand, and in a moment,
her motion being so stopped, the sea broke over
her in such a manner that we expected we
should all have perished immediately."

The crew took to the boat, which soon
swamped, and all perished except Robinson
Crusoe, who swam to shore, and found himself
on an island, from the highest part of
which the mainland was distinctly visible on
a fair clay. In his first conversation with his
"man Friday," Crusoe states that they talked
of a current which swept by the island, and
which, he says, " I understood to be no
more than the sets of the tide, as going out
or coming in; but I afterwards understood it
was occasioned by the great draft and reflux of
the mighty river Oroonoque, in the mouth or
gulf of which river, as I found afterwards, our
island lay; and this land which I perceived to
the west and north-west, was the great island
Trinidad, on the north point of the mouth of
the river." If any more evidence be needed to
prove that Juan Fernandez has no more claim
to be considered Robinson Crusoe's island than
the island of Lampedusa has to be considered
that of Prosperp, the question is settled by the
title of the original edition of Robinson Crusoe,
always abridged by modern publishers. It reads:
"The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures
of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner; who
lived eight-and-twenty years, all aloue, in an
uninhabited Island on the Coast of America, near
the mouth of the Great River Oroonoque; having
been cast on shore by shipwreck, wherein all the
men perished but himself. With an account
how he was at last strangely delivered by Pirates.
Written by himself. London: printed
for Mr. Taylor, at the Ship, in Paternoster
Row."

The adventures of Alexander Selkirk were
published by Captain Woodes Rogers and
Edward Cooke, in 1712, seven years before Robinson
Crusoe was printed, in a book well described
in its title-page: "The World Displayed, or a
Curious Collection of Voyages and Travels
selected from the Writers of all Nations in which
the Conjectures and Interpolations of several
vain Editors and Translations are expunged;
every Relation is made concise and plain, and
the Divisions of Counties and Kingdoms are
clearly and distinctly noted. Illustrated and
embellished with a variety of Maps and Prints
by the best Hands. London, 1771." The
sixth volume of this book contains the voyage
during which Selkirk was landed on the island
of Juan Fernandez. De Foe may very possibly
have imitated Alexander Selkirk's story in some
particulars: Selkirk kept tame goats and cats;
Robinson Crusoe had his parrot, dog, and goat;
but De Foe unquestionably made his own great
narrative. There is reason to suppose that
he may have seen and conversed with Selkirk.
It has indeed been conjectured that the book
was suggested to De Foe by Sir Richard
Steele, who certainly knew Selkirk, for he
says in the Englishman, No. 26, for Decem-
ber, 1714, "The person I speak of is Alexander
Selkirk, whose name is familiar to men of
curiosity, from the fame of having lived four years
and four months alone in the island of
Juan Fernandez. I had the pleasure frequently
to converse with the man soon after his arrival
in England, in the year 1711. It was matter
of great curiosity to hear him, as he is a man
of good sense, give an account of the different
revolutions in his own mind in that long solitude."

Steele's description of Selkirk in conversation
must have been very vivid and impassioned, for
there is no man in England on whom Selkirk's
adventures could have made a greater impression,
Steele being extremely fond of society,
and not able to sit alone even for a short time.
Alluding to Selkirk's solitude, Steele says:
"When we consider how painful absence from
company, for the space of but one evening, is
to the generality of mankind, we may have a
sense how painful this necessary and constant
solitude was to a man bred a sailor, and ever
accustomed to enjoy, and suffer, eat, drink, and
sleep, and perform all offices of life in fellowship
and company."

But we would direct more particular attention
to the conjecture that, in planning his
work, De Foe was thinking less of Selkirk than
of Peter Serrano, a Spanish sailor, whose story
is told in a book with which De Foe could
hardly fail to have been acquainted. "The Royal
Commentaries of Peru, written originally in
Spanish by the Juca Garcillasso de la Vega,
and rendered into English by Sir Paul llycant,
Kt." This is a large Tolio volume, published in
London in 1688, when De Foe was twenty-seven