Читать книгу The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism (Vol. 1-4). The History of Sea Voyages, Discovery, Piracy and Maritime Warfare онлайн

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The Challenger afterwards visited Juan Fernandez, the real Robinson Crusoe island where Alexander Selkirk passed his enforced residence of four years. Thanks to Defoe, he lived to find himself so famous, that he could hardly have grudged the time spent in his solitary sojourn with his dumb companions and man Friday. Alas! the romance which enveloped Juan Fernandez has somewhat dimmed. For a brief time it was a Chilian penal colony, and after sundry vicissitudes, was a few years ago leased to a merchant, who kept cattle to sell to whalers and passing ships, and also went seal-hunting on a neighbouring islet. He was “monarch of all he surveyed”—lord of an island over a dozen miles long and five or six broad, with cattle, and herds of wild goats, and capital fishing all round—all for two hundred a year! Fancy this, ye sportsmen, who pay as much or more for the privileges of a barren moor! Yet the merchant was not satisfied with his venture, and, at the time of the Challenger’s visit, was on the point of abandoning it: by this time it is probably to let. Excepting the cattle dotted about the foot of the hills and a civilised house or two, the appearance of the island must be precisely the same now as when the piratical buccaneers of olden time made it their rendezvous and haunt wherefrom to dash out and harry the Spaniards; the same to-day as when Alexander Selkirk lived in it as its involuntary monarch; the same to-day as when Commodore Anson arrived with his scurvy-stricken “crazy ship, a great scarcity of water, and a crew so universally diseased that there were not above ten foremast-men in a watch capable of doing duty,” and recruited them with fresh meat, vegetables, and wild fruits.