PREFACE. XV 



moil with a few others to have perceived it), I deem 

 it desirable to pubhsh the fact. As proof of my 

 statement that Crusoe's island lies north of the equa- 

 tor, instead of to the south of it, the following pages 

 are offered in evidence. 



And in these pages I proffer a description of the 

 veritable island in which Robinson Crusoe lived his 

 lonely life, the scene of his wreck, his cave, his bower, 

 his Man Friday ; the birds and trees he saw or ought 

 to have seen, together with a narrative of the author's 

 own experience in the wilderness of Tobago. 



Various quotations from Crusoe have been used, 

 which, together with tlie internal evidence of the book 

 itself, seem to show conclusively that the island of his 

 exile was not Juan Fernandez in the Pacific Ocean, 

 but Tobago in the Caribbean Sea, not far distant 

 from the north coast of South America. 



In very truth, if the vessel in which Crusoe was 

 wrecked had sailed only a little farther to the north- 

 ward, and if he himself had but lived a little later 

 (say a century or so), he might have been claimed as 

 a fellow-citizen, by the inhabitants of our great com- 

 monwealth, the prototype of which he founded on 

 his island, in his latter years. 



Frederick A. Ober. 

 New York, October, 1897. 



