4 CRUSOE'S ISLAND. 



I \^s overjoyed at this, for I had made my posi- 

 tion secure, and knew that I could convince tlie cap- 

 tain of the truth of it. And I did it from the Crusoe 

 book itself, as follows : " You will remember that 

 Crusoe, when a young man, ran away to sea, was 

 shipwrecked, captured by the savage Moors, with 

 whom he hved as a captive two years or so on the 

 coast of Africa, and tlien escaped and finally arrived 

 at the Brazils. Here he lived about four years as a 

 planter, at the end of which time he set out for Africa 

 again in quest of slaves. It is with this latter voy- 

 age that his real adventures begin, for it ended in 

 shipwreck and led to his long period of seclusion on 

 the island in question. 



"They had not been out long when, the storm 

 abating a little — to quote directly from Crusoe's own 

 journal — ' The Master made an observation as well as 

 he could, and found that he was in about 11° of north 

 Latitude, so that we were gotten beyond the coast of 

 Guiana, and beyond the river Amazones, towards the 

 Eiver Oroonoque (Orinoco) commonly called the Great 

 Eiver.'" 



" Bless my stars ! " said the captain, when I read 

 this to him, " that does look like Tobago. But go on ; 

 I'm anxious to see where he fetched up." 



" ' So we chang'd our course, and steer'd away 

 N. W. by W., in order to reach some of the English 

 Islands ; but a second Storm came upon us and drove 

 us so out of the way of all humane Commerce, that, 

 had all our lives been saved, as to the Sea, we were 

 rather in danger of being devour'd by the Salvages, 



