154 CRUSOE'S ISLAND. 



19tli Day of December, in the Year 1686, after I had 

 been upon it eight and twenty Years, two Months, 

 and 19 Days." 



When he arrived in England, June, 1687, after 

 an absence of thirty -five years, he was well along in 

 life ; but even then he married. Eight years later, 

 however, his wife died, and he went roving again, 

 impelled by an irresistible desire to revisit the scene 

 of his adventures, which he reached in April, 1695. 

 In the narrative of that second voyage to Tobago he 

 again refers to Trinidad as a neighboring island, for 

 he went ashore there and saw some of the Indians. 



Lastly, in bringing to a conclusion all this cumu- 

 lative evidence in favor of Tobago as the island of 

 Crusoe's exile, and of Friday as an Indian of the 

 West Indies, I wish to reiterate that Selkirk's was 

 not the only narrative from which Defoe might have 

 derived suggestions, if not actual material, for a story. 

 The chronicles of the Spanish conquests are replete 

 with adventures strange and wonderful ; the voyages 

 of Drake, Morgan, and Hawkins were full of incidents 

 such as the novelist would like to seize upon and 

 weave into a story. 



It can not be doubted that Defoe had grasped all 

 these things before, that he had stored in memory the 

 description of early voyagers, and especially Ealeigh's, 

 and was only awaiting a hero, when along came Sel- 

 kirk. This I am constrained to believe : that, having 

 got together this food for fiction and this hero to his 

 mind, he merely waited during many years for leisure 

 to shape it according to his fancy ; that he was engaged 



