APPENDIX. 271 



dren, constitute the present population of the island of 

 Juan Fernandez, on which the Scotch sailor, Alexander 

 Selkirk, spent four years and four months. Seen from a 

 distance the island looks almost like a fortress, with its 

 tall, dark, granite cliffs rising without a break hundreds 

 of feet from the turbulent surf of the shore. Yet, when 

 one gets nearer a beautiful little bay about a quarter of 

 a mile wide, offers a welcome to the seafarer, and recalls 

 to mind the ' little cove ' of Robinson Crusoe. It forms 

 a kind of cleft and opening in the wall of rock that lines 

 the shore, and slopes gently upward into a valley extend- 

 ing several miles inland to the base of the Yunque, the 

 highest mountain of the island. Cumberland Bay is the 

 name that has been given to this lovely and picturesque 

 anchorage. Right on the shore are situated the houses 

 of the inhabitants of the island, while to the rear of the 

 little settlement, forming a delightful background, are 

 green fields, gardens, orchards, and, in one word, the most 

 charming landscape that can be imagined, rendered all 

 the more striking by the contrast which is offered by the 

 somber basaltic cliffs that rise on either side. 



" Indeed, the entire island, set in the blue of the Pa- 

 cific Ocean, illuminated by the setting rays of a tropical 

 sun, angry and forbidding in parts, adorned with the most 

 luxuriant vegetation in other places and with its highest 

 peak rising to a lofty altitude — an altitude so lofty, in fact, 

 that it is often shrouded in the very clouds — offers a spec- 

 tacle which once seen is never forgotten. 



" Many are the vicissitudes which the island has under- 

 gone since it was occupied by Daniel Defoe's hero, ' Rob- 

 inson Crusoe.' In the early part of the century it was used 

 for a time as a convict settlement, and in the walls of the 

 cliff are to be found hundreds of dungeons hewn by the 

 prisoners themselves in the heart of the rock. But the 

 distance of the island from the mainland, as well as the 

 difficulty experienced in keeping the garrison under proper 



