AFTER SPENDING FOUR YEARS ALONE ON A DESERT ISLAND
In 1709 a castaway sailor has been rescued after spending more than four years alone on a desert island. Alexander Selkrik could hardly speak English when Capt. Woodes Rogers found him on one of the uninhabited Juan Fernandez Island of coast of Chile in South America. He had survived with the aid of a musket, a hatchet, a knife and a flint to strike a flame, improvising all his other needs. Selkrikt had been left on the Island after an argument with master of his buccaneer ship, the Cinque-Ports. As Captain Rogers described it in his ship's log today, the longboat brought on board ''a man cloth'd in goat-skins, who look'd wilder than the first owners of them. For the first eight month he had ado to bear up against melancholy and the terror of being left alone in such a desolate place''. Rogers has appointed him ship's mate. He plans to help Selkrik publish a report of solitary sojourn. The story could interest the London writer Daniel Defore, who has been exploring the use of real events as the basis for his tales of fiction.
In 1709 a castaway sailor has been rescued after spending more than four years alone on a desert island. Alexander Selkrik could hardly speak English when Capt. Woodes Rogers found him on one of the uninhabited Juan Fernandez Island of coast of Chile in South America. He had survived with the aid of a musket, a hatchet, a knife and a flint to strike a flame, improvising all his other needs. Selkrikt had been left on the Island after an argument with master of his buccaneer ship, the Cinque-Ports. As Captain Rogers described it in his ship's log today, the longboat brought on board ''a man cloth'd in goat-skins, who look'd wilder than the first owners of them. For the first eight month he had ado to bear up against melancholy and the terror of being left alone in such a desolate place''. Rogers has appointed him ship's mate. He plans to help Selkrik publish a report of solitary sojourn. The story could interest the London writer Daniel Defore, who has been exploring the use of real events as the basis for his tales of fiction.
