black pepper, which had some useful medicinal qualities.
On wearing out his shoes, not thinking it necessary to manufacture fresh
ones, he went barefooted, and thus his feet became so hard that he could
run over the roughest ground without suffering. When he first took to
wearing them on board his feet swelled and caused him considerable
uneasiness. He employed part of his time in cutting his name on trees,
with the date of his landing, and other particulars. At first he was
greatly annoyed by cats and rats, which had been landed from some ships
touching there, and had now greatly increased. The rats gnawed his feet
and clothes while he was asleep, so he bethought himself of encouraging
the cats by giving them the goats' flesh. By this means so many of them
became tame that they would assemble round him in hundreds, and kept the
rats at bay. He likewise tamed some kids, and, to amuse himself, would
now and then dance and sing with them and his cats.

When his clothes wore out, he made himself a coat and cap of goat-skins,
which he stitched together with thongs of the same material. A nail
served him for a needle. When, in time, his knife wore out from
constant grinding, he made others of some iron hoops which had been left
on shore. Finding in his chest some linen cloth, he manufactured some
shirts, using a nail as a needle, and employing the worsted of an old
stocking to stitch them, and he had his last shirt on when discovered.
Had the vessels he had seen been Frenchmen he would have gone among
them, but he preferred the risk of dying on the island to falling into
the hands of Spaniards, who would, he believed, have murdered him, or
made him a slave in the mines, as they were supposed to treat all the
strangers they could get hold of.

He described the climate as genial, the winter lasting only during June
and July, when there was but little frost, though occasionally heavy
rains. He saw no venomous or savage creature on the island, the only
beasts, besides rats and cats, being goats, the ancestors of which had
been left there by Juan Fernandez, the discoverer. Besides the
pimento-trees, some of which were sixty feet high, and some large
cotton-trees, the only trees of value were some bearing black plums,
which, however, growing among the mountains and rocks, were difficult to
get at. The trees and grass were verdant all the year round, and it was
evident that the soil was fertile in the extreme.

Alexa