ut
be careful and have it fully ripe: green mangosteens are apt to produce
colic, as Frank can tell you of his own knowledge."

ROBINSON CRUSOE'S ISLAND.

The island of Juan Fernandez has always been said to be the island on
which Robinson Crusoe was cast away. Nothing can be further from the
truth. Crusoe never saw Juan Fernandez, and, so far as we know, never
once so much as thought of casting himself away there.

No man has ever charged Robinson Crusoe with not telling the truth. He
may have had his faults--and he certainly did show very little judgment
when he built his first boat so far from the shore that he could not
possibly launch it--but he always told the truth. We ought therefore to
believe what he says about the situation of his island. He informs me
that, having sailed from Brazil on a voyage to the coast of Guinea, he
was driven northward by stormy weather, and was finally wrecked
somewhere between the mouth of the river Orinoco and the Caribbean or
West India islands. Now the island of Juan Fernandez is in the Pacific
Ocean, about three hundred and sixty miles southwest of Valparaiso. To
suppose that Crusoe was wrecked on Juan Fernandez, while on his way from
Brazil to Guinea, is like saying that a ship on her way from New York to
Liverpool was wrecked on one of the Sandwich Islands. Such a story would
be perfectly absurd. However, when we have Crusoe's word that he was
cast away near the mouth of the Orinoco, there is an end of the matter.
He probably could not have told a lie if he had tried to.

In the year 1704 an English vessel called the _Cinque Ports_ came to
Juan Fernandez. One of her officers, Alexander Selkirk by name, had
quarrelled with the Captain, and he said he would much rather stay on
this island than sail any longer on board the _Cinque Ports_. The
Captain was glad to get rid of him, and therefore sailed away, and left
him behind. What Selkirk and the Captain had quarrelled about has never
been certainly known, but when we reflect that Selkirk was a Scotchman,
we can understand that very likely he was unwilling to practice piracy
on Sunday, while the captain insisted that any day was a fit day on
which to rob a Spanish ship. This would have led to a quarrel, and very
possibly was the precise cause of the quarrel which resulted in Selkirk
leaving the ship at Juan Fernandez. It is true that the _Cinque Ports_
was called a buccaneer, instead of a pirate, but no man can see the