ire of batteries! Among the sentiments which honor
humanity, which elevate it notwithstanding its defects, thou hadst
preserved at least thy confidence in God and in his mercy, Selkirk,
and to-day thou doubtest both!

Why dost thou weep? why dost thou distrust God?

Because thy monkey is dead!

CHAPTER X.

Discouragement.--A Discovery.--A Retrospective Glance.--Project of
Suicide.--The Last Shot.--The Sea Serpent.--The _Porro_.--A Message.
--Another Solitary.

His provisions are exhausted, and Selkirk thinks not of renewing them;
his settlement on the shore is destroyed, and he thinks not of
rebuilding it; the fish-pond, the bed of water-cresses are encroached
upon by sand and weeds, and he thinks not of repairing them. His mind,
completely discouraged, recoils before such labors; he has scarcely
troubled himself to replace the roof of his cabin.

In the midst of his dreams, Selkirk had not counted enough on two
terrific guests, which must sooner or later come: despair and _ennui_.

Nevertheless, he had read in his Bible this passage: 'As the worm
gnaweth the garment and rottenness the wood, so doth the weariness of
solitude gnaw the heart of man.'

One day, as he was descending from the Oasis, where he had dug a tomb
for Marimonda, he bethought himself of visiting the site of his
burning wood.

Around him, the earth, blackened by the ravages of the fire, presented
only a naked, gloomy and desolate picture. To his great surprise,
beneath the ruins, under coal dust and half-calcined trunks of trees,
he discovered, elevated several feet above the soil, the partition of
a wall, some stones quarried out and placed one upon another; in fine,
the remains of a building, evidently constructed by the hand of man.

Men had then inhabited this island before him! What had become of
them? This wood, impenetrably choked, stifled with thorny bushes,
briars and vines, and which he had delivered over to the flames, was
undoubtedly a garden planted by them, on a sheltered declivity of the
mountain; the garden which surrounded their habitation, as he had
himself designed his own to do.

Ah! if he could have but found them in the island, how different would
have been his fate! But to live alone! to have no companions but his
own thoughts! amid the dash of waves, the cry of birds, the bleating
of goats, incessantly to imagine the sound of a human voice, and
incessantly to experience the torture of being undeceived! Wha