Selkirk en La isla de Juan Fernández:
"He had with him his clothes and bedding, with a firelock, some powder, bullets and tobacco, a hatchet, a knife, a kettle, a Bible, some practical pieces, and his mathematical instruments and books. He diverted and provided for himself as well as he could, but for the first eight months had to bear up against melancholy, and the terror of being left alone in such a desolate place. He built two huts with pimento trees, covered them with long grass, and lined them with the skins of goats, which he killed with his own gun as he wanted, so long as the powder lasted, which was but a pound; and that being almost spent he got fire by rubbing two sticks of pimento wood together upon his knee..........." "After he had conquered his melancholy, he diverted himself sometimes with cutting his name on trees, and of the time of his being left, and continuance there. He was at first much pestered with cats and rats that bred in great numbers from some of each species which had got ashore from ships that put in there for wood and water. The rats gnawed his feet and clothes whilst asleep, which obliged him to cherish the cats with his goats' flesh, by which so many of them became so tame, that they would lie about in hundreds, and soon delivered him from the rats. He likewise tamed some kids; to divert himself, would now and then sing and dance with them and his cats; so that by the favor of providence, and the vigor of his youth, being now but thirty years old, he came, at last, to conquer all the inconveniences of his solitude, and to be very easy." "When his clothes were worn out he made himself a coat and a cap of goat skins, which he stitched together with little thongs of the same, that he cut with his knife. He had no other needle but a nail; and when his knife was worn to the back he made others, as well as he could, of some iron hoops that were left ashore, which he beat thin and ground upon stones. Having some linen cloth by him, he sewed him some shirts with a nail and, stitched them with the worsted of his old stockings, which he pulled out on purpose. He had his last shirt on when we found him on the island." (taken from Capt. Woodes Rogers book, "A Voyage Around the World" printed in London, 1712) Alexander Selkirk was born in the year 1676 in Largo, Scotland, the son of a fairly prosperous tanner and leather worker. Selkirk was an adventurer at heart, unsuited to shoemaking and village life, and in 1695 ran away to sea and by 1703 was the Master of the Galley. Later he joined the famed William Dampier on a privateering expedition in the Pacific whose sole purpose was preying on Spanish merchant ships. In September of 1704, after a quarrel with his own Captain, the hotheaded Selkirk requested that he be put ashore on the uninhabited island of Juan Fernandez, four hundred miles west of Valparaiso, Chile. It was fortunate for Selkirk because his ship later sank with the loss of most hands. Selkirk remained there until February of 1709 when he was discovered by Captain Woodes Rogers in the sailing ship "Duke" whose pilot happened to be Dampier. Despite his long castaway, Selkirk was appointed Mate by Rogers and later given command of a captured prize ship. Selkirk did not return to England until 1711 where he met the essayist, Richard Steele, who wrote up his story in a publication, "The Englishman" (1713). Daniel Defoe made use of this story in his novel "Robinson Crusoe". Selkirk finally returned home to Scotland where he lived the life of a recluse but later went to sea again. He died at sea in 1721 at the age of forty-five.