Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 87, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 April 1918 — Juan Fernandez [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Juan Fernandez

There have been recent references to the Island of Juan Fernandez In the south Pacific ocean, 550 miles off the coast of South America. Juan Fernandez lies under about the thirty-seventh parallel of south latitude and is a little south of west from Valparaiso, Chile, from which it is distant about 600 miles. Close upon the Island of Juan Fernaqdez is the much smaller island of Santa Clara, and something more than 100 miles farther out to sea. west by a trifle south, is a lone island of the name of Masafuera. There are nd islands between Juan Fernandez and the mainland'. And it. lies'in a particularly lonesome part of the vast ocean. The eightieth parallel of longitude passes nearly a hundred miles west of Juan Fernandez, and that parffllerpasses between two small Islands, St. Felix and St. Ambrose, nearly 1,000 miles north of Juan Fernandgz, Santa Clara and Masafuera. Not only have there been recent references to Juan Fernandez island, but frequent references td.it- may be read in the'-publtc prints, and nearly always is it referred to as Robinson Crusoe’s island. Yet the reference is Inexact and many thousands, of miles put of the .way. However, it is probable that the geographical or literary error has been given too much headway ever to be overtaken and corrected, and no doubt it will be perpetuated. Not Crusoe's Island. There are few' places in the world which have given so much interest and entertainment to boys as the lonely Island on which Robinson Crusoe and his 'man Friday had their adventures. There Is no telling jnst where Defoe thought Robinson Crusoe's island was, but It most certainly was 'nojt in that paVt <sf the world where 4he Island of Juan Fernandez lies. I J anywhere, it was on the Atlantic side of the great continent of South America. off the eastern coast of Venezuela or the north coast of British Guiana, somewhere about the mouth of the Orinoco river. But then there are,.several mouths to that vast river and, though there are Islands there, no evidence of occupancy -by Robinson Crusoe has been found and none of the footprints of Friday have been discovered. The only clue to the island is found in Defoe's magnificent story itself, where Robinson Crusoe speaks as fol-, lows: “I asked him how far it vAis froin our lands to the short* and whether the canoes were not often lost; he told me there was no danger, -no canoes were ever lost, but’ that after a little way out to sea there was a current and wind, always one way in the morning. Qie other way in the aftermum. This I understood to be no more than the sets of the tide as going out and coming in; hut I afterwards understood that It was occasional by the great draft and reflux of the mighty River Oroonooko. in the mouth or gulf nf which river, as I fburid afterward, our island lay. and this land which I perceived to the west and north weet was the great Island of. Trinldlwl on the north point of the mouth of the river." ’ n' - _Where Selkirk Was Marooned. •Hie Island of Juan Fernandez became associated with the story of Roth Inson Crusoe from the fact that on that island Alexander Selkirk was put ashore at bis own request after a quarrel with the captain of the ship Cliii-Jue Ports, of which he was sailing master. Selkirk lived on. the inland for four years, and in 1712 there appeared a book entitled "Cruising Voyage Round, ;he World,” which was written by (’apt. Wordes Rogers, who had ix«a•ued Selkirk from the island. Part >f the adventures of Selkirk were told z n that story, and It is supposed that twas this hint which Stirred Defoe’s

imagination and led ttFThe writing of Robinson Crusoe. Captain Rogers’ book, in which the adventures of Selkirk were told, was also the-inspiration, or rather the text, of Cowper’s poem, which is generally called “Solitude.” but which the poet, in what was faction in the eighteenth century, called “Verses Supposed to Be Written by Alexander Selkirk During His Solitary Abode in the Island of Juan Fernandez.” A literary man who took up the Connection between Selkirk’s adventure and Defoe’s story of Robinson Crusoe has written this: “There was more than enough of a nudge for Defoe, for Cowper, for scores of others. But Defoe never got his hero, Robinson Crusoe, round the Horn or into the Pacific at all; he started him from England, shipwrecked him in Africa, sent him as a planter to ’the Brazils’—as he always pluraIlzes the name—and finally blew him north, shipwrecked again on an island which Defoe carefully labeled on the title page of the first edition as .being ‘at .the mouth of the mighty Orinoco,’ a continent and parts of two oceans removed from Juan Fernandez.” The.lsland of Tabago in the Caribbean archipelago was mentioned by one writer as the island of Crusoe, but Tabago. north of the Trinidad, is too far from the mouth of Orinoco to agree with what Crusoe says of the location of his Island. ,Louis Rhead, in a preface to one edition of Robinson Crusoe, wrote: “A map has been prepared to show the real location, which is at the mouth of the Orinoco, thirty miles northwest of Trinidad, an Island lying just in t]je Caribbean archipelago. The Island is now known as Tabago.” - . A good many distinguished writers have mistaken the Island of Juan Fernandez for the island of Robinson Crusoe, and among <htm was R. H. Dana, jr., who, in his “Two Years Before the Mast,” wrote that he saw the Island of Juan Fernandez “rising like a deep hlqe cloud out of the sea” when hit brig, the Pilgrim, was seventy miles away. ' After the brig’s stop at the island Mr. Dan»Fwrote: “I gave-R a parting look and bid farewell to the most romantic spot of eerth my eyes had ever seen because of the associations which every one has connected with it In their childhood Robinson Crusoe." /

Tablet Erected to Alexander Selkirk’s Memory on Juan Fernandez.