There are not many places that I find it more agreeable to revisit when I am in an idle
mood, than some places to which I have never been. For, my acquaintance with those
spots is of such long standing, and has ripened into an intimacy of so affectionate a
nature, that I take a particular interest in assuring myself that they are unchanged.
I never was in Robinson Crusoe's Island, yet I frequently return there. The colony he
established on it soon faded away, and it is uninhabited by any descendants of the grave
and courteous Spaniards, or of Will Atkins and the other mutineers, and has relapsed into
its original condition. Not a twig of its wicker houses remains, its goats have long run
wild again, its screaming parrots would darken the sun with a cloud of many flaming
colours if a gun were fired there, no face is ever reflected in the waters of the little creek
which Friday swam across when pursued by his two brother cannibals with sharpened
stomachs. After comparing notes with other travellers who have similarly revisited the
Island and conscientiously inspected it, I have satisfied myself that it contains no vestige
of Mr. Atkins's domesticity or theology, though his track on the memorable evening of
his landing to set his captain ashore, when he was decoyed about and round about until it
was dark, and his boat was stove, and his strength and spirits failed him, is yet plainly to
be traced. So is the hill-top on which Robinson was struck dumb with joy when the
reinstated captain pointed to the ship, riding within half a mile of the shore, that was to
bear him away, in the nine-and-twentieth year of his seclusion in that lonely place. So is
the sandy beach on which the memorable footstep was impressed, and where the savages
hauled up their canoes when they came ashore for those dreadful public dinners, which
led to a dancing worse than speech-making. So is the cave where the flaring eyes of the
old goat made such a goblin appearance in the dark. So is the site of the hut where
Robinson lived with the dog and the parrot and the cat, and where he endured those first
agonies of solitude, which - strange to say - never involved any ghostly fancies; a
circumstance so very remarkable, that perhaps he left out something in writing his
record? Round hundreds of such objects, hidden in the dense tropical foliage, the tropical
sea breaks evermore; and over them the tropical sky, saving in the short rainy season,
shines bright and cloudless.
Neither, was I ever belated among wolves, on the borders of France and Spain; nor, did I
ever, when night was closing in and the ground was covered with snow, draw up my little
company among some felled trees which served as a breastwork, and there fire a train of
gunpowder so dexterously that suddenly we had three or four score blazing wolves
illuminating the darkness around us. Nevertheless, I occasionally go back to that dismal
region and perform the feat again; when indeed to smell the singeing and the frying of the
wolves afire, and to see them setting one another alight as they rush and tumble, and to
behold them rolling in the snow vainly attempting to put themselves out, and to hear their
howlings taken up by all the echoes as well as by all the unseen wolves within the woods,
makes me tremble.
