Robinson Crusoe's Island To-day

Rochester Democrat. The sun "was bathing the beautiful island with a flood of golden light as we neared its picturesque harbor. In little boats we went ashore, and landed in the primitive manner of running the boat aground and pulling the boat upon tho shore. It was difficult to realize that we were, indeed, on this historical, mysterious island that imagination had pictured from childhood's early hours ki so many fanciful forms. The books tell you that it was on this lovely island that in 1704, the celebrated English navigator, Dampier, landed his coxswain, Alexander Selkirk, with whom he had quarreled, and left him alone on this uninhabited spot with a small quantity of provisions and tools. Here he lived four years, till he was picked up by a passing ship, and brought back to Europe. It was from the notes he made during his solitary residence that Daniel Defoe composed his incomparable work of " Robinson Crusoe." No book, doubtless, ever held the childish interest with greater fascination than that which describes his wanderings on this mysterious and enchanted island. That which had always seemed but a dreamy romance was now before you. The scènes where all the wild and wondrous experienees were described are just at hand, and you wander on, as it were, but just aroused from a francif ui dream. Perchance it was on this sandy beach along whioh you wander that Crusoe ñrst diseovered the tootprints of his good man Friday. The island .is about even Spanish leagues in circumference, or a trifle over twenty English miles. It belongs to Chili, and for a number of years the government used it as a place for transporting convicts, till one night ali the prisoners arose in their power, killed their keepers, and taking the only boais on the island sailed away and were never heard of more. Of late years the govemment has leased tho island to one man who pays something like $2.000 a year for its use. This man has a small colony of workmen whom he employs in cutting timber, drying iish and goat skins and sending them every few months to the markets at Valparaíso.