ductions of unassisted nature may be said to excel all the fictitious descriptions of the most animated imagination. This island was very propitious to the remains of Commodore Anson's squadron in 1741; after they had been buffeted with tempests and debilitated by an inveterate scurvy. The piece of ground, in which the Commodore pitched his tent,, was a small lawn, that lay on a little ascent, at the distance of about half a mile from the sea. In the front of his tent was a large avenue cut through the woods to the sea-side, which, sloping to the water with a gentle descent, opened a prospect of the bay and the ships at anchor. This lawn was screened behind by a tall wood of myrtle, sweeping round it in form of a theatre; the slope on which the wood stood rising with a much sharper ascent than the lawn itself; though not so much but that the hills and precipices within land, towered up considerably above the tops of the trees, and added to the grandeur of the view. There were likewise two streams of crystal water which ran to the right and left of the tent within a hundred yards distance; and were shaded by the trees, which bordered the lawns on either side, and completed the symmetry of the whole.

There are instances of two men living, at different times, alone, on this island for many years; the one a Mosquito Indian, the other Alexander Selkirk a Scotchman, who was, after five years, taken on board an English ship and brought back to Europe. From the history of this recluse, Daniel De Foe wrote his " Adventures of Robinson Crusoe," and robbed Selkirk of both the honour and profits of his manuscripts.

Here we shall take the liberty to make a short digression, in order to present our readers with

some account of this extraordinary man.-Alexander Selkirk was born in the county of Fife about the year 1676, and was bred a seaman. He went from England in 1703, in the capacity of sailing master of a small vessel, called the Cinque Ports Galley, Charles Pickering captain; and in September the same year, he sailed from Cork in company with another ship called the St. George, commanded by William Dampier, intending to cruize on the Spaniards in the South Sea. On the coast of Brasil Pickering died, and was succeeded in his command by lieutenant Stradling. They proceeded on their voyage round Cape Horn to the island of Juan Fernandes, whence they were driven by the appearance of two French ships of thirty-six guns each, and left five of Stradling's men there on shore, who were taken off by the French. From hence they sailed to the coast of America, where Dampier and Stradling quarrelled and separated by agreement on the 19th of May 1704. In September following, Stradling came again to the island of Juan Fernandes, where Selkirk and his captain had a difference, which, with the circumstance of the ship's being very leaky, induced him to determine on staying there alone. When his companions were about to depart, his resolution was shaken, and he desired to be taken on board; but the captain positively refused to admit him, and he was consequently obliged to remain, having nothing but his clothes, bedding, a gun, and a small quantity of powder and ball; a hatchet, knife, and kettle; and his books and mathematical and nau tical instruments. He kept up his spirits tolerably well till he saw the vessel put off; but then (as he afterwards related) his heart yearned within him,

and melted at the thought of parting with his com rades and all human society at once.

"Yet believe me Arcas,

Such is the rooted love we bear mankind,
All ruffians as they were, I never heard
A sound so dismal as their parting oars."'

Thomson's Agamemnon.

Thus left sole monarch of the island, with plenty of the necessaries of life, he found himself in a situation hardly supportable. He had fish, goats flesh, turnips, and other vegetables; yet he grew dejected, languid, and melancholy, to such a degree as to be scarcely able to refrain from putting a period to his existence. Eighteen months passed before he could, by reasoning, reading his bible, and meditation, be thoroughly reconciled to his situation. At length, however, he grew happy, employing himself in decorating his hut, and chas. ing the goats, which he seldom failed of catching. He also tamed young kids, laming them, to prevent their running away; and he constantly kept a guard of tame cats about him, to defend him from the rats, which were exceedingly troublesome. When his clothes were worn out, he made others of goats skins, but could not succeed in making shoes, with the use of which, however, he was in time enabled to dispense. He computed that he had caught a thousand goats during his abode in the island, of which he had released five hundred after marking them by slitting their horns. He made companions of his tame goats, and cats, often dancing and singing with them. He also frequently read aloud, and performed his devotions at stated hours; yet when he was taken off the

island, his language, from disuse of conversation, was become scarcely intelligible.

In this solitude Selkirk continued nearly five years; during which time only two incidents hap pened which he thought worth relating, the occurrences of every day being, in his circumstances, nearly similar. The one was, that pursuing a goat eagerly, he caught it just on the edge of a precipice, which was covered with bushes, so that he did not perceive it, and he fell over to the bottom, where he supposed by the alteration of the moon that he had lain three days. When he came to himself, he found the goat lying under him dead, and it was with great difficulty that he could crawl to his habitation, whence he was unable to stir for ten days. The other event was the arrival of a ship which he supposed to be French; and so strong was the love of society in his mind that he was eager to abandon his solitary felicity, and surrender himself to them, although enemies; but upon their landing he found them to be Spaniards, of whom he had too great a dread to trust himself in their hands. They were by this time so near, that it required all his agility to escape, which he effected by climbing into a thick tree, being shot at several times as he ran off.

His enemies having departed, Selkirk returned to his situation, and reconciled himself as much as possible to his solitary life till the 2d of February, 1709, where captains Rogers and Courtney arrived in two privateers from Bristol, and after a fortnight's stay at Juan Fernandes, appointed him master's mate of one of their vessels. In October 1711, he arrived in England, where the public curiosity was so strongly excited concerning him, that he was persuaded to put his papers into the

hands of De Foe to arrange and form them into a regular narrative. From this account of Selkirk, De Foe took the idea of writing the romance of Robinson Crusoe, and basely defrauded the original proprietor of his share of the profits,

CUBA is a large and important island, seven hundred miles long and eighty-seven broad. It commands the entrance of the gulfs of Mexico and Florida, as well as the windward passages; and thus it may be properly called the Key of the West Indies. It was discovered in 1429 by Columbus, who gave it the name of Ferdinando in honour of King Ferdinand of Spain; but it soon recovered its ancient name of Cuba. By the year 1511, the Spaniards had become complete masters of this island, and, according to their own accounts, they had in that time destroyed several millions of people. The possession of Cuba, however, was far from answering the expectations of the Spanish adventurers, whose avarice could not be gratified with any thing but gold. These men finding that there was gold upon the island, concluded it must come from mines; and therefore tortured the few inhabitants they had left, in order to extort from them a discovery of the places where these mines lay. The miseries endured by the unfortunate natives were such, that they had almost unanimously resolved to put an end to their own lives; but were prevented by one of the Spanish tyrants, who threatened to hang himself along with them, that he might have the pleasure, as he said, of tormenting them in the next world worse than he had done in this; and so much were they afraid of the Spaniards, that this ridiculous threat proved sufficient to divert them from their desperate resolution. The soil of Cuba, if we except a ridge of moun