nder the most favorable auspices; his young trees, firmly rooted, are
growing rapidly beneath the double influence of heat and moisture; at
the axil of some of their leaves, he sees a bud, an earnest of the
harvest. He must now occupy himself with the means of surprising,
seizing and retaining the ancestors of his future flock.

Here, patience, address or stratagem can alone avail.

Notwithstanding his natural agility, he does not dream of reaching
them by pursuit. Since his last hunts, goats and kids keep themselves
usually in the steep and mountainous parts of the island. To leap from
rock to rock, to attempt to vie with them in celerity and lightness
appears to him, with reason, a foolish and impracticable enterprise.
Later, perhaps,... Who knows?

He manufactures snares, traps; but suspicion is now the order of the
day around him; each holds himself on the _qui vive_. After long
waiting without any result, he finds in his snares a coati, some
little Guinea pigs; here is one resource, undoubtedly, but he aims at
higher game, and the kids will not allow themselves to be taken by his
baits.

He remembers then, that in certain parts of America, the hunters, in
order to seize their prey living, have recourse to the lasso, a long
cord terminated by a slip-noose, which they know how to throw at great
distances, and almost always with certainty.

With a thread which he obtains from the fibres of the aloe, with
narrow strips of skin, closely woven, he composes a lasso more than
fifty feet long; he tries it; he exercises it now against a tuft of
leaves detached from a bush, now against some projecting rock;
afterwards he tries it upon Marimonda, who often enough, by her
agility and swiftness, puts her master at fault.

In the interval of these preparatory exercises, Selkirk occupies
himself with the construction of a latticed inclosure, destined to
contain the flock which he hopes to possess; he makes it large and
spacious, that his young cattle may bound and sport at their ease;
high, that they may respect the limits he assigns them. In one corner,
supported by solid posts, he builds a shed, simply covered with
branches; that his flock may there be sheltered from the heat of the
day. The inclosure and the shed, together with his garden, form a new
addition to his great settlement.

When, his kids shall have become goats, when the epoch of domesticity
shall have arrived for them, when they shall have contracted habits