ng time forsaken his cabin,
which was too far distant from his hunting-grounds.

If he had a stock of provision on hand, he still pursued the goats as
usual, but only for his personal gratification. If he caught one, he
contented himself with slitting its ear; this was his seal, the mark
by which he recognized his free flock. During the last years of his
abode in the island, he had killed or marked thus nearly five
hundred.[1]

[Footnote 1: Long after his departure from Juan Fernandez, the ship's
crews, who came there for supplies, or the pirates who took refuge
there, found goats whose ears had been slit by Selkirk's knife.]

In the natural course of things, as his physical powers increased, his
intelligence became enfeebled.

Necessity had at first aroused his industry, for all industry awakes
at the voice of want; but his own had been due rather to his
recollections than to his ingenuity. He thought himself a creator, he
was only an imitator.

Whatever may have been said by those who, in the pride of a deceitful
philosophy, have wished to glorify the power of the solitary man--if
the latter, supported by certain fortunate circumstances, can remain
some time in a state hardly endurable, it is not by his own strength,
but by means which society itself has furnished. This is the
incontestable truth, from which, in his pride, Selkirk had turned
away.

Deprived of exercise and of aliment, his thoughts, no longer sustained
by reading the Holy Book, were day by day lost in a chaos of dreams
and reveries.

A prey to terrors which he could not explain, he feared darkness, he
trembled at the slightest sound of the wind among the branches; if it
blew violently, he thought the trees would be uprooted and crush him;
if the sea roared, he trembled at the idea of the submersion of his
entire island.

When he traversed the woods, especially if the heat was great, he
often heard, distinctly, voices which called him or replied. He caught
entire phrases; others remained unfinished. These phrases, connected
neither with his thoughts nor his situation, were strange to him.
Sometimes he even recognized the voice.

Now it was that of Catherine, scolding her servants; now that of
Stradling, of Dampier, or one of his college tutors. Once he heard
thus the voice of one of his classmates whom he least remembered; at
another time it was that of his old admiral, Rourke, uttering the
words of command.

If he attempted to raise his