s to protect his provisions from dampness. He even
manufactured a game-pouch, which he constantly carried when hunting.

His salt fish, his biscuit, some well smoked quarters of goat's flesh,
and the productions of his fish-pond, at present constitute a store on
which he can live for a long time, without any care, but to ameliorate
his condition.

He is now in possession of all the enjoyments he has coveted,
abundance, leisure, absolute freedom.

And yet, his brow is sometimes clouded, and an unaccountable
uneasiness torments him; something seems wanting; his appetite fails,
his courage grows feeble, his reveries are painfully prolonged. But,
by mature reflection, he has discovered the cause of the evil.

What is it that is so essential to his happiness? Tobacco.

Our factitious wants often exercise over us a more tyrannical empire,
than our real ones; it seems as if we clung with more force and
tenacity to this second nature, because we have ourselves created it;
it originates in us; the other originates with God, and is common to
all!

Selkirk now persuades himself that tobacco alone is wanting to his
comfort; it is this privation which throws him into these sorrowful
fits of languor. If Stradling had only given him a good stock of
tobacco, he would have pardoned all; he no longer feels courage to
hate him. What to him imports the plenty which surrounds him, if he
has no tobacco? of what use is his leisure, if he cannot spend it in
smoking? what avails even this fire, which he has just conquered, if
he is prevented from lighting his pipe at it?

Careworn and dissatisfied, he was wandering one morning through his
domains, with his gun on his shoulder, his hatchet at his belt, when
he perceived something dancing on a point of land, shadowed by tall
canes.

It was Marimonda.

At sight of her enemy, she darted lightly and rapidly behind a woody
hillock. An instant afterwards, he saw her tranquilly seated on the
topmost branch of a tree, holding in each of her hands fruits which
she was alternately striking against the branch, and against each
other, to break their tough envelope.

The sight of Marimonda has always awakened in Selkirk a sentiment of
repulsion; she not only reminds him of Stradling, but with her
withered cheeks, projecting jaw, and especially her dancing motion, he
now imagines that she resembles him; and yet, pausing before her, he
contemplates her not without a lively emotion of surprise and