1928 Juan Fernandez Island magazine article, CHILE, Robinson Crusoe Island

Description

Selling is a 1928 magazine article about:
Juan Fernandez Island
Title: A VOYAGE TO THE ISLAND HOME OF ROBINSON CRUSOE
Author: Waldo L. Schmitt, Ph. D. Curator of Marine Invertebrates, National Museum, Smithsonian Institution
Quoting the first page “Below me was the beach where Crusoe found Friday's tracks in the sand. At the water's edge a Chilean fisherman tinkered with the engine of his motorboat. From where I sat, in front of the cave, I could gaze far over the sea-that same empty sea that Robinson Crusoe watched through the years, waiting a friendly sail.
About the cave itself, where Crusoe talked with his cats, his pet kids, and his parrot, and where he kept his guns, tools, and sea chests saved from the wreck, the ground was strewn with pie crust, paper napkins, and picnic litter; for yesterday a party of Valparaiso tourists had swarmed ashore to see the island in a day.
When this tourist boat steams in two island idlers garb themselves as Crusoe and Friday. One wears a peaked goat-hair cap and carries a parrot and a clumsy umbrella. The other, as scantily clad as Friday was, poles their rude raft around the ship, as they seek to amuse the restless trippers and gather a few tips.
Such is the power of good printed words. In every tongue from Japanese to Scandinavian, millions read Crusoe and Friday. Even after 200 years, Defoe's great book is still perhaps as widely known as any other, excepting always the Bible.
Weeks before, I had left the coast of Chile to visit Robinson Crusoe's hermit home, that romantic bit of rock and earth that lifts its green head from the Pacific, 365 miles west of Valparaiso. But no ocean greyhound, no crack tourist liner, carried me. I came to Juan Fernandez Island much as Crusoe came, in a 60-ton windjammer.
As our stubby, dripping nose smashed the howling seas, I wondered why this mad ocean was ever called pacific. The only other passenger was a Chilean lady. Between fellow travelers, however, no merry quip and jest now, no cards or music on moonlit decks. Society and sea-sickness do not mix, especially in a 10 x 12 "saloon," with bunks built parallel with the dining table. Although I read Spanish, I speak it as a Russian might recite "Hiawatha." So between us, now and then, we exchanged remarks scribbled on bits of paper sack. The lady's husband, once governor of Easter Island, had been lost at sea. She, also, was bound for Crusoe's Island, to visit relatives engaged in the lobster fishery.
Only twice was our tedious trip broken by excitement, and the skipper's foghorn voice raised to battle pitch. That was when he found extraneous matter in his tea, and again when we hit a whale.
It's an odd fact that no marine creature likes to have a boat pass him. This whale not only swam ahead of us, but tried to right-angle across our bow. Down on him we crashed just as we slipped over a big sea, hitting him a frightful blow that rocked him from snout to tail. He snorted like a freight engine grunting in an effort o start a long train; then up he came in our wake, spouted a geyser blast of water and spray, and sank to rest his back.
By profession I am a student of Nature and specialize in marine life. Pondering such piscatorial problems as whether shrimp make good mothers, how flying fish make a landing without crashing, and what the well-bred crab should eat for lunch might be thought the limit of imagination for a man whose life is spent prying into the diet, distribution, and habits of marine invertebrates.
Nevertheless, not even a shrimp hunter can sail these southern seas, where romance and adventure never die, without finding far more to think about, for example, than why some fish mothers carry their eggs in their gill cavities and others don't.
On less stormy days I lay on a coil of rope up forward and watched the cloud world skim over. Prying all thoughts of…"
7” x 10”, 18 pages, 24 B&W photos
These are pages carefully removed from an actual 1928 magazine.
28I3
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