PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN ALMOST MENTIONED IN WALDEN: ALEXANDER SELCRAIG SELKIRK (MONARCH OF ALL HE SURVEYED) “NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project The People of Walden HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: ALEXANDER SELCRAIG SELKIRK PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN WALDEN: My imagination carried me so far that I even had the refusal of several farms, –the refusal was all I wanted,– but I never got my fingers burned by actual possession. The nearest that I came to actual possession was when I bought the Hollowell Place, and had begun to sort my seeds, and collected materials with which to make a wheelbarrow to carry it on or off with; but before the owner gave me a deed of it, his wife –every man has such a wife– changed her mind and wished to keep it, and he offered me ten dollars to release him. Now, to speak the truth, I had but ten cents in the world, and it surpassed my arithmetic to tell, if I was that man who had ten cents, or who had a farm, or ten dollars, or all together. However, I let him keep the ten dollars and the farm too, for I had carried it far enough; or rather, to be generous, I sold him the farm for just what I gave for it, and, as he was not a rich man, made him a present of ten dollars, and still had my ten cents, and seeds, and materials for a wheelbarrow left. I found thus that I had been a rich man without any damage to my poverty. But I retained the landscape, and I have since annually carried off what it yielded without a wheelbarrow. With respect to landscapes,– “I am monarch of all I survey, My right there is none to dispute.” HOLLOWELL FARM ALEXANDER SELKIRK HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: ALEXANDER SELCRAIG SELKIRK PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN 1676 Alexander Selcraig was born in Largo, Scotland, a seacoast village.1 NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT The People of Walden “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 1. For a useful account of Alexander Selkirk’s life, refer to John Howell’s THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF ALEXANDER SELKIRK, which takes fully into account the major contemporary accounts such as Captain Woodes Rogers’s ACRUISING VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD, Richard Steele’s 1713 essay “Alexander Selkirk” in The Englishman, William Dampier’s A NEW VOYAGE AROUND THE WORLD, and William Funnell’s A VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD, CONTAINING AN ACCOUNT OF CAPTAIN DAMPIER’S EXPEDITION. DANIEL DEFOE HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: ALEXANDER SELCRAIG SELKIRK PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN 1695 At the age of 19, Alexander Selcraig ran away to sea, altering his name on the ship’s register to Alexander Selkirk. DANIEL DEFOE LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project The People of Walden HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: ALEXANDER SELCRAIG SELKIRK PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN 1701 Alexander Selkirk (Alexander Selcraig) returned to Largo, Scotland, where he had grown up, but almost immediately he got in a fight with his brothers. As a joke they had given him a mug of seawater. DANIEL DEFOE In Scotland, a habeas corpus act expressly excluded the workers in the coal mines and the salt pans. That is to say, those who were for life white slaves were not to be protected under such a law. THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project The People of Walden HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: ALEXANDER SELCRAIG SELKIRK PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN 1703 April 30, Friday (Old Style): The Dampier expedition sailed, with Alexander Selkirk aboard. DANIEL DEFOE THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project The People of Walden HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: ALEXANDER SELCRAIG SELKIRK PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN 1704 January: The Dampier expedition rounded the horn of South America (this was the second British ship to do so) and ventured into the “Spanish Lake,” that is to say, the Pacific Ocean. Soon they arrived at Más á Tierra Island in the Juan Fernández group 400 miles off the coast of Chile, which Captain Dampier had visited while with Captain John Cook in 1684. While in these waters there would be violent arguments aboard the vessel and they would fight naval engagements with French and Spanish vessels.2 Finding the timbers of the ship full of worms, Alexander Selkirk became convinced that there was little chance that such a skipper and such a crew and such a hull would get him safely home, and consequently asked to be abandoned on Más á Tierra. HERMITS DANIEL DEFOE 2. A naval engagement, particularly if it was with a French vessel, would probably involve attempts to destroy enemy rope rigging and spars and sails by the firing of bar shot known as “doublehead.” Here is a contemporary sketch of the shot used, with a photo of a doublehead that has been found lying at the floor of the ocean: HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: ALEXANDER SELCRAIG SELKIRK PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN October: As the longboat pulled away from the shore of Más á Tierra Island, Alexander Selkirk ran after it shouting. He was thinking about maybe changing his mind. His crewmates rested on their oars a moment, laughing at him, and then went back to their strokes. HERMITS And this fellow Selkirk, or Selcraig, was suddenly all alone as the undisputed monarch of all he surveyed. WALDEN: My imagination carried me so far that I even had the refusal of several farms, –the refusal was all I wanted,– but I never got my fingers burned by actual possession. The nearest that I came to actual possession was when I bought the Hollowell Place, and had begun to sort my seeds, and collected materials with which to make a wheelbarrow to carry it on or off with; but before the owner gave me a deed of it, his wife –every man has such a wife– changed her mind and wished to keep it, and he offered me ten dollars to release him. Now, to speak the truth, I had but ten cents in the world, and it surpassed my arithmetic to tell, if I was that man who had ten cents, or who had a farm, or ten dollars, or all together. However, I let him keep the ten dollars and the farm too, for I had carried it far enough; or rather, to be generous, I sold him the farm for just what I gave for it, and, as he was not a rich man, made him a present of ten dollars, and still had my ten cents, and seeds, and materials for a wheelbarrow left. I found thus that I had been a rich man without any damage to my poverty. But I retained the landscape, and I have since annually carried off what it yielded without a wheelbarrow. With respect to landscapes,– “I am monarch of all I survey, My right there is none to dispute.” HOLLOWELL FARM ALEXANDER SELKIRK WILLIAM COWPER HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: ALEXANDER SELCRAIG SELKIRK PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN 1709 February 1, Tuesday (1708, Old Style): The hermit castaway Alexander Selkirk sighted the sails of the Duke and Duchess of Captain Woodes Rogers, two small British privateering vessels. He had been on Más á Tierra Island, husbanding his goats, for a lonely four years and four months. February 2, Wednesday (1708, Old Style): Woodes Rogers reported that “Immediately our Pinnace return’d from the shore, and brought an abundance of Craw-fiſh, with a Man cloth’d in Goat-Skins, who Look’d wilder than the firſt Owners of them. He had been on the Iſland Four Years and four Months, being left there by Capt. Stradling In the Cinque-Ports; his name was Alexander Selkirk....” HERMITS ALEXANDER SELKIRK CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT The People of Walden “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: ALEXANDER SELCRAIG SELKIRK PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN 1712 From 1708 until 1711, the privateer Captain Woodes Rogers had led an expedition which would circumnavigate the world while harassing Spanish shipping. William Dampier was his navigator. The expedition was quite profitable, returning with stolen gold bullion, precious stones, and exotic silks. Rogers at this point in London published about his voyage, in A CRUISING VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD: FIRST TO THE SOUTH SEAS, THENCE TO THE EAST INDIES, AND HOMEWARD BY THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE...CONTAINING A JOURNAL OF ALL THE REMARKABLE TRANSACTIONS...AN ACCOUNT OF ALEXANDER SELKIRK’S LIVING ALONE FOUR YEARS AND FOUR MONTHS ON AN ISLAND. It had been Woodes Rogers who after navigating through Cape Horn rescued the hermit castaway Alexander Selkirk from the island of Juan Fernandez. DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD. The People of Walden “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: ALEXANDER SELCRAIG SELKIRK PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN 1713 December 3, Thursday (Old Style): In an article in The Englishmen, #26, pages 121-4, one Richard Steele appraised the Alexander Selkirk story as “a memorable example, that he is happiest who confines his wants to natural necessities; and he that goes further in his desire, increases his wants in proportion to his acquisitions.” Steele’s article was titled “Talia monstrabat relegens errata retrorum.” Actually, however, according to William Dampier’s A NEW VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD, seaman Selkirk had been preceded on the island of Juan Fernandez off the coast of Chile by a native American man of the Moskito tribe, name unknown to me, who had lived on goat’s flesh and fish on that island for three years.