AN ISLAND WITH ONE INHABITANT.

Lyttelton Times, Volume VIII, Issue 531, 5 December 1857, Page 4

AN ISLAND WITH ONE INHABITANT.

St. Paul's.was not uninhabited at the period of our visit, which was made for the purpose of correcting our chronometers. We found a solitary individual roaming about upon its lonely beach. He had been there two years!—two years upon a barren island 2000 miles away from any cultivated community. He had, however, managed to survive, and was so pleased with his island that he positively refused to leave his singular home, where we left him when we took our departure. He had been left there two years previously by a whaler, to catch seals, the captain having promised to call for him on his return to America, while he, in the meantime, with his ship, departed to a distant sea, for the grander purpose of killing whales. When first left upon St. Paul's he had a companion, and they lived together pretty amicably for some time. But one of them, it seems, \?as a desperate character; indeed, our Robinson. Crusoe was one of the most ruffianly-looking fellows imaginable. His story was, that he suspected his companion secretly- intended to murder him, and by that means obtain a double share of the produce of the seal skins they had collected and dried. "Dead men tell no tales," said his friend, "and of course it was easy to tell the captain when he called that he died from natural causes." When this idea once got possession of him he lived in continual dread, and the conduct of his companion daily becoming more suspicious, he quarrelled withjfiim. Between two such spirits words were soon hatched into blows, and they fought like furies, stabbing each other with their seal!knives so seriously that they lay for some time helpless, exposed to the effects of the sun and the hot vapours of the'subterranean fires, that slumbered in comparison with the rage, that burned in each of their breasts; they had?^ried their ; best t6 kill each other, and had failed. ; Slowly reco ? _ vering> they parted^ and lived] m opposite, parts of the island, but as necessity brought them in contact at thel crater; when -they met, they scowled and passed on in silence. They, however, lived in mutual dread: of! each other, and at night they crept into ; sly and sequestered nooks io sleep. It would have been dangerous for the one that was caught sleeping, our solitary said, would never have risen again." Under such circumstances, life at length became unbearable, for the dread of'being murdered in their sleep weighed heavily upon them, and they came to the conclusion that one of them should leave St. Paul's and depart for the sister isle of Amsterdam. Each man mnst have an island for himself. With characteristic indifference they tossed up which should go; and the reader must be told that the loser would in all _ probability lose his life, for the trip to the isle of Amsterdam, though only about thirteen leagiies, was a most dangerous exploit to attempt in an open, boat and single-handed. They tossed up, and the man we found there won, when the loser, true to his word, in less than an hour took the boat left them by the ship, and safely navigated her to the.island of Amsterdam, where, however, he would have starved had he not been taken off, together with about a dozen other persons (who had been wrecked there a few days previously), by a brig four days after he !so singularly joined them.—r United Service Gazette.