THE RIDDLE OF THE SANDS
Sir-One of your "Radio Viewsreel" commentators asks (writing of Robinson Crusoe) "How . , . did Friday manage, as is expressly stated, to leave in the middle of a large sandy beach one solitry footprint?" The question of how one footprint got there is certainly a poser, and is not made easier by Defoe, who repeatedly makes it plain that there was only one print. But. it certainly wasn’t put there by Friday, and it is on this point ‘that I wish to quarrel with your commentator, who has evidently read some very unreliable abridgement. The footprint that put Crusoe into cogitations and uneasiness for so many nights and months appeared about two years before his 19th year on the island. That is the nearest explicit statement as to when he saw it. He says he saw the remains of a cannibal feast in his nineteenth year, and this was after two years of uneasiness occasioned by the footprint. It wasn’t until his twentythird year that he had the dream that forecast the arrival of Friday, and it was 18 months after this dream that dive canoes of cannibals landed with Friday as ¢heir principal dish and Friday esca from them "with incredible swiftness along the sands," to become Crusoe’s servant. So.as far as I can work it out (with difficulty) from a complete edition, nearly eight years passed between the time of the footprint and Friday’s arrival in circumstances which suggest he had never been there before.
QUIBBLER
(Wellington).
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19451019.2.11.11
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 330, 19 October 1945, Page 24
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252THE RIDDLE OF THE SANDS New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 330, 19 October 1945, Page 24
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