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Show A FEMALE ROBINSON CRUSOE. Scribner=s has a wonderfully romantic story of an occurrence which happened on the Santa Barbara islands, a cluster off the California coast, which, in the fifteenth century were densely peopled by a superior race, described as white, with light hair and ruddy cheeks, the women with fine forms, beautiful eyes and modest demeanor, who dressed in petticoats and capes of sealskin, embroidered with pearl and small pink shells. But in time the inhabitants mysteriously melted away, and in 1835 a schooner was sent to bring the remnant to the main land. After the ship had sailed it was found that a child had been left behind, the mother supposing it to have been carried aboard by an old sailor. She frantically implored the captain to return, but, a storm threatening, he refused. She became desperate, and jumping overboard swam for shore. No attempt was made to rescue her, and the captain of the schooner, although promising to visit the island and take her off, never did so, his vessel shortly after being destroyed in a storm. There being no other sea craft on that coast, and no one cared to attempt a passage of seventy miles in an open boat, the event faded out of interest and finally out of memory until fifteen years afterward, when under promise of $300???, the island was visited and searched with no results. The attempt, however, revived the story, and three years afterward a captain and crew of otter hunters walking along the beach in Aone of those limpid nights of which California knows" saw on the lonely shore the print of a slender naked food. Search was begun, and after a several days= march a dangerous climb brought Brown, the captain, to a spot where there were fresh footprints, which he followed up the cliffs until they were lost in the thick moss. Then his eyes caught a small object a long way off on the hills. It appeared like a crow at that glance, but advancing steadily he found it was the head of a woman barely visible above the low-woven brush sides of ??? [several lines illegible] much fairer than the ordinary Indian and she had regular features, and thick brown hair which fell about her shoulders in a tangled mat. She was talking to herself and watching with alarm Brown=s companions on the plot? below. When he stepped forward and spoke to her she ran a few steps, then controlling her self, stopped and answered him in an unknown tongue. She was dressed in a tunic-shaped garment made of birds plumage, low in the neck, sleeveless, and reaching the ankle. She greeted them all with a simple dignity, and set about preparing food for them. They made her understand by signs that she was to go with them, and she gladly did so. By signs she, on her part told her history. She had never found her child, which was probably destroyed by the wild dogs of the island. She made a fire by rubbing sticks together, and for eighteen years had kept it alight like a vestal flame, and had lived on roots, fish, seals blubber and shell fish. Her return to the confining and unhealthful conditions of civilization after her free outdoor life soon killed her. The story, of which this is only a brief sketch is wonderfully fascinating from beginning to end. |
