CHAPTER X.
Discouragement .-- A Discovery .-- A Retrospective Glance .-- Project of Suicide .-- The Last Shot .-- The Sea Serpent .-- The _Porro_ .-- A Message.
-- Another Solitary.
His provisions are exhausted, and Selkirk thinks not of renewing them; his settlement on the shore is destroyed, and he thinks not of rebuilding it; the fish-pond, the bed of water-cresses are encroached upon by sand and weeds, and he thinks not of repairing them.

His mind, completely discouraged, recoils before such labors; he has scarcely troubled himself to replace the roof of his cabin.
In the midst of his dreams, Selkirk had not counted enough on two terrific guests, which must sooner or later come: despair and _ennui_.
Nevertheless, he had read in his Bible this passage: 'As the worm gnaweth the garment and rottenness the wood, so doth the weariness of solitude gnaw the heart of man.' One day, as he was descending from the Oasis, where he had dug a tomb for Marimonda, he bethought himself of visiting the site of his burning wood.
Around him, the earth, blackened by the ravages of the fire, presented only a naked, gloomy and desolate picture.

To his great surprise, beneath the ruins, under coal dust and half-calcined trunks of trees, he discovered, elevated several feet above the soil, the partition of a wall, some stones quarried out and placed one upon another; in fine, the remains of a building, evidently constructed by the hand of man.
Men had then inhabited this island before him! What had become of them?
This wood, impenetrably choked, stifled with thorny bushes, briars and vines, and which he had delivered over to the flames, was undoubtedly a garden planted by them, on a sheltered declivity of the mountain; the garden which surrounded their habitation, as he had himself designed his own to do.
Ah! if he could have but found them in the island, how different would have been his fate! But to live alone! to have no companions but his own thoughts! amid the dash of waves, the cry of birds, the bleating of goats, incessantly to imagine the sound of a human voice, and incessantly to experience the torture of being undeceived! What elements of happiness has he ever met in this miserable island?
When he dreamed of creating resources for a long and peaceful future, he lied to himself.

A life favored by leisure would but crush him the oftener beneath the weight of thought, and it is thought which is killing him, the thought of isolation! What import to him the beautiful sights spread out before his eyes?
The vast extent of sky and earth has repeated to him each day that he is lost, forgotten on an obscure point of the globe.

The sunrises and sunsets, with their magic aspects, this luxuriant tropical vegetation, the magnificent and picturesque scenery of his island, awaken in him only a feeling of restraint, an uneasiness which he cannot define.
Perhaps the emotions, so sweet to all, are painful to him only because he cannot communicate them, share them with another.