Emboldened by their example, and especially by the balsamic odor of the plant, he tastes it.

It is sweet and succulent.
This plant is no other than that providential vegetable called by the Spaniards _porro_, and which forms so large a part of the nourishment of the poor inhabitants of Chili.[1] [Footnote 1: It is the _Durvilloea utilis_, dedicated to Dumont d'Urville, by Bory de St.Vincent, and classed by him in the laminariees, an important and valuable family of marine cryptogamia.] The sea, which had already sent Selkirk seals to furnish him with oil and furs in a moment of distress, had just come to his assistance by giving him an easily procured aliment for a long time.
Another surprise awaits him.
Between the interlaced branches of his alga, he discovers a little bottle, strongly secured with a cork and wax.

It contains a fragment of parchment, on which are traced some lines in the Spanish language.
Although he is but imperfectly acquainted with this language, though the characters are partially effaced or scarcely legible, Selkirk, by dint of patience and study, soon deciphers the following words: 'In the name of the Holy Trinity, to you who may read'-- (here some words were wanting,)--'greeting.

My name is Jean Gons--( Gonzalve or Gonsales; the rest of the name was illegible.) After having seen my two sons, and almost all my fortune, swallowed up in the sea with the vessel _Fernand Cortes_, in which I was a passenger, thrown by shipwreck on the coasts of the Island of San Ambrosio, near Chili, I live here alone and desolate.

May God and men come to my aid!' At the bottom of the parchment, some other characters were perceptible, but without form, without connection, and almost entirely destroyed by a slight mould which had collected at the bottom of the bottle..