There is here confusion of place and confusion of time; not only is _Mas a Fuera_ not _San Ambrosio_ but this latter island, far from being a desert, as your correspondent has said, has been inhabited more than twenty years by a multitude of madmen, fishermen and pirates, potato-eaters and old sailors, who, when I visited them, in 1702, politely received me with gun-shots, and whose politeness I returned with cannon-shots.

Therefore, my boy, he who wrote to you must have been dead when you received his letter.
What date did it bear ?' 'None,' said Selkirk; 'the last lines were effaced;' and he trembled at the idea of all the dangers he had run in pursuit of this friend, who no longer existed, and of a land which he had never inhabited.
After having satisfied a duty of humanity, that which he had regarded as a debt contracted towards a friend, Selkirk, among other inquiries, let fall the name of Stradling.

This time, it was hatred which asked information.
His hatred was destined to be gratified.
In pursuing his voyage, after having coasted along the shores of the Straits of Magellan, Stradling, surprised by a frightful hurricane, had seen his vessel entirely disabled.

Repulsed at five different times, now by the tempest, now by the Spaniards, from the ports where he attempted to take refuge, he was thrown, near La Plata, on an inhospitable shore.

Attacked, pillaged by the natives, half of his crew having perished, with the remains of his ship he constructed another, to which he gave the name of the Cinque Ports, instead of that of the Swordfish, which it was no longer worthy to bear.