Identifier: crusoesislandbir00ober (find matches)
Title: Crusoe's Island; a bird-hunter's story
Year: 1898 (1890s)
Authors: Ober, Frederick A. (Frederick Albion), 1849-1913
Subjects: Defoe, Daniel, 1661?-1731 Birds
Publisher: New York, D. Appleton and company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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in his Face. His Hair waslong and black, not curld like Wool; his Foreheadvery high and large, and a great vivacity and spark-ling sharpness in his Eyes. The colour of his Skin was not black, but verytawney ; and yet, not of an ugly nauseous tawney, asthe Brazilians and Virginians, and other Natives ofAmerica are; but of a bright kind of a dun oliveColour, that had in it something very agreeable,though not easy to describe. His Face was roundand plump, his Nose small, but not flat like the Ne-groes ; a very good Mouth, thin Lips, and his fineTeeth well set, and white as Ivory. That is Man Fridays portrait, as drawn by Robin-son Crusoe, mariner, shortly after these two distin-guished heroes of fiction became acquainted. And itis sufficiently accurate for us to identify, by means ofit, the Indians surviving relatives, many degreesremoved—the Caribs of the Lesser Antilles of thepresent day. Friday informed his master that the few poorwretches who escaped would tell their friends on the
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151 152 CRUSOES ISLAND. other island (Trinidad) that they had been killed bythunder and lightning, as this was their first ac-quaintance with firearms. But this is one of the manyanachronisms of the book; for at the time Crusoe was written (1719) there were no Indians on thecoasts of the Americas and the West Indies unac-quainted with firearms. At that time more than twohundred years had passed since the first Spaniardshad carried guns and powder thither, and the rudeweapons of the aborigines had long since been super-seded by those of the Europeans. Yet all the sav-ages that Crusoe met were armed with woodenswords and clubs, bows and arrows. Upon one point, however, the author of Crusoeis correct: that the Indians ate only such as weretaken in battle ; for, like the Aztecs of Mexico, theCaribs, if they were given to the practice of cannibal-ism at all, were merely ritual cannibals, so called—that is, they ate the flesh of their enemies merelyfrom motives apart from a desire for hum

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