We came to a wild fig-tree loaded with fruit, of which I gave them the English name.
"Figgies, figgies!" they cried, while they picked till their baskets were full.

But when I told them that the _cabra_ they pointed out was only a goat, they screamed with laughter, and rolled on the grass in wild delight to think that a man had come to their island who would call a cabra a goat.
[Illustration: The man who called a cabra a goat.] The first child born on Juan Fernandez, I was told, had become a beautiful woman and was now a mother.

Manuel Carroza and the good soul who followed him here from Brazil had laid away their only child, a girl, at the age of seven, in the little churchyard on the point.

In the same half-acre were other mounds among the rough lava rocks, some marking the burial-place of native-born children, some the resting-places of seamen from passing ships, landed here to end days of sickness and get into a sailors' heaven.
The greatest drawback I saw in the island was the want of a school.

A class there would necessarily be small, but to some kind soul who loved teaching and quietude life on Juan Fernandez would, for a limited time, be one of delight.
On the morning of May 5, 1896, I sailed from Juan Fernandez, having feasted on many things, but on nothing sweeter than the adventure itself of a visit to the home and to the very cave of Robinson Crusoe.
From the island the _Spray_ bore away to the north, passing the island of St.Felix before she gained the trade-winds, which seemed slow in reaching their limits.
If the trades were tardy, however, when they did come they came with a bang, and made up for lost time; and the _Spray_, under reefs, sometimes one, sometimes two, flew before a gale for a great many days, with a bone in her mouth, toward the Marquesas, in the west, which, she made on the forty-third day out, and still kept on sailing.
My time was all taken up those days--not by standing at the helm; no man, I think, could stand or sit and steer a vessel round the world: I did better than that; for I sat and read my books, mended my clothes, or cooked my meals and ate them in peace.