Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles.




CHAPTER I.

MY BIRTH AND HOME--MY PRETTY COUSIN--ACCIDENT TO THE
"KITTYWICH"--JOURNEY TO GUERNSEY--PLEADING TO BECOME A CRUSOE--MY
WISH GRANTED--OUTFIT SECURED--SAIL TO JETHOU.


That Crusoe of Crusoes, Alexander Selkirk, as I am aware, commences his
entertaining history with his birth and parentage, and as I am also a
Crusoe, although a very minor adventurer, I may as well follow the
precedent and declare my nativity.

I was born at the little village of Barton in Norfolk, at the time the
guns at Balaclava were mowing down our red coats and tars, where my
father had a small house facing the Broad. It was a comfortable old
two-storied building, with a thatched roof, through which a couple of
dormer windows peered out, like two eyes, over the beautiful green lawn
which sloped to the reed-fringed water. My father was in very
comfortable circumstances, as he was owner of six large fishing vessels
hailing from the port of Great Yarmouth, some ten or twelve miles
distant as the crow flies.

[Illustration: THE OLD HOME AT BARTON.]

Being born, as it were, on the water (for a distance of a hundred yards