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.
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