Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 5.djvu/245

235 took us for pirates, as we were all armed, and abandoning his hut, fled to the woods, but hearing us speak English, he sprang from his retreat and welcomed us with a pleasure which it would be difficult to describe. He had spent five weeks here, and meant to stay about as much longer. His clothing consisted of a pair of coarse woolen trousers, of which it would be hard to detect the original material and color, with a cotton and a flannel shirt, and a hat (he preferred, however, going bareheaded), but no coat. The surgeon and I gave him all that we could spare from our own slender stock, for which he was very thankful. His little hut was built of stones and turf, thatched with the straw of the wild oat. In one corner lay a bundle of straw and his blanket; a log of wood to sit upon composed all the furniture. His only cooking utensil was a common castiron pot, with a wooden bottom, in which he boiled his food by sinking it a few inches in the floor of his dwelling, and placing the fire round the sides. He longed to taste roast beef (having had none for seven years), and one day tried to bake some, as he termed it; but the bottom of his culinary apparatus, as might be expected, gave way in the process, so that poor Clarke was unable to accomplish his new fashion of preparing the national dish.

It was agreeable to find that this poor exile possessed a good deal of information; his library amounted to seventeen volumes &mdash; a Bible and common prayer book, which he kept concealed in a secret place when his Spanish companions were with him; some odd volumes of "Tales of my Landlord" and "Old Mortality;" several of voyages, and Cowper's poems, out of which he had learnt by heart the one upon Alexander Selkirk; and what is still more worthy of notice, a finely bound copy of "Robinson Crusoe," of which the poor fellow might himself be considered the latest and most complete edition. Like most English sailors, he had no aversion to rum; I gave him a single dram, which, as he had been long unaccustomed to it, made him forget his exile, and, like the heroes of Troy,

""He fought his battles o'er again,

And slew the slain three times.""