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Crusoe leading the Young Kid
Justyne, Leitch, Macquoid, Morgan, Pasquier, & Thomas
Engravers: Butterworth and Heath
1863-64
Wood-engraving
14.7 cm high by 14.1 cm wide.
Cassell's Robinson Crusoe, page 73.
[Click on image to enlarge it and mouse over text for links.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
In this journey my dog surprised a young kid, and seized upon it; and I, running in to take hold of it, caught it, and saved it alive from the dog. I had a great mind to bring it home if I could, for I had often been musing whether it might not be possible to get a kid or two, and so raise a breed of tame goats, which might supply me when my powder and shot should be all spent. I made a collar for this little creature, and with a string, which I made of some rope-yam, which I always carried about me, I led him along, though with some difficulty, till I came to my bower, and there I enclosed him and left him, for I was very impatient to be at home, from whence I had been absent above a month. [Chapter VIII, "Surveys His Position," page 75]
The particular moment realised reinforces Crusoe's status for much of the first half of the story as the castaway on a "desert" or previoiusly uninhabited island south of Trinidad off the mouth of the Orinoco River. Here, having survived a near-death experience, Crusoe begins to see possibilities for using the island's goats as a food resource without necessarily hunting them as he finds his supplies of black powder and shot starting to dwindle.
Left: Thomas Stothard's 1790 realisation of the solitary and somewhat nervous castaway's encountering the goat in the cave: Robinson Crusoe terrified at the dying goat (Chapter IV, "First Few Weeks on the Island," copper-engraving). Right: George Cruikshank's other scene involving the island's goats, Crusoe discovers a dying goat in a cave (1831). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Above: Cruikshank's version of Crusoe's goat-hunting, with far less emphasis on the vegetation surrounding the hunter: Crusoe hunting goats (1831). [Click on image to enlarge it.]
Defoe, Daniel. The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner. As Related by himself. With upwards of One Hundred Illustrations. London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin, 1863-64.
Last modified 12 March 2018