Reading this famous book opens a window into the cultural and ethical milieu of early 19th century Europe. We see an idealized family facing severe challenges in an unknown and exotic part of the world, and doing so without despair or pessimism.
To a modern reader, the Robinson family might resemble The Cosby Show: the father comes across as a bit of a pedant, the children speak in complete and grammatically-correct sentences[1], and the family solves problems in the book-chapter equivalent of a 30 minute TV segment. Other dubious elements of the story might amuse the adult reader: see for example their island's impossible array of wildlife and botany, or the family's ability to MacGyver almost anything out of anything.
And yet one can easily see how this would be a wonderful and ethically nutritious story for a young person to read (or have read to him or her), as it conveys a range of non-cynical messages that are rapidly disappearing from the modern era: on not being idle, on making good use of your time, on using your intellect, and on being knowledgeable about--and grateful for--the bounty of nature.
It's also fascinating--again, from the perspective of a modern--how well this family sleeps after a day of earnest labor, as they work with their hands in the real world, acquiring food, building shelter and storing up provisions. Their work is daunting and never ends, but it is sincere, satisfying work in a way that spending all day filing TPS reports simply isn't. No one in this family suffers from depression or body dysphoria, nobody has any of the low-grade rage or anomie so common in our day. Instead, they have "good Christian cheer" in the broadest, most beautiful sense of the phrase. Perhaps that is the central message of this book: keep a positive attitude, stay in solution mode, never complain, and never indulge in impotent despair.
Many modern readers, raised on a steady diet of snark and sarcasm (I include myself here), might find this family's attitude a shock, but hopefully a refreshing one. Maybe that's a sign to put down tools of modernity--like snark, sarcasm or rage--and instead pick up some of the older tools of survival.
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Footnote:
[1] Long before he became infamous for, uh, other reasons, Cosby famously rejected the idea of his TV "family" speaking in slangy, Ebonics-style speech, saying, "We spoke English!"
[Readers, feel free to skip the rest of this post. What follows are just my notes and reactions to the various plot points of the novel. I keep these notes online just to help me remember what I read.]
Notes:
Foreword:
11-12 Note the discussion here of how the author devoted his life to amassing all kinds of native Swiss tales and folklore, but no one knew who he was until he wrote The Swiss Family Robinson in 1812. [You never know what you'll be recognized for, and it might be for something that isn't even your "thing" at all!] The story was originally divided into two lengthy parts and was left unfinished at the authors death in 1830, but "with the consent of the author's son, the Baroness de Montolieu wrote a conclusion to the story which so well fits into the whole a few readers have ever suspected that two authors had a hand in the telling."
12 This introduction [which is anonymous; there's no byline anywhere] quotes the author's original introduction to the first edition of The Swiss Family Robinson describing how another Swiss man, on a round the world voyage, was part of a crew who thought they had discovered an unknown island, but to their shock they were greeted there by another Swiss man and his family already living there. The man gave him his journal, "to be forwarded to his friends in Switzerland." [It's an interesting "nested story" kind of introduction, sort of like how Mary Shelley's begins Frankenstein.]
Chapter 1: Storm at Sea
13 A father with his four boys and wife, on a ship at sea, are on their knees praying during the seventh day of a storm. The ship has been driven far off course: it had been approaching land, but then struck a huge rock. The crew fled onto the lifeboats, not knowing the family was still on the boat; the family called to the ship's crew but their voices were drowned out by the raging storm. Part of the ship they were on "was immovably fixed between two rocks" so they survived until the morning, praying all night.
18ff The storm subsides, and the family goes around the ship to collect things that they might use, finding two large dogs, various provisions, water; they feed the livestock on the ship; the youngest son finds a set of fishhooks, and the other three boys mock him for something so useless: but the father takes a moment here to lecture his sons for their mockery, telling them, "'Silence--and you should be ashamed of yourselves,' said I; the youngest has made the most valuable addition to our stores. These are fish hooks, and maybe more useful for the preservation of our lives than anything the ship contains." [The reader gets a good impression here of the father's semi-pedantic, church pastor vibe.]
20ff The family contrives a sort of segmented boat by hammering planks and an outrigger across a set of empty wine casks; they lever it off the ship and into the water as the father gives a lecture on the power of Archimedes' lever.
Chapter 3: The Embarkation
24ff They give the livestock on the ship fodder for a few days with the intention to return later for them, and then push off toward shore. Interesting to see a long sentence here describing all of the different guns, pistols, balls, shot, lead and powder that they took along, reminding the reader how moderns, increasingly ignorant of shooting and firearm safety, simply would never make it in any other era. The father describes the segments of their makeshift boat, each holding a different member of his family, and he describes each of his sons' and his wife's natures with blunt candor:
The faithful and pious wife.
Francis, six, "of a sweet disposition."
Fritz, our eldest, fourteen or fifteen years old [wait, the father doesn't know?], a curly-headed, clever, intelligent and lively youth.
Jack ten years old: "heedless, enterprising, bold and useful."
Ernest, twelve years of age, well-informed and rational, but somewhat selfish and indolent."
25ff They pass by some floating casks from the ship and tie them to their makeshift boat, they also see other items from the shipwreck that have floated to the island. They reach shore, finding a huge collection of penguins and flamingos, along with some of the ducks and geese that the family had set free from the ship that had also made their way to the island.
Chapter 4: Safe and Sound
30ff They unload their haul from their boat, then set up a tent using canvas from the ship's sails; they set up a cooking fire, discover lobsters and oysters; Ernest complains that he doesn't want to get his feet wet foraging for oysters, they even find salt, and the mother puts together a soup for the family to eat; and then they realize they didn't have any utensils to eat it with, so they so scoop up the soup and drink with oyster shells.
33ff Fritz manages to shoot an agouti, a type of rodent related to the guinea pig; he pretends it's a suckling pig, earning him a lecture from his father who "warned him never to use the least deceit, even in jest." Later the dogs eat this animal, and Fritz becomes angry and strikes the dogs with his gun, bending it, then getting yet another lecture from his father. "'Uncontrolled anger,' I said, 'leads to every crime. Remember Cain, who killed his brother in a fit of passion." The son shows tremendous contrition both times. Finally, it gets dark quickly after sunset, so the father concludes that they must be somewhere close to the equator.
Chapter 5: Exploration
37ff The father and Fritz go on a scouting mission of the area. "I gave Fritz a pair of pistols in addition to his gun." Still there's no sign whatsoever of any of the other sailors from their ship. His son asks why they should search for them after they abandoned us, and the father says "We must not return evil for evil. Besides, they may assist us, or be in need of our assistance. After all, remember, they could save nothing but themselves. We have got many useful things which they have as much right to as we."
Chapter 6: Gourds and Sugar Cane
44ff The father and Fritz find a "gourd tree" that they use to fashion plates and even utensils; they find no sign of their shipmates; and then they find sugarcane, as well as a group of monkeys up in various coconut trees; by throwing stones at the monkeys, the monkeys respond by throwing down all the coconuts to them, which they gather up.
Chapter 7: Returning Home
49ff Fritz learns how to suck the juice out of a sugarcane, the dog Turk kills a mother monkey; and then the baby monkey bonds with Fritz, so he carries him back with them; they return to the family camp with the gourdware, coconuts, the monkey, and sugarcanes for everyone.
Chapter 8: A Hearty Supper
56ff Fritz and the father return to find that his wife and other three sons hard at work on a good supper, with fish roasting on a spit along with a surprise bird: a boobie, that Ernest actually killed, saying it was "so stupid that I knocked it down with a stick." Ernest and his father have an lengthy discussion of the various habits of this bird until the mother interrupts them and says it's time to eat. They sit down to a delicious meal, then go to sleep, and then the family is awakened by jackals that attacked their two dogs; the dogs, Fritz and the father with their guns fight them off.
Chapter 9: To the Vessel
60ff The father decides to take Fritz with him back to the foundered ship; Fritz also takes one of the jackals that he had killed the night before and sets it in front of the tent to scare the boys; when his brother Jack comes out with the baby monkey on his shoulder, the monkey was so terrified by the jackal that he raced back into the tent and hid himself. Ernest, Jack and Francis have a debate about whether it's a dog or a wolf, and Ernest confidently "pronounced it to be a golden fox." Fritz mocks Ernest, making him cry, and their father lectures them both: "I reproved Fritz for his ridicule of his brother, and Ernest for so easily taking offense."
62ff After breakfast Fritz and the father head back on their makeshift boat to the ship; they feed the livestock still there, and load up with more equipment, including hammocks, blankets, guns, knives, gunpowder, various foodstuffs and even a barrel of sulfur. Fritz also has the idea to rig up a sale to assist them on their return to the island.
Chapter 10: Back to Shore
65ff Fritz suggests tying floatation materials around the different animals on the ship, and tied them together by cords, so that the animals could float/swim back with them; they manage to bring the sow, ass, cow, as well as sheep and goats to shore, along with plenty of stores from the ship. On the way, though, there's a bit of panic as a giant fish attempts to eat one of the sheep, but Fritz quickly shoots the fish twice in the head and it swims away. The family welcomes them at shore and they all sit down to dinner.
Chapter 11: Exciting Discoveries
69ff The mother relates what happened while he and Fritz were gone; she and the boys went on an exploratory excursion.
70 [It is fascinating to hear the philosophy (or better said, necessity) of gun ownership a century or so ago]. The mother tells her husband: "As we proceeded, I could not help feeling thankful that you had so early taught the boys to use firearms properly, as the defense of my youngest boy and myself now depended on the two boys of ten and the twelve years of age."
70ff The mother and the three boys found a huge tree with supporting arches and a huge wide trunk, along with places in the branches where they could build an elevated shelter big enough for the whole family; on their return they stumble onto more supplies from the ship that had drifted ashore plus a huge supply of turtle eggs.
Chapter 12: The Bridge
75ff The husband and wife discuss whether to move their camp to under the tree; the husband shares his plan to make a makeshift bridge across the river; later the father goes with his sons to where they had unloaded but not yet moved various items from the ship, and they find the body of the big fish that Fritz had shot; the family also finds various birds, crawfish and crabs for food. Finally they manage to use the cow and ass to drag long wood beams across the river, and using removable planks, they fashion a makeshift bridge across the river that they can remove if necessary.
Chapter 13: Moving Day
80ff As they load up the pack animals, the mother teaches the boys how to trap chickens and other fowl by scattering seeds inside their tent, and then after the chickens enter, closing up the entrance. "Remember that intellect has more power than mere bodily exertion."
84ff Jack dispatches a porcupine. Fritz shoots a tiger cat that would have eaten all their chickens. The family arrives to their new home in an area with huge trees, and they settle in to cook supper while the father makes needles from porcupine quills. The mother can't bring herself to eat their soup, made of porcupine meat, while the father pronounces the porcupine meat "of good flavor, though rather hard."
Chapter 14: A New Home
87ff They find flamingos and even manage to domesticate one of them; the family begins working on a rope ladder; they set up a pulley system to use later for building a shelter up in the huge tree that the wife had discovered earlier; then they sleep the night in hammocks suspended in the tree. The husband lays awake worrying about the safety of the rest.
Chapter 15: Above the Ground
92ff Work begins on the treehouse; they lay planks across level branches and construct a temporary roof of sailcloth. They tie the dogs to the foot of the tree to protect the animals, and ascend to a good night's sleep, looking forward to the Sabbath tomorrow for day for a day of rest.
Chapter 16: The First Sunday
95ff The father gives a sort of sermon for the family describing a kingdom (a sort of allegory for God's rules), where some people shirk their duty, others ignore the king's rules, but some follow the rules happily and cultivate their land according to the laws of the king. The father then explains and applies the allegory to each of his children and their weaknesses. He warns Fritz to avoid pride in his natural abilities, Ernest to avoid seeking pleasure instead of doing his duty, etc.
100ff The next day they hunt small birds to store up food, using bows and arrows the father fashions.
Chapter 17: Our Own Geography
102ff The family names the various parts of the island. On their way back to their initial homesite to gather supplies, they find a supply of wild potatoes in the soil.
Chapter 18: Transporting Our Belongings
105ff On the way to their old tent location, the father points out all the flora, even discovering a karata plant with multiple uses including a source of thread; and his wife says something complementary to him that likely would sound totally foreign to 99% of this era's married men [excluding me of course!]: "How happy this is for us that you have devoted your life to study. In our ignorance we might have passed this treasure without suspecting its value."
106 They find the ducks and geese they had left behind had become too feral to gather up, but Ernest figure out a solution: tie cheese to a string and gather up the animals after they had eaten the bait. They return home laden with more supplies.
Chapter 19: Eggs and Nests
110ff The father has an idea to build a sledge; they recover a trunk of clothing that had floated ashore, he also lectures his sons after they waste too much powder and shot shooting birds; also they catch their pet monkey hiding eggs, and so then they begin tying him up each morning until the eggs were collected.
Chapter 20: A Good Day's Catch
112ff With the newly-made sledge the father takes Ernest back to recover more supplies. They find some hollows near the bay perfect for baths; Ernest hooks a huge salmon; on their return they shoot an animal bounding near them, a kangaroo. When they returned with the kangaroo, "Fritz displayed a little jealousy, but soon surmounted it by an exertion of his nobler feelings; and only the keen eye of his father could have discovered it."
Chapter 21: To the Ship Again
115ff The father takes Fritz to sail back to the wrecked ship, and over the course of two days, the father and Fritz, using wood from the ship itself, make a raft; they load it with everything they can carry: doors and windows, chests of supplies, fruit, vines and plants, seeds, iron and lead bars, tools, a ship's compass, a large fishing net and harpoons, cart wheels, even a handmill, broken up into pieces. [To explain this deus ex machina the reader is told that the ship was stocked to supply a new colony.]
Chapter 22: The Giant Turtle
120ff On their return Fritz harpoons a huge sea turtle that pulls their raft toward shore. The other boys have found manioc tubers in the meantime. They have a meal of the turtle meat, and the wife breaks out a Malaga wine that had washed ashore in a cask.
Chapter 23: The Pinnace
124ff Returning to the wrecked ship, Fritz finds a pinnace, a small ship broken down into numbered pieces; it even has two small mounted guns. They bring yet another stash of goods back, and are greeted by a flock of penguins on shore. Jack leaps among them striking several dead or senseless, and is lectured "for his useless rashness, for the flesh of the penguin is by no means a delicacy." The family laughs as the father for bringing tobacco graters back from the ship; but he father has a plan for them. They tie each live penguin to a goose or duck in their poultry yard in order to see if they can be tamed. The father tells the sons to rise early tomorrow for an important task.
Chapter 24: Baking Day
129ff The father tells his family that they'll be baking today. An amusing quote here, his wife "put the potatoes on the fire, a proof she had not much faith in my bread-making." They grate and press the manioc, then bake flatbread from it, then test whether they processed out enough of the poisonous liquid by feeding some of the bread to two of the chickens as well as the monkey. Finding it safe to eat, the entire family enjoys the bread and decides to cultivate the manioc.
Chapter 25: Assembling the Pinnace
133ff The father and his boys assemble the pinnace but with no real plan to get it out of the ship's hold. They spend a week going back and forth to the ship building it.
Chapter 26: The Launching
135ff The father hatches a plan to use a mortar on the ship to blow an opening in the hull to set the pinnace free; his plan succeeds and they sail back on the small craft. They name the craft The Elizabeth after the mother. We learn that in the meantime the mother and the youngest son have planted manioc, potatoes and all kinds of vegetables.
Chapter 27: The Giant Crab and the "Water" Plant
141ff The father teaches the sons the use of the lasso. The family then goes on an excursion for more game. They discover a large land crab that climbs trees and sends down coconuts to break and eat. Ernest finds a water plant, the liane rouge, and shows how it can furnish drinkable water.
Chapter 28: Wild Boar and Crocodile
145ff The family continues on their excursion, reaching the "Gourd Wood" and making fresh bowls and flasks to use, when Ernest sees what he thinks is a wild boar, but it turns out to be their own sow, which had been living in the woods. They discover guava plants, as well as a large iguana that Jack mistakes for a crocodile. The father kills it painlessly with a noose and the family eats part of it at dinner, "which was pronounced excellent."
Chapter 29: An Eventful Excursion
150ff The father and eldest son Fritz set out to "explore the limits of our country" to make sure it was an island rather than part of a continent. They see a ruffled grouse performing a mating dance. Fritz quickly shoots it, earning a lecture from his father for "so rashly killing everything we met without consideration." They find candleberries that can be used to make wax candles. Fritz captures a parrot that he wants to teach to speak. Later he discovers a rubber tree. The father explains to Fritz his plan for making shoes with the gum from the tree. Finally they find a tree containing sago, and load some 25 pounds of it on their ass before returning home.
Chapter 30: Candlemaking and Other Activities
156ff The family uses the wax berries from the candleberry tree to make candles, which "prolonged our days by many useful hours we had lost before." They also are able to make butter using a gourd filled with cream from the cow and shaken. And then the father builds a wheeled cart using wheels taken from the shipwreck. They plant vines and fruit trees, they organize a bit of a barrier around their tent and storage place at their first living site, etc. "These labors occupied us three months, only interrupted by a strict attention to the devotions and duties of the Sunday."
158ff The family starts experiencing wear and degradation in their clothing, so they make another journey to the shipwreck to get bales of cloth and some of the chests of clothes still there; "In fact we completely sacked the vessel; carrying off, after several days' labor, all our booty." Then the father resolves to blow up the ship, setting a fuse to a large barrel of gunpowder in the hold; they watch the explosion from shore and then pick up the wood that floated to shore afterwards.
Chapter 31: Ernest's Experiment
160ff The family sets out on a journey to resupply their candleberries and other provisions; the boys climb coconut trees after their father teaches them to use a rope to secure themselves; despite mockery from his brothers, Earnest climbs up another tree that lacked coconuts to discover a cabbage palm as well as palm-wine, both delicacies.
162ff As the family settles down to sleep that night their donkey begins to bray and runs off, disappearing into a thicket of bamboo.
Chapter 32: The Herd of Buffalo
164ff The father takes Jack to go search for the donkey; as they walk through the thicket of bamboo and arrive on the other side, they find an extensive plain ending in a bay that a river empties into, and likely very fertile country. Suddenly, they come face to face with a herd of buffalo. The dogs go ballistic and attack one of the young buffalo, enraging its mother; this enrages the entire herd. The father gives a signal to his son who fired on the herd with his gun, causing the herd to run away. The mother buffalo, wounded by Jack's shot, advances on the dogs, but the father finishes it off with his pistol. Jack and his father bind up the Buffalo calf, thinking to add it to their menagerie and replace their donkey.
168ff The author describes how the father perforates the buffalo calf's nose and inserts a cord through it to use as a rein, they make use of what they can from the mother buffalo.
Chapter 33: The Useful Sago-Palm
171ff While the father and Jack were gone Fritz and Ernest attempted to cut down an immense sago palm to get at its "precious pith," but while they were doing so a troop of monkeys broke into their tent and pillaged and destroyed everything: overturning milk, carrying off provisions. Fritz captures a small eagle that his father suggests he could train as a falcon to chase other birds; the family smokes some of the buffalo meat.
172ff The father has the idea of not only splitting open the huge sago-palm to extracting the pith for food, but also to use the huge 70 foot-long trunk to channel water from the river to their garden.
Chapter 34: Plans for a Stairway
174ff The family collects candleberries as well as sap from the rubber tree. While they are working the dogs freak out over something in the thicket; it turns out to be the family sow once again, but this time they find her surrounded by seven piglets nursing; they propose to take away two to feed and raise up at home, leaving the rest of the pigs to support themselves on acorns in the woods. They then return to their tree house.
175ff Fritz makes a mistake and removes his eagle's hood too early, before it was tamed. The eagle attacks his pet parrot and tears it to pieces. Ernest then offers to train the eagle, and then begins explaining how it's done first by showing him how the bird can be subdued by using tobacco smoke, as Earnest smokes a pipe [!! Wait, isn't Ernest like 12 years old?] under the branch where the bird was perched, calming it until it was motionless enough for Fritz to put the hood on yet again.
176ff The family stabilizes their fruit tree plantings with bamboo poles, as they were beginning to list, while the father gives a lecture on the origins of all the different fruits and where they came from in the world. The father also conceives a plan to replace the rope ladder with a safer staircase up to their tree house. They begin sounding the tree, noting that there was a beehive inside of it, and they discover that it is much more hollow than they thought, and perhaps they could build a staircase inside the tree. As they start beating on the trunk some of the bees come out and sting the boys.
Chapter 35: Finishing the Staircase
181ff The father plasters over most of the entrance to the beehive in the trunk, and then inserts the end of his pipe, smoking briskly to stupefy the bees. They then break open the tree, getting access to a gigantic store of wax and honey; they take the upper comb and place it in a new hive made out of a large gourd. The family processes the wax and honey, and then begins building a staircase inside the tree now that they find that it was entirely hollow. The father even places windows (taken from the ship) at various points in the trunk along the staircase. This project took "a month of patient industry." During this time the dogs produces puppies, the goat has two kids and the sheep have lambs.
Chapter 36: Odd Jobs
186ff The family continues working with the young buffalo calf in order to ride it and train it to carry loads; Fritz continues training his young eagle; Ernest even takes to training of the family's pet monkey; the father perfects the candle making molds that he had fashioned from sugarcane stalks, and then also perfects his rubber footwear using a mold and gum from the rubber tree; they also arrange the long sago palm trunks to divert running water near to their tree house, rigging it to empty into the large turtle shell from the turtle Fritz harpooned earlier and the story.
Chapter 37: More Livestock
192ff The family hears a howling sound outside their treehouse: it's the donkey that's returned, accompanied by another similar animal: "I knew it at once to be the onagra, or wild ass, a most important capture, if we can make it; though all naturalists have declared it impossible to tame this elegant creature, yet I determined to make the attempt." Discussion here over two pages about how we goes about taming it with his son Fritz.
197 The chickens continue to increase; the father also realizes he needs to produce some sort of shelter for the animals for the rainy season; he builds an extension off of the tree where they have their tree house, creating stables, poultry houses, a larder, a storeroom, etc., building over it a roof firm enough to act as a sort of balcony for the family.
Chapter 38: The Rainy Season
199ff The father examines some of the long leaves that the boys were using as pretend swords and discovers that it is New Zealand flax, "a most important discovery to us, and which, when I communicated it to my wife, almost overwhelmed her with joy." She is thus able to make sewing thread, cords, stockings, shirts, coats, she asks him to make a machines for her so she can spin and weave the material into fabric.
200ff Discussion here of how to treat the flax: it must be soaked in water for two weeks to separate out the fibrous part of the plant; in the meantime the family continues to store up provisions for the rainy season: harvesting acorns, manioc, potatoes, wood, sugar cane, fruit, as well as fodder for the cattle. They also plant some of the European grains that were on the shipwreck.
201ff During the heaviest hurricane season rain entered their treehouse from all directions and the wind threatened to carry everyone and everything off, so the family had to move down and live with the animals in the sheltered storage area: "the various offensive smells made our retreat almost unbearable. We were choked with smoke if we lighted a fire, and inundated with rain if we opened the door. For the first time since our misfortune, we sighed for the comforts of our native home; but action was necessary, and we set about endeavoring to amend our condition." [Along with the shipwreck scene in the beginning of the book, this is the closest the family ever gets to despair. Not very close! Kudos to them.]
202ff The family has extra downtime now, so the father writes in his journal, the mother works on making fabric and repairing their clothing, Fritz and Jack teach their young brother to read and write; Ernest copies his father's journal, the family reads lessons from the Bible. "We then retired to rest, content with ourselves and with our innocent and peaceful life." [There's no insomnia and no free-floating angst in this family!]
205ff They resolve to build a more secure winter shelter for the next rainy season as "even my gentle Elizabeth got out of temper with the inconveniences, and begged we would build a better winter house." [Okay, maybe a little free-floating angst...] The oldest son quotes from Robinson Crusoe, who cut a dwelling out of rock; they go to examine the rocks near where they had set up their orginal tenthouse upon their arrival to the island. The father also builds a beetle and carding combs for his wife to use to work with the flax.
Chapter 39: Sunshine Again--And Hewing Rock
207ff Spring arrives; the family is thankful like the children of Noah coming out of the ark. The mother processes the flax, producing highly useful thread ready for spinning; the father makes a wheel and reel she can use to spin thread. Note the comment here that Ernest was the only son willing to help her, thanks to his "indolent habits," while the other boys "rebelled at the effeminate work."
208 The family returns to the their tent house site, finding most of their provisions destroyed, but the pinnace was still safe at anchor. The worst loss was the two barrels of gunpowder which had been destroyed by the rain; this makes them realize all the more the need of a genuinely secure shelter. They begin working at a rockface near their old tent house, finding the stone impenetrable at first, but the rock becomes softer as they break it down. Eventually they find behind the rock a small opening, although it was filled with a toxic carbonic acid gas which can collect in caves or grottos. They burn out the gas using gunpowder and some of the signal fireworks from the shipwreck.
211ff The grotto has large crystals on the walls that turn out to be rock salt; the space here is large enough to house the entire family.
Chapter 40: Bounty of the Sea
215ff Discussion here of the construction of the rock house, which provided enough space for the entire family. They also trap turtles, as lobsters, crabs, mussels and various fish. A side story here about they saw the sea appear to be boiling, while an immense flock of marine birds hovered over it; and it turns out to be a gigantic school of herring which came directly into the island's bay; here the father reminds his family that "when Providence sends plenty, we ought to put forth our hands to take it." Ultimately they manage to put away a dozen barrels of herring, salted with salt from inside the rock cavern.
Chapter 41: Our Plantations
218ff Other stories here on the fish that they capture--some less plausible than others--including a story about an eight foot sturgeon that the family had to collectively pull in together, even bringing in the buffalo and harnessing it to the harpoon line. They harvest the caviar, dry it in their smoking hut, and then harvesting the sturgeon's "isinglass" which the father thought he could use to make a transparent glue to fabricate additional windowpanes.
220ff The family's garden is producing all sorts of abundance: peas, beans, lentils, lettuce, cucumbers, melons; but the corn was devoured by birds, so they set Fritz's eagle out, which caught a bustard; also the family's pet jackal brought in several quails which the family ate. The family also sets out to build a farmhouse for their animals some distance away from their tree house so that the animals could forage well still being secure; while they were seeking a suitable site they find cotton plants.
Chapter 42: The Farmhouse
224ff The family begins structuring a farmhouse built around four trees that happen to be at a useful distance from each other. The family also finds a lake, reminding them of home in Switzerland; the family is struck by the sight of "a pair of black swans, sailing majestically on the water." Nearby they also find wild rice and wild strawberries; also Ernest impresses his father with his skill in bringing down several birds.
229ff The father builds yet another new building, a summer house for the family that they name Prospect Hill. Finally he finds a tree with a soft bark that he thinks may enable him to build a sort of canoe.
Chapter 43: Well Established
232ff The family finishes work on the canoe. "Our fleet was now in good condition. For distant excursions we could take the pinnace, but the canoe would be invaluable for the coasting service." The rainy season returns, but this year the family has a warm and comfortable home to live in and plenty of provisions. "The privations of the preceding winter increased the enjoyment of our present comforts."
232ff The family finishes work on the canoe. "Our fleet was now in good condition. For distant excursions we could take the pinnace, but the canoe would be invaluable for the coasting service." The rainy season returns, but this year the family has a warm and comfortable home to live in and plenty of provisions. "The privations of the preceding winter increased the enjoyment of our present comforts."
234ff [Beautiful closing quote here emphasizing gratitude and acceptance:] "We had thus made great steps toward civilization; and, though condemned, perhaps, to pass our lives alone on this unknown shore, we might yet be happy. We were placed in the midst of abundance. We were active, industrious, and content; blessed with health and united by affection, our minds seem to enlarge and improve every day. We saw around us on every side traces of the Divine wisdom and beneficence, and our hearts overflowed with love and veneration for that Almighty hand which so miraculously saved, and continued to protect us. I humbly trusted in Him either to restore us to the world, or send some beings to join us in this beloved island, where for two years we had seen no trace of man. To Him we committed our fate. We were happy and tranquil, looking with resignation to the future."
Vocab:
ebullition: the physical act of a liquid boiling or bubbling up. Metaphorically, it describes a sudden, often violent outburst of emotion or activity, such as a spontaneous display of excitement, anger, or passion
isinglass: a pure, collagen-rich gelatin derived from the dried swim bladders of fish (primarily sturgeon). It is primarily used in the brewing and winemaking industries as a natural fining agent to clarify cloudy liquids.