Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Selkirk   /sˈɛlkərk/   Listen
Selkirk

noun
1.
Scottish sailor who was put ashore on a deserted island off the coast of Chile for five years (providing the basis for Daniel Defoe's novel about Robinson Crusoe) (1676-1721).  Synonyms: Alexander Selcraig, Alexander Selkirk, Selcraig.



Related search:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Selkirk" Quotes from Famous Books



... the branches while the gun was levelled at them; in fact, little Alexander, returning one day with several of them that he had shot, complained of want of sport, quoting the lines of his namesake Selkirk in Cowper,—"Their tameness is shocking ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn

... lady assented. "The regular Railway-Ghosts—I mean the Ghosts of ordinary Railway-literature—are very poor affairs. I feel inclined to say, with Alexander Selkirk, 'Their tameness is shocking to me'! And they never do any Midnight Murders. They couldn't 'welter in gore,' to ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll

... of August 29, 1817, I arrived at the ancient little border town of Selkirk, where I put up for the night. I had come down from Edinburgh, partly to visit Melrose Abbey and its vicinity, but chiefly to get sight of the "mighty minstrel of the north." I had a letter of introduction to him from Thomas Campbell, the poet, and had reason ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving

... himself by his two voyages round the globe that he was granted a commission by Prince George of Denmark to sail as a privateer in the St. George, to prey on French and Spanish ships, the terms being: "No purchase, no pay." Sailing as his consort was the Cinque Ports, whose master was Alexander Selkirk, the original of Robinson Crusoe. This voyage, fully recounted in Dampier's book, is a long tale of adventure, hardship, and disaster, and the explorer eventually returned to England a beggar. However, his travels made a great ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse

... same day Jones made a descent on the estate of the Earl of Selkirk, near his old home in Kirkcudbright, with the intention of carrying off the earl as a hostage. But the earl was not at home, and Jones consented, he says, to let his men, mutinous and greedy, seize the Selkirk family plate, which Jones put himself at a great deal of trouble ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood

... born, but his name was then John Paul. His uncle, like his father, was a gardener, and worked on the estate of the Earl of Selkirk on St. Mary's Isle, where John Paul used to visit him and go fishing in small boats that he obtained from a little seaport near at hand. Many sailors came to this port, and they made friends with the alert boy who was ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards

... story to hear from Caleb, but to suspect him of inventing or of exaggerating was impossible to anyone who knew him. And we have seen that Isaac Bawcombe was an exceptional man—physically a kind of Alexander Selkirk of the Wiltshire Downs. And he, moreover, had a dog to help him—one as superior in speed and strength to the ordinary sheep-dog as he himself was to the rack of his fellow-men. It was only after much ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson

... of the hill you follow Dr. Brown into the valley of Yarrow, and the deep black pools, now called the "dowie dens," and so, "through the pomp of cultivated nature," as Wordsworth says, to the railway at Selkirk, passing the plain where Janet won back Tamlane from the queen of the fairies. All this country was familiar to Dr. Brown, and on one of the last occasions when I met him, he was living at Hollylea, on the Tweed, just above Ashestiel, Scott's ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang

... at the foot of a mountain, according to tradition, lived Robinson Crusoe, and from a saddle in the crest he threw longing, eager glances over the great ocean. A memorial tablet in the cave relates that the real Crusoe, a Scotch sailor named Selkirk, lived alone on the island for four years and four months in the years 1704-1709. He went on shore of his own accord, being dissatisfied with the officers of the ship to which he belonged. The climate was mild, the rainfall moderate, and wild goats and ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin

... Spaniards who discovered it, Mas-a-fuero—that is, the farthest—to distinguish it from Juan Fernandez, which lies nearer the main land, and in sight of Masafuero. Juan Fernandez is well known to all the reading community as having once been the temporary residence of Alexander Selkirk, the original, or, as grammarians would call it, the root, of De Foe's bewitching ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames

... anticipation of the Millennium at the end of the sixth book. He could describe a piece of shell-work as well as any modern poet: but he could not describe the New Jerusalem so well as John Bunyan;—nor are his verses on Alexander Selkirk so good as Robinson Crusoe. The one is not so much like a vision, nor is the other ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt

... Selkirk town, Who have been buying, selling, 10 Go back to Yarrow, 'tis their own; Each maiden to her dwelling! On Yarrow's banks let herons feed, Hares couch, and rabbits burrow! But we will downward [1] with the Tweed, 15 Nor turn aside ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth

... this letter was no doubt a memorial to Government in behalf of a project then promoted by the Earl of Selkirk and other friends of Foulis, of settling a salary on him for directing an institution so useful to the nation as the Academy of Design. Whether Smith overcame his alleged indolence and drew up the memorial ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae

... know you're clear away from the river and all tangled up. But, still, men have come up here one way or another. On the other side, there used to be a sort of pack-horse trail from Revelstoke up to the Selkirk gold-mines. There are two or three creeks which are still worked along the Big Bend of the Columbia. When we engineers have all done our work it will be easier to get in here than it ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough

... Winipeg Lakes. Buildings were first erected here by a party of Norwegians, who were driven away from the colony at Red River by the commotions which took place some time ago. It is now a trading post belonging to the Hudson's Bay Company. On landing at Norway House we met with Lord Selkirk's colonists, who had started from York Factory the day before us.—These poor people were exceedingly pleased at meeting with us again in this wild country; having accompanied them across the Atlantic, they viewed us in the light of old acquaintances. ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin

... call New Ontario, and also the upper part of the province of Quebec. Outside of this territory there was at the dawn of time no other 'land' where North America now is, except a long island of rock that marks the backbone of what are now the Selkirk Mountains and a long ridge that is now the mountain chain of the Alleghanies ...
— The Dawn of Canadian History: A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada • Stephen Leacock

... for our little brother;" and he became one of us. In time we learned from John, who was a bright boy, and from the rescuing party, who had heard some particulars, that Mr. David Tully, a Scotchman, had been living three years at the Selkirk settlement, where the crops had been so poor, from various causes, notably from the grasshoppers and the ravages of innumerable black birds, that a famine was threatened, and he, becoming discouraged, had started, with his wife and children, two boys and an infant daughter, ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve

... produced opposite results to these, and caused very ludicrous statements to be made seriously. Thus a French Gazette reports that "Lord Selkirk arrived in Paris this morning. He is a descendant of the famous Selkirk whose adventures suggested to Defoe his Robinson Crusoe." Among the various curious and useful items of knowledge contained in the "Almanach de Gotha,"—the first number of which was published 111 years ago—we ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... Nipissing to Lake Superior at the river Pic, the line might skirt the shore of the lake to Fort William, or it might run northerly through what is now known as the clay belt, with Fort William and the lake made accessible by a branch. Continuing westward to the Red River at Selkirk, with Winnipeg on a branch line to the south, the projected line crossed Lake Manitoba at the Narrows, and then struck out northwesterly, through what was then termed the 'Fertile Belt,' till the Yellowhead Pass was reached. Here the Rockies could be easily pierced; ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton

... reverend locks, and Bryan with the flaxen wig, and Brady with the long brogue, and Paddy with the short, and Terry with the butcher's-blue coat, and Dennis with no coat at all, and Eneas Hosey's widow, and all the Devines, pleading and quarrelling about boundaries and bits of bog. I wish Lord Selkirk was in the midst of them, with his hands crossed before him; I should like to know if he could make them understand his Essay ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... This threatens absolutely Syrian drought. As the Selkirk election comes on Monday, I go out to-day to Abbotsford, and carry young Davidoff and his tutor with me, to see our quiet way of managing the ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... latitude, its rivers, lakes, forests, animals, men, and commerce, including an account of the various Indian tribes, and the trading companies dealing with them. The trading posts of the Hudson's Bay Company, Lord Selkirk's colony on Red River, Labrador, Newfoundland, the British Possessions on the West coast, Russian America, are successively treated. Next the Indians in Canada and the United States are considered at length, in respect of their history, traditions, languages, monuments, customs, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... quite sixty years of age. The book, which must have been somewhat influenced by 'Pilgrim's Progress,' was more directly suggested by a passage in William Dampier's 'Voyage Round the World,' and also, as every one knows, by the experience of Alexander Selkirk, a sailor who, set ashore on the island of Juan Fernandez, off the coast of Chile, had lived there alone from 1709 to 1713. Selkirk's story had been briefly told in the year of his return in a newspaper ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... weather, or form a secret society in order to make jokes about mothers-in-law. Nor is it only from the point of view of particular amateurs of the sensational such as myself, that it is permissible to say, in the words of Cowper's Alexander Selkirk, that "their tameness is shocking to me." The whole modern world is pining for a genuinely sensational journalism. This has been discovered by that very able and honest journalist, Mr. Blatchford, who started his campaign against Christianity, warned on ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... Fernandez, by the author of Picciola, translated from the French, by ANNE T. WILBUR (published by Ticknor, Reed, and Fields), is founded on the Life of Alexander Selkirk, whose adventures it employs to enforce the moral lesson of the importance of society. The story is constructed with the subtle delicacy of conception which pervades the charming Picciola, and contains several ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... October, only three days after that on which Highland Mary died. Burns met on that day not only the professor (p. 035) and his accomplished wife, but for the first time in his life dined with a live lord—a young nobleman, said to have been of high promise, Lord Daer, eldest son of the then Earl of Selkirk. He had been a former pupil of Dugald Stewart, and happened to be at that time his guest. Burns has left the following humorous record of his own feelings ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp

... the chiefs of the north, issuing with their wild bois brules from the stronghold of Fort William,[43] raided and harried the despised "old countrymen," the "Pork-eaters," the "Workers in gardens," or suffered reprisals from these underestimated rivals; the history of Lord Selkirk's settlement in the Red River, around which the final battle wound in the year when Europe was witnessing the last great effort of Napoleon—all this does not fall within the scope of ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... to close by explosions the tunnels through which the Canadian Pacific Railroad passes under the Selkirk Mountains in British Columbia. The German General Staff in this instance operated through Franz Bopp, the German consul-general in San Francisco, and Lieutenant von Brincken. J. H. van Koolbergen was hired to do ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... satire knows its time and place, You still may lash the greatest—in disgrace: For merit will by turns forsake them all; Would you know when exactly when they fall. 90 But let all satire in all changes spare Immortal Selkirk,[192] and grave Delaware.[193] Silent and soft, as saints remove to heaven, All ties dissolved, and every sin forgiven, These may some gentle ministerial wing Receive, and place for ever near a king! There, where no passion, pride, or shame ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al

... called because they never had any defences and never needed any. As a matter of fact, in the early days, when the Hudson Bay Company made its first establishments on the upper river, there was supposed to be some need of fortification, and Fort Selkirk and Fort Yukon were stockaded. Fort Selkirk, indeed, was sacked and burned sixty years ago, but not by Yukon Indians. The Chilkats from the coast, indignant at the loss of their middle-man profits by the invasion of the interior, crossed the mountains, descended the river, and destroyed the ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... there lived in Scotland a young man whose name was Alexander Selkirk. He was quarrelsome and unruly. He was often making ...
— Fifty Famous People • James Baldwin

... at the assembly of the states-general, and given audience to divers ambassadors at the Hague, he repaired to his house at Loo, attended by the earls of Essex, Portland, and Selkirk. There he was visited by count Tallard the French minister, who had instructions to negotiate the treaty concerning the Spanish succession. The earl of Portland, by his majesty's order, had communicated to Secretary Vernon the principal conditions which the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... abundance of cry-fish, with a man clothed in goats skins, who looked wilder than the first owners of them. He had been on the island four years and four months, being left there by Captain Stradling in the Cinque-ports, his name was Alexander Selkirk, a Scotchman, who had been master of the Cinque-ports, a ship that came here last with Captain Dampier, who told me, that this was the best man in her. I immediately agreed with him to be a mate on board our ship: It was he that made ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe

... you that journey across a continent I had never before seen. It was endless and hopeless. I only know that we crawled up the Rocky Mountains and the Selkirk Range, over spider-like viaducts, with interminable effort, and that the prairies were just the broad Pacific over again. They rolled on for ever. But we did reach Quebec—in time we reached it; and we caught by an hour the ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... running upwards on the slopes of the mountains, for trains or cars to be turned into, in the event of a break loose or run away, and a man is always in attendance at the switches leading to these sidings. All this day the train ran through mountains, the Rocky Mountains, the Selkirk Range, and Eagle Pass. With the exception of the steep grade mentioned, the ruling ones are 116 feet to the mile, and there are numerous sharp curves, usually to save short tunnels. The line, however, is in some parts well ballasted, and work is still ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin

... story takes up that portion of Paul Jones' adventurous life when he was hovering off the British coast, watching for an opportunity to strike the enemy a blow. It deals more particularly with his descent upon Whitehaven, the seizure of Lady Selkirk's plate, and the famous battle with the Drake. The boy who figures in the tale is one who was taken from a derelict by Paul Jones shortly after this particular ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis

... and unabashed by the revellers that rioted about him while Daylight gave his orders. "Um," said Kama, tabling his instructions on his fingers. "Get um letters from Rawlins. Load um on sled. Grub for Selkirk—you think um ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London

... who wrote Quarll. I never thought of Quarll as having an author. It is a poor imitation; the monkey is the best in it, and his pretty dishes made of shells. Do you know the Paper in the Englishman by Sir Rd. Steele, giving an account of Selkirk? It is admirable, and has all the germs of Crusoe. You must quote it entire. Captain G. Carleton wrote his own Memoirs; they are about Lord Peterborough's campaign in Spain, & a good Book. Puzzelli ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... by reason of their clinging to a mast, Upon a desert island were eventually cast. They hunted for their meals, as ALEXANDER SELKIRK used, But they couldn't chat together—they had not ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert

... companions," was his paternal great-grandmother, Mrs. John Lang. Her husband, who died shortly afterwards, so that she was a widow when Scott conversed with her, chanced to be chief magistrate of Selkirk. His family was aroused late one night by the sound of a carriage hurrying down the steep and narrow street. Lord Napier was bringing, probably from Hawick, the tidings that the beacons were ablaze. The town-bell was instantly rung, the inhabitants met in the marketplace, where Scott's ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... buried in a multitude of "smoky dwarf houses"—a living poet, Mr. Matthew Arnold, has found the fitting phrase for these dwellings, once for all. All over the Forest the waters are dirty and poisoned: I think they are filthiest below Hawick; but this may be mere local prejudice in a Selkirk man. To keep them clean costs money; and, though improvements are often promised, I cannot see much change—for the better. Abbotsford, luckily, is above Galashiels, and only receives the dirt and ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang

... Hall." Its cheerful fire many a time shone out under the shadow of Mount Royal, when were gathered around its board Simon McTavish, Duncan McGillivray, Sir John Franklin and Joseph Frobisher. With them was frequently seen Thomas Douglas, Earl of Selkirk, who formulated the scheme of populating the prairies of the North-West with poverty-stricken and down-trodden tenants from older lands, many of whom lie in the old grave-yard of the Kildonan settlement ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway

... the writings of Doctor Shaw—the high and ample space he filled in the opinion of the country, particularly of those who best knew him, and the honourable testimony which one of the most enlightened personages who in this age have done honour to the peerage of Great Britain (lord Selkirk) has borne to his talents and virtues, would prompt us to enlarge upon this theme, if we did not feel that it would be injuring the matter to take it out of the hands of the editor, J. E. Hall, Esq. whose words, as being ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various

... of the Hudson's Bay Company that in some years the latter declared no dividends. The rivalry between the two companies reached its highest between 1811 and 1818, when Thomas Douglas, fifth Earl of Selkirk, who was an enthusiastic promoter of colonisation in British North America, obtained from the Hudson's Bay Company an immense tract of land in the Red River country and made an earnest effort to establish a Scotch ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot

... railway officials. Some of the men (one was taking a photograph of "the city,") have the American twang. Mr. Rosa is going off directly the directors arrive, far into the interior, on an exploring tour into the Selkirk range, &c. The line is "graded" about fifty miles further on, and the bridges and tunnels are making. They are working the other end from Port Moodie on the Pacific, and will meet by the spring of next year. What a pity ...
— The British Association's visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters • Clara Rayleigh

... account, and too boastful on Canada's, But he was a man of humble origin, son of a farmer who seemed, by the way, to be dead; and grandson, so Delaine had heard him say, through his mother, of one of the Selkirk settlers of 1812—no doubt of some Scotch gillie or shepherd. Such a person, in England, would have no claim whatever to the intimate society of Elizabeth Merton. Yet here she was alone, really without protection—for what ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... necessary, and the British father will support us. If we should be whipped, which is hardly possible, we will still be safe, the prophet having received a friendly talk from the chief of Wassicummico, at Selkirk's settlement, telling him, that if we were not happy in our own country, to let him know and he would make us happy. He had received information from our British father that we had been badly treated by the Americans. We must go and see the prophet. I will go first; you ...
— Autobiography of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, or Black Hawk • Black Hawk

... perfect rhyme. In the "Rape of the Lock" tea (tay) rhymes with obey, and in Cowper's verses on Alexander Selkirk sea rhymes with survey.' It is not likely that the pronunciation of the name was fixed, but there is every reason to suppose that the spellings of Peyps and Peaps were intended to represent the ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... it goes by steamer, and in winter by dog-train. There's the York Factory packet from Winnipeg to Hudson Bay by way of Norway House, a distance of seven hundred miles. In winter it is hauled by dogs from Selkirk as far as Oxford House, and from there to York Factory by men with toboggans. In summer it is carried by canoe on Hay River and by steamboat on Lake Winnipeg. Then there's the Liard River packet and the Reindeer Lake packet. Each travels about five hundred miles by dogs in winter and ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming

... us his desire and intention of returning to the Countess of Selkirk some plate, which his people ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various

... not much of a Robinson Crusoe, nor yet an Alexander Selkirk. I never found any of its charms. But, Lord bless you, Sir Lionel, people never leave me in solitude. I'm never alone. My sister Patty has fifteen children. I could have half of them to live with me if I liked it." This view ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... for a long time thought that Defoe was ignorant, that he accidentally happened to write Robinson Crusoe because he had been told of the recent experience of Alexander Selkirk on a solitary island in the Pacific. It is now known that Defoe was well educated, versed in several languages, and the most versatile writer of his time. Robinson Crusoe was no more of an accident than any other ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... upright in his amazement, "a ward of yours? You say that as though you had several scattered among the tribes about here. So it is a Kootenai Pocahontas! What good advice was it you gave me yesterday about keeping clear of Selkirk Range females? And now you are deliberately gathering one to yourself, and I will be the unnecessary third on our journey home. Dan! Dan! I wouldn't have thought ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan

... only one we can properly lay claim to as being "of our own make," so to speak, and written by Daniel De Foe, and, in the main, from the imagination. De Foe, it has been stated, derived his idea for this story from the adventures of one, Alexander Selkirk, a Scotchman, who had been a castaway on the Island of Juan Fernandez. The first portion of "Robinson Crusoe" appeared in "The Family Instructor," in 1719, of which De Foe was the founder. It, at once, sprang into popularity, and has left its ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent

... from all the other tales in this part of our book is the story of Robinson Crusoe, written by Daniel Defoe about two hundred years ago and here condensed for your enjoyment. There was, in Defoe's time, a sailor, Alexander Selkirk by name, who was left by his shipmates on an island and who lived by himself for four years before he attracted the attention of a passing ship. This suggested the idea of Robinson Crusoe to Defoe, but he has greatly expanded the ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck

... was at this time in the hands of three men—Col. George F. Selkirk, J. L. Lamed, and Thomas A. Kennett. Colonel Selkirk was business manager, Lamed was political editor. With the purchase of Kennett's share Clemens became a sort of general and contributing editor, with a more or less "roving commission"—his hours and duties ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... reason ably large share of matrimonial comforts, was, after his hundredth year, the avowed father of four children, by less legitimate affections. He subsisted in his extreme old age by a pension from the present Earl of Selkirk's grandfather. Will Marshal is buried in Kirkcudbright Church, where his monument is still shown, decorated with a scutcheon, suitably blazoned with two tups' horns and two ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... and hand ready to greet his fellow-beings, glad to be one with them. The thing which smote him was odd. It was that he found himself a stranger among the fellow-beings he had come to meet. He found himself still a Selkirk of the world of trade and traffic and transfer of thought and well-wishing and strong-doing and of all social life. He was like a strange bird, like an albatross blown into unaccustomed seas, alighting upon an island ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo

... idea of his story from the adventures of a Scots sailor named Alexander Selkirk. This sailor quarreled with his captain, and was set ashore upon an uninhabited island where he remained alone for more than four years. At the end of that time he was rescued by a passing ship and brought home to England. Out of this slender tale ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... where there are no inhabitants; and then, although he should escape the danger of the sea, what will he do for food? T.—And have such accidents sometimes happened? Mr B.—Yes, several; there was, in particular, one Selkirk, who was shipwrecked, and obliged to live several years upon a desert island. T.—That was very extraordinary indeed; and how did he get victuals? Mr B.—He sometimes procured roots, sometimes fruits; he also at last became so active, that he was ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day

... Winagog is a fort no longer. It is a mere ruin like old Fort Selkirk. There may be an Indian or two in the neighbourhood. There is certainly ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns

... Improvements in agriculture opposed Low wages of the labouring population State of the Lothians and Ayrshire Wretched states of the roads Difficulty of communication between districts Coach started between Edinburgh and Glasgow Carrier's perils between Edinburgh and Selkirk Dangers of travelling in Galloway Lawlessness of the Highlands Picking and lifting of cattle Ferocity of population on the Highland Border Ancient ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... the Lewis River took them to the Rink Rapids, through which they passed without difficulty. Just beyond are the ruins of Fort Selkirk, where the Pelly and Lewis rivers unite. Tim McCabe studied the mouth of the Pelly, as it poured into the Lewis, and soon as the point was fairly passed, he turned to his friends, his round ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis

... parents in 1749 returned to Scotland where one of the children died; in 1761 the Duke of Douglas had himself followed. Three claimants took the field, the Duke of Hamilton as heir male of line, the Earl of Selkirk as heir of provision under former deeds, and Archibald Steuart or Douglas. Lady Jane died in 1753, and Sir John in 1764, both on their death-beds testifying to the legitimacy of their surviving child. The Duke of Douglas, ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask

... on this voyage that Alexander Selkirk was found upon Juan Fernandez, and Woodes Rogers learned from his pilot, Captain Dampier, how the man had been left upon the island more than four years before from the Cinque Ports, and that Selkirk was the best man in her, and so Rogers took him ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery

... Horse Pass and over the Selkirks into British Columbia, and was sucked dry, I gave it at last to a farming Englishman who lived not far from Kamloops. I remember that in the flyleaf I kept a rough diary of the terrible week I spent in climbing through the Selkirk Range with sore and wounded feet. It is perhaps little wonder that I associate Teufelsdrockh, the mind-wanderer, with those days of my own life. And yet, unless I live to be old, I shall never ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts

... justice. Mr. Cunningham relates that Sir Walter had a high notion of the dignity which belonged to his post, and sternly maintained it when any one seemed disposed to treat it with unbecoming familiarity. On one occasion, it is said, when some foreign prince passed through Selkirk, the populace, anxious to look on a live prince, crowded round him so closely, that Scott, in vain attempted to approach him; the poet's patience failed, and exclaiming "Room for your sheriff! Room for your sheriff!" he pushed and elbowed the gapers impatiently aside, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various

... was Juan Fernandez, or, as we called it, Robinson Crusoe's Island, where he, or rather Alexander Selkirk, lived so long till rescued by the ship in which the veteran Dampier sailed as pilot. It is about three hundred miles west of Valparaiso, on the coast of Chili, very mountainous and rugged, but richly covered with vegetation. We hove-to off the bay in which ...
— The Two Whalers - Adventures in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston

... the Borders, an opinion that the arms of the town of Selkirk represent an incident which occurred there at the time of the battle of Flodden. The device, it is well known, consists of a female bearing a child in her arms, seated on a tomb, on which is also placed the Scottish lion. ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various

... Buccleuch and Monmouth. Beardie's elder brother, William Scott of Raeburn, my great-grand-uncle, was killed about the age of twenty-one, in a duel with Pringle of Crichton, grandfather of the present Mark Pringle of Clifton. They fought with swords, as was the fashion of the time, in a field near Selkirk, called from the catastrophe the Raeburn Meadow-spot. Pringle fled from Scotland to Spain, and was long a captive and slave in Barbary. Beardie became, of course, Tutor of Raeburn, as the old Scottish phrase called him—that is, guardian to his infant nephew, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... man, woman, or child who has not sympathized with the poor seaman before the mast, Alexander Selkirk, typified by the genius of Defoe as his inimitable Crusoe, whose name (although one by no means uncommon in middle life in the east of England,) has become synonymous for all who build and plant in a wilderness, ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill

... towns. Then we lose sight of the Sound until within a few miles of Bellingham. The next reach of intervening waterway is termed Bellingham Bay, and it furnishes a setting for a city situated both on hills and lowland, withal very picturesque, Mt. Baker near in view and the Selkirk range dimly visible. Bellingham is really a combination of four towns, Whatcom, Fair Haven, Sea Home, and South Bellingham; it is a city of about thirty-seven thousand inhabitants. The unifying process is going on, and in a few years its separate identity will be forgotten, for with its large ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck

... Settlement in 1869 contained about twelve thousand inhabitants. The English-speaking portion of the population {162} consisted of heterogeneous groups without unity among them for any public purpose. Some were descendants or survivors of Lord Selkirk's settlers who had come out half a century before; others were servants of the Hudson's Bay Company, both retired and active; a third group were the Canadians; while a fourth was made up of a small though noisy body of Americans. Outnumbering the English, and united under leaders of their ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun

... counties of Caithness, Sutherland, Ross, Inverness, Argyll, the islands of Orkney, Shetland, Bute, and some of the Hebrides. Two are found in Forfarshire, and one each in the counties of Perth, Stirling, Midlothian, Selkirk and Berwick." ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray

... how can I keep up with your breathless changes? Innerleithen, Cramond, Bridge of Allan, Dunblane, Selkirk. I lean to Cramond, but I shall be pleased anywhere, any respite from Davos; never mind, it has been a good, though a dear lesson. Now, with my improved health, if I can pass the summer, I believe I shall be able no more ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... and economical effects of these changes have been traced by Lord Selkirk with great precision and accuracy. But the change, though steadily and rapidly progressive, has nevertheless been gradual; and, like those who drift down the stream of a deep and smooth river, we are not aware of ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... snows of Russia, a Scotch nobleman of somewhat eccentric habits conceived the idea of planting a colony of his countrymen in the very heart of the vast continent of North America. It was by no means an original idea that entered into the brain of Lord Selkirk; other British lords had tried in earlier centuries the same experiment; and they, in turn, were only the imitators of those great Spanish nobles who, in the sixteenth century, had planted on the coast of the Carolinas ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler

... the old hunter forced long trails into the unknown country and blazed the way for those who were speedily to follow by thousands. To him Yukon and Selkirk were ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan

... 18 m. SW. of Selkirk, with a stronghold of the Scott family, giving the head the title ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... immediate descent upon Carrick, there, in the midst of his family possessions, to set up his banner in Scotland. The lands had been forfeited by Edward and bestowed upon some of his own nobles. Annandale had been given to the Earl of Hereford, Carrick to Earl Percy, Selkirk to Aymer de Valence. The castle of Turnberry was occupied by Percy with three hundred men. Bruce sent on his cousin Cuthbert to reconnoitre and see whether the people would be ready to rise, but Cuthbert found the Scots sunk in despair. All who ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty

... of the children; whether they returned to their "ain countrie," to grow up to womanhood within the halls of Thirlstane, "the glass of fashion and the mould of form," or early slept on the hill side of Selkirk, covered by the heath and shaded by the broom. Perhaps at this moment they live in a green old age, the chronicles of that fated period, when the mother country by her ill-starred policy threw away one of her brightest jewels. Individual suffering ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 528, Saturday, January 7, 1832 • Various

... Border found its expression and world influence in Sir Walter Scott. Thence, passing by way of contrast through the long isolated peninsula of Fife, say to representative towns like Kirkcaldy and Largo, we still see the conditions of that individualism of which Adam Smith and Alexander Selkirk ("Robinson Crusoe") have each in his way become the very prototypes. In such ways the connection of regional geography, history, and social psychology becomes increasingly clear. Again, we explore the other old Fife seaports, a ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes

... That is the great secret. He never speaks about it, and does not like to be asked questions. But the truth is, he is the most solitude-loving person in the world. He does find its charms, though Alexander Selkirk ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

... in it, and with due contempt of those who could but did not;" and, secondly, I refer to Lord Cockburn's pages for an anecdote which illustrates the perverted feeling I refer to, now happily no longer existing. It relates the opinion expressed by an old drunken writer of Selkirk (whose name is not mentioned) regarding his anticipation of professional success for Mr. Cranstoun, afterwards Lord Corehouse. Sir Walter Scott, William Erskine, and Cranstoun, had dined with this Selkirk writer, and Scott—of hardy, ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... king rather chose to dismiss Michael with the most ample concessions, than to stand the probable consequences. Another time, it is said, when residing at the tower of Oakwood, upon the Ettrick, about three miles above Selkirk, he heard of the fame of a sorceress, called the witch of Falsehope, on the opposite side of the river. Michael went one morning to put her skill to the test, but was disappointed, by her denying positively any knowledge of the necromantic art. In his discourse ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 492 - Vol. 17, No. 492. Saturday, June 4, 1831 • Various

... in the Footsteps of Alexander Selkirk. With Sketches of Adventure in California and Washoe. ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... to back-trip it sled by sled, though he managed most of the time, through herculean efforts, to bring all along on the one haul. He did not seem moved when the captain of police told him his man was hitting the high places for Dawson, and was by that time, probably, half-way between Selkirk and Stewart. Nor did he appear interested when informed that the police had broken the trail as far as Pelly; for he had attained to a fatalistic acceptance of all natural dispensations, good or ill. But when they told him ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London

... have said, Livingstone disliked Selkirk heartily, and did not take the trouble to conceal it. He used to look at him sometimes with a curious expression in his eyes, which made the tutor twirl and writhe uncomfortably in his chair. The latter annoyed him as much as he possibly could, but Guy held on the even ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... Dundee, Edinburgh, Forfar, Forres, Inverness, Irvine, Kirkaldy, Linlithgow, Lochmaben, Montrose, Nairn, Peebles, Perth, Renfrew, Rutherglen, and Stirling; by the magistrates and town council of Brechine, Inverary, St. Andrews, Selkirk, Jedburgh, Kirkcudbright, Kirkwall, and Paisley; by the magistrates, town council and all the principal inhabitants of Fortrose; by the provost, magistrates, council, burgesses and inhabitants of Elgin; by the chief ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean

... Selkirk was his nearest town, and that was seven miles from Ashestiel; and even his nearest neighbour was at Yair, a few miles off lower down the Tweed,—Yair of which he wrote in another of the ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton

... not set me half-an-hour forward, by my own showing, I should have been twenty-three-and-a-half minutes too late. What sophistry! But thus it happened (namely, through the wickedness of this man), that, upon entering the theatre, I found myself like Alexander Selkirk, in a frightful solitude, or like a single family of Arabs gathering at sunset about a solitary coffee-pot in the boundless desert. Was there an echo raised? it was from my own steps. Did any body cough? it was too evidently myself. I was the audience; I was the public. And, if any ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... contradicted the general. "You talk as if I were requiring you all to Selkirk on a ten acre island, instead of going to one of the pleasantest and most populous counties in the oldest state in the Union. Mr. Byrd, the former owner of Shirley, told me that the neighborhood was very thickly settled and sociable. I counted five gentlemen's houses in sight myself. ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland

... Marquis of Lothian, Bishop Watson, Lord Malmesbury, Earl of Abergavenny, Lord Chedworth, Lord Audley, Lord Eglinton; and all of the armed neutrality, who are: Duke of Northumberland, Lord Rawdon, Lord Selkirk, Lord Breadalbane, Lord Hawke, Lord Kinnaird, Lord Shaftesbury, Lord Huntingdon; Lord Lonsdale absent; Lord Lansdowne with us, and spoke better than I ever heard him in my life, fewer flourishes, ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham

... found 'em, maybe I can coax 'em to come and live with us. I used to ask White Antelope every question I could think of, but all he knew was that after they'd sold their furs to the Hudson Bay Company, they sometimes went to a lodge in Canada called Selkirk, where almost everybody there was named MacDonald or MacDougal or Mackenzie or Mac something. Lots of his friends there married Sioux and went to the Walla Walla valley, and maybe I'll have to go there to find somebody who knew him; but first ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart

... by reason of their clinging to a mast, Upon a desert island were eventually cast. They hunted for their meals, as Alexander Selkirk used, But they couldn't chat together—they had ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... his birth. He had served under Decatur when that gallant officer peppered the Algerines and made them promise not to sell their prisoners of war into slavery; he had worked a gun at the bombardment of Vera Cruz in the Mexican War, and he had been on Alexander Selkirk's Island more than once. There were very few things he hadn't done in a ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... before he could settle down to that life of loneliness. Hitherto he had not lived the life of a Crusoe or Selkirk; but now he was destined to know what real solitude was. John Stevens at last began to take some interest in his domestic affairs. He sadly missed the thousand little attentions which feminine instincts suggested for his comfort; but anon he became ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick

... In the Selkirk Mountains of Canada the basement rocks of the region have been driven east for seven miles on a thrust plane, over rocks which originally lay thousands of ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton

... Jan. 21st, 1897, you wrote of the swallowing up by the sea of Robinson Crusoe's Island, or the island of Juan Fernandez. Now I have always heard this island called "Robinson Crusoe's Island," and I think the reason is, that Alexander Selkirk was cast away there, and on his adventures the story of Robinson Crusoe was written by Daniel Defoe. But I have read "Robinson Crusoe," and the island as described by him cannot be the Island of Juan Fernandez, but must be one of the Windward Islands in the Caribbean Sea, off the mouth ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 15, February 18, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... then a perfect rhyme. In the "Rape of the Lock" tea (tay) rhymes with obey, and in Cowper's verses on Alexander Selkirk sea rhymes with survey.' It is not likely that the pronunciation of the name was fixed, but there is every reason to suppose that the spellings of Peyps and Peaps were intended to represent the ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... easily tricked. To this guilelessness on their part must be attributed another strange method of defeating their evil designs on children. It appears to be enough to lay over the infant, or on the bed beside the mother, a portion of the father's clothes. A shepherd's wife living near Selkirk was lying in bed one day with her new-born boy at her side, when she heard a sound of talking and laughter in the room. Suspecting what turned out to be the case, she seized in great alarm her husband's waistcoat, which was ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland



Words linked to "Selkirk" :   crewman, Alexander Selcraig, Selkirk Mountains, Alexander Selkirk, sailor



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com