With these helps, hunting soon became his chief amusement. It was his custom, after running down the animals, to slit their ears, and then allow them to escape. The young he carried to the green lawn beside his hut, and employed his leisure hours in taming them. They in time supplied him with milk, and even with amusement, as he taught them as well as the cats to dance; and he often afterwards declared, that he never danced with a lighter heart, or greater spirit, any where, to the best of music, than he did to the sound of his own voice, with his dumb companions. As the northern part of the island where Alexander lived, is composed of high craggy precipices, many of which are almost too hilly to climb, though generally covered with wood, the soil is loose and shallow, so that on the hills the largest trees soon perish for want of nourishment, and are then very easily overturned. This was the cause of the death of a seaman belonging to the Dutchess, who being on the high ground in search of goats, caught hold of a tree to aid his ascent, when it gave way and he rolled down the hill. In his fall he grasped another of considerable bulk, which likewise failed him, and he was thrown amongst the rocks and dashed to pieces. Mr. Butt also met with an accident, merely by leaning his back to a tree nearly as thick as himself, which stood upon a slope, almost without any hold of the soil. [Illustration: Selkirk catching a Goat.] Our adventurer, himself nearly lost his life from a similar cause. When pursuing a goat, he made a snatch at it on the brink of a precipice, of which he was not aware, as some bushes concealed it from them; the animal suddenly stopped; upon which he stretched forward his hand to seize it, when the branches gave way, and they both fell from a great height. Selkirk was so stunned and bruised by the fall, that he lay deprived of sensation and almost of life. Upon his recovery, he found the goat lying dead beneath him. This happened about a mile from his hut. Scarcely was he able to crawl to it when restored to his senses; and dreadful were his sufferings during the first two or three of the ten days that he was confined by the injury. This was the only disagreeable accident that befel him during his long residence on the island. W. Rogers says that Selkirk lay above the goat deprived of sensation, for 24 hours; Sir R. Steele mentions three days. Selkirk, computed the length of time by the moon’s growth from the last observation which he had made on the evening before his fall.