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The Cape of Good Hope
Justyne, Leitch, Macquoid, Morgan, Pasquier, & Thomas
Engravers: Butterworth and Heath
1864
Wood-engraving
14 cm high by 14 cm wide, framed (exclusive of caption).
Cassell's Robinson Crusoe, page 316.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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From the Brazils we made directly over the Atlantic Sea to the Cape of Good Hope, and had a tolerably good voyage, our course generally south-east, now and then a storm, and some contrary winds; but my disasters at sea were at an end— my future rubs and cross events were to befall me on shore, that it might appear the land was as well prepared to be our scourge as the sea.
Our ship was on a trading voyage, and had a supercargo on board, who was to direct all her motions after she arrived at the Cape, only being limited to a certain number of days for stay, by charter-party, at the several ports she was to go to. This was none of my business, neither did I meddle with it; my nephew, the captain, and the supercargo adjusting all those things between them as they thought fit. We stayed at the Cape no longer than was needful to take in-fresh water, but made the best of our way for the coast of Coromandel. We were, indeed, informed that a French man-of-war, of fifty guns, and two large merchant ships, were gone for the Indies; and as I knew we were at war with France, I had some apprehensions of them; but they went their own way, and we heard no more of them. [Chapter IX, "Dreadful Occurrences in Madagascar," page 315]
After the death of Friday, Defoe shifts the action from the West to the East Indies, where Crusoe will consistently play a peripheral role in the Farther Adventures, which are not merely a sequel ("Further"), but far away from both Europe and the coast of South America. The narrative-pictorial sequence offers a great many images of exotic foreign locales, images that emphasize the grandeur of the geographical setting and the markedly un-European nature of the architecture — but, quite often, the illustrators minimize the human figures, leaving the reader to place the action within the physical backdrop that the illustrations provide. Here the ship is dwarfed by Table Mountain, the chief geographical feature of the Cape, and the illustrator has given no indication of human habitation, although the Dutch East India Company had founded the Cape Colony in 1652, well ahead of Crusoe's supposed voyage there, a thousand houses existed in Cape Town by the middle of the eighteenth century, and a thousand ships a year regularly dropped anchor in Table Bay. Founded as a refreshment station for European ships in 1652, about the time that Crusoe cruised by and re-provisioned, the colony's population would have been roughly 5,500: 744 Dutch East Indian Company officials, perhaps 2,000 burghers, and just over 2,700 slaves. A series of ethnically-fuelled conflicts, beginning with the Zulu Wars of 1879, would bring the region to prominence in British newspapers in the last two decades of the nineteenth century.
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 7 April 2018