Juan Fernandez

Juan Fernandez, called also MAS-Á-TIERRA ('nearer the mainland'), a rocky island in the Pacific Ocean, 420 miles W. of Valparaiso, Chili, to which it belongs. It is 13 miles long and 4 broad, and is for the most part a series of rocky peaks of volcanic origin, the highest of which, Yunque, is 3000 feet above sea-level. The trees are mostly ferns. The sandalwood trees are nearly all exterminated. Horses, pigs, and goats run wild. The island was discovered by the Spaniard whose name it bears in 1563, and was frequently visited by buccaneers down to its occupation by the Spaniards in 1750. Here Alexander Selkirk, a buccaneer, a native of the Scotch fishing-village of Largo, lived in solitude from 1704 to 1709. His story is supposed to have suggested the Robinson Crusoe of Defoe; though it should be remembered that Robinson's island was on the other side of South America, near the mouth of the Orinoco. When Spain lost her South American colonies Juan Fernandez fell to Chili, which used it as a penal settlement from 1819 to 1835. It is usually inhabited by a few Chilian seal and sea-lion hunters; and in 1877 it was leased by the Chilian government to a Swiss, who established a small colony there. See an article in Chambers's Journal (1888); and Mackenna, Juan Fernandez (Santiago, 1883).