The time I spent upon the island is still so horrible a thought to me , that I must pass it lightly over . In all the books I have read of people cast away , they had either their pockets full of tools , or a chest of things would be thrown upon the beach along with them , as if on purpose . My case was very different . I had nothing in my pockets but money and Alan 's silver button ; and being inland bred , I was as much short of knowledge as of means . I knew indeed that shell-fish were counted good to eat ; and among the rocks of the isle I found a great plenty of limpets , which at first I could scarcely strike from their places , not knowing quickness to be needful . There were , besides , some of the little shells that we call buckies ; I think periwinkle is the English name . Of these two I made my whole diet , devouring them cold and raw as I found them ; and so hungry was I , that at first they seemed to me delicious . Perhaps they were out of season , or perhaps there was something wrong in the sea about my island . But at least I had no sooner eaten my first meal than I was seized with giddiness and retching , and lay for a long time no better than dead . A second trial of the same food -LRB- indeed I had no other -RRB- did better with me , and revived my strength . But as long as I was on the island , I never knew what to expect when I had eaten ; sometimes all was well , and sometimes I was thrown into a miserable sickness ; nor could I ever distinguish what particular fish it was that hurt me . All day it streamed rain ; the island ran like a sop , there was no dry spot to be found ; and when I lay down that night , between two boulders that made a kind of roof , my feet were in a bog . The second day I crossed the island to all sides . There was no one part of it better than another ; it was all desolate and rocky ; nothing living on it but game birds which I lacked the means to kill , and the gulls which haunted the outlying rocks in a prodigious number . But the creek , or strait , that cut off the isle from the main-land of the Ross , opened out on the north into a bay , and the bay again opened into the Sound of Iona ; and it was the neighbourhood of this place that I chose to be my home ; though if I had thought upon the very name of home in such a spot , I must have burst out weeping . I had good reasons for my choice . There was in this part of the isle a little hut of a house like a pig 's hut , where fishers used to sleep when they came there upon their business ; but the turf roof of it had fallen entirely in ; so that the hut was of no use to me , and gave me less shelter than my rocks . What was more important , the shell-fish on which I lived grew there in great plenty ; when the tide was out I could gather a peck at a time : and this was doubtless a convenience . But the other reason went deeper . I had become in no way used to the horrid solitude of the isle , but still looked round me on all sides -LRB- like a man that was hunted -RRB- , between fear and hope that I might see some human creature coming .
Now , from a little up the hillside over the bay , I could catch a sight of the great , ancient church and the roofs of the people 's houses in XXXXX .
Alan English Iona Ross buckies first gulls limpets night periwinkle