_He Rears a Flock of Goats--His Diary--His Domestic Habits and Style of
Living--Increasing Prosperity_
But being now in the eleventh year of my residence, and as I have said,
my ammunition growing low, I set myself to study some art to trap and
snare the goats, to see whether I could not catch some of them alive;
and particularly, I wanted a she-goat great with young.
To this purpose, I made snares to hamper them, and I do believe they
were more than once taken in them; but my tackle was not good, for I
had no wire, and I always found them broken, and my bait devoured. At
length I resolved to try a pitfall; so I dug several large pits in the
earth, in places where I had observed the goats used to feed, and over
these pits I placed hurdles, of my own making too, with a great weight
upon them; and several times I put ears of barley and dry rice, without
setting the trap, and I could easily perceive that the goats had gone
in and eaten up the corn, for I could see the mark of their feet. At
length I set three traps in one night, and going the next morning, I
found them all standing, and yet the bait eaten and gone; this was very
discouraging. However, I altered my trap; and, not to trouble you with
particulars, going one morning to see my trap, I found in one of them a
large old he-goat, and in one of the others three kids, a male and two
females.
As to the old one, I knew not what to do with him, he was so fierce I
durst not go into the pit to him; that is to say, to go about to bring
him away alive, which was what I wanted. I could have killed him, but
that was not my business, nor would it answer my end; so I even let him
out, and he ran away, as if he had been frightened out of his wits. But
I had forgotten then what I learned afterwards, that hunger will tame
a lion. If I had let him stay there three or four days without food,
and then have carried him some water to drink, and then a little corn,
he would have been as tame as one of the kids, for they are mighty
sagacious, tractable creatures where they are well used.
However, for the present I let him go, knowing no better at that time.
Then I went to the three kids, and taking them one by one, I tied them
with strings together, and with some difficulty brought them all home.
It was a good while before they would feed, but throwing them some
sweet corn, it tempted them, and they began to be tame. And now I
found that if I expected to supply myself with goat-flesh when I had
no powder or shot left, breeding some up tame was my only way, when
perhaps I might have them about my house like a flock of sheep.
But then it presently occurred to me that I must keep the tame from
the wild, or else they would always run wild when they grew up; and
the only way for this was to have some enclosed piece of ground, well
fenced either with hedge or pale, to keep them in so effectually, that
those within might not break out, or those without break in.
This was a great undertaking for one pair of hands; yet as I saw there
was an absolute necessity of doing it, my first piece of work was to
find out a proper piece of ground, viz., where there was likely to be
herbage for them to eat, water for them to drink, and cover to keep
them from the sun.
Those who understand such enclosures will think I had very little
contrivance when I pitched upon a place very proper for all these,
being a plain open piece of meadow land, or savanna (as our people
call it in the western colonies), which had two or three little drills
of fresh water in it, and at one end was very woody; I say, they will
smile at my forecast, when I shall tell them I began my enclosing of
this piece of ground in such a manner, that my hedge or pale must have
been at least two miles about. Nor was the madness of it so great as
to the compass, for if it was ten miles about, I was like to have time
enough to do it in. But I did not consider that my goats would be as
wild in so much compass as if they had had the whole island, and I
should have so much room to chase them in, that I should never catch
them.
My hedge was begun and carried on, I believe, about fifty yards, when
this thought occurred to me, so I presently stopped short, and, for the
first beginning, I resolved to enclose a piece of about 150 yards in
length, and 100 yards in breadth; which, as it would maintain as many
as I should have in any reasonable time, so, as my flock increased, I
could add more ground to my enclosure.
This was acting with some prudence, and I went to work with courage.
I was about three months hedging in the first piece, and, till I had
done it, I tethered the three kids in the best part of it, and used
them to feed as near me as possible, to make them familiar; and very
often I would go and carry them some ears of barley, or a handful of
rice, and feed them out of my hand; so that after my enclosure was
finished, and I let them loose, they would follow me up and down,
bleating after me for a handful of corn.
This answered my end, and in about a year and half I had a flock of
about twelve goats, kids and all; and in two years more I had three and
forty, besides several that I took and killed for my food. And after
that I enclosed five several pieces of ground to feed them in, with
little pens to drive them into, to take them as I wanted, and gates out
of one piece of ground into another.
But this was not all, for now I not only had goat’s flesh to feed on
when I pleased, but milk too, a thing which, indeed, in my beginning, I
did not so much as think of, and which, when it came into my thoughts,
was really an agreeable surprise. For now I set up my dairy, and had
sometimes a gallon or two of milk in a day; and as Nature, who gives
supplies of food to every creature, dictates even naturally how to make
use of it, so I, that had never milked a cow, much less a goat, or seen
butter or cheese made, very readily and handily, though after a great
many essays and miscarriages, made me both butter and cheese at last,
and never wanted it afterwards.
How mercifully can our great Creator treat His creatures, even in those
conditions in which they seemed to be overwhelmed in destruction! How
can He sweeten the bitterest providences, and give us cause to praise
Him for dungeons and prisons! What a table was here spread for me in a
wilderness, where I saw nothing at first but to perish for hunger!
It would have made a stoic smile, to have seen me and my little family
sit down to dinner. There was my majesty, the prince and lord of
the whole island; I had the lives of all my subjects at my absolute
command. I could hang, draw, give liberty, and take it away; and no
rebels among all my subjects.
Then to see how like a king I dined, too, all alone, attended by my
servants. Poll, as if he had been my favorite, was the only person
permitted to talk to me. My dog, who was now grown very old and crazy,
and had found no species to multiply his kind upon, sat always at my
right hand, and two cats, one on one side the table, and one on the
other, expecting now and then a bit from my hand, as a mark of special
favor.
But these were not the two cats which I brought on shore at first, for
they were both of them dead, and had been interred near my habitation,
by my own hand. But one of them having multiplied by I know not what
kind of creature, these were two which I had preserved tame, whereas
the rest ran wild in the woods, and became indeed troublesome to me
at last; for they would often come into my house, and plunder me too,
till at last I was obliged to shoot them, and did kill a great many;
at length they left me. With this attendance, and in this plentiful
manner, I lived; neither could I be said to want anything but society;
and of that in some time after this, I was like to have too much.
I was something impatient, as I have observed, to have the use of my
boat, though very loth to run any more hazards; and therefore sometimes
I sat contriving ways to get her about the island, and at other times
I sat myself down contented enough without her. But I had a strange
uneasiness in my mind to go down to the point of the island, where, as
I have said, in my last ramble, I went up the hill to see how the shore
lay, and how the current set, that I might see what I had to do. This
inclination increased upon me every day, and at length I resolved to
travel thither by land, following the edge of the shore. I did so; but
had any one in England been to meet such a man as I was, it must either
have frightened them, or raised a great deal of laughter; and as I
frequently stood still to look at myself, I could not but smile at the
notion of my travelling through Yorkshire, with such an equipage, and
in such a dress. Be pleased to take a sketch of my figure, as follows:
I had a great high shapeless cap, made of a goat’s skin, with a flap
hanging down behind, as well to keep the sun from me, as to shoot the
rain off from running into my neck; nothing being so hurtful in these
climates as the rain upon the flesh, under the clothes.
I had a short jacket of goat’s skin, the skirts coming down to about
the middle of my thighs; and a pair of open-kneed breeches of the same.
The breeches were made of the skin of an old he-goat, whose hair hung
down such a length on either side, that, like pantaloons, it reached to
the middle of my legs. Stockings and shoes I had none, but had made me
a pair of somethings, I scarce know what to call them, like buskins, to
flap over my legs, and lace on either side like spatterdashes; but of
a most barbarous shape, as indeed were all the rest of my clothes.
I had on a broad belt of goat’s skin dried, which I drew together with
two thongs of the same, instead of buckles; and in a kind of a frog on
either side of this, instead of a sword and a dagger, hung a little
saw and a hatchet, one on one side, one on the other. I had another
belt, not so broad, and fastened in the same manner, which hung over my
shoulder; and at the end of it, under my left arm, hung two pouches,
both made of goat’s skin too; in one of which hung my powder, in the
other my shot. At my back I carried my basket, on my shoulder my gun,
and over my head a great clumsy ugly goat-skin umbrella, but which,
after all, was the most necessary thing I had about me, next to my
gun. As for my face, the color of it was really not so mulatto-like
as one might expect from a man not at all careful of it, and living
within nineteen degrees of the equinox. My beard I had once suffered
to grow till it was about a quarter of a yard long; but as I had both
scissors and razors sufficient, I had cut it pretty short, except
what grew on my upper lip, which I had trimmed into a large pair of
Mahometan whiskers, such as I had seen worn by some Turks whom I saw at
Sallee; for the Moors did not wear such, though the Turks did. Of these
mustachios or whiskers, I will not say they were long enough to hang my
hat upon them, but they were of a length and shape monstrous enough,
and such as, in England, would have passed for frightful.
But all this is by the bye; for, as to my figure, I had so few to
observe me, that it was of no manner of consequence; so I say no more
to that part. In this kind of figure I went my new journey, and was
out five or six days. I travelled first along the sea-shore, directly
to the place where I first brought my boat to an anchor, to get up
upon the rocks. And having no boat now to take care of, I went over
the land, a nearer way, to the same height that I was upon before;
when, looking forward to the point of the rocks which lay out, and
which I was obliged to double with my boat, as is said above, I was
surprised to see the sea all smooth and quiet, no rippling, no motion,
no current, any more there than in other places.
I was at a strange loss to understand this, and resolved to spend some
time in the observing it, to see if nothing from the sets of the tide
had occasioned it. But I was presently convinced how it was, viz., that
the tide of ebb setting from the west, and joining with the current of
waters from some great river on the shore, must be the occasion of this
current; and that according as the wind blew more forcibly from the
west, or from the north, this current came near, or went farther from
the shore; for waiting thereabouts till evening, I went up to the rock
again, and then the tide of ebb being made, I plainly saw the current
again as before, only that it ran farther off, being near half a league
from the shore; whereas in my case it set close upon the shore, and
hurried me and my canoe along with it, which, at another time, it would
not have done.
This observation convinced me that I had nothing to do but to observe
the ebbing and the flowing of the tide, and I might very easily bring
my boat about the island again. But when I began to think of putting it
in practice, I had such a terror upon my spirits at the remembrance
of the danger I had been in, that I could not think of it again with
any patience; but, on the contrary, I took up another resolution, which
was more safe, though more laborious; and this was, that I would build,
or rather make me another _periagua_ or canoe; and so have one for one
side of the island, and one for the other.
You are to understand that now I had, as I may call it, two plantations
in the island; one, my little fortification or tent, with the wall
about it, under the rock, with the cave behind me, which, by this time,
I had enlarged into several apartments or caves, one within another.
One of these, which was the driest and largest, and had a door out
beyond my wall or fortification, that is to say, beyond where my wall
joined to the rock, was all filled up with the large earthen pots,
of which I have given an account, and with fourteen or fifteen great
baskets, which would hold five or six bushels each, where I laid up my
stores of provision, especially my corn, some in the ear, cut off short
from the straw, and the other rubbed out with my hand.
As for my wall, made, as before, with long stakes or piles, those piles
grew all like trees, and were by this time grown so big, and spread so
very much, that there was not the least appearance, to any one’s view,
of any habitation behind them.
Near this dwelling of mine, but a little farther within the land, and
upon lower ground, lay my two pieces of corn ground, which I kept duly
cultivated and sowed, and which duly yielded me their harvest in its
season; and whenever I had occasion for more corn, I had more land
adjoining as fit as that.
Besides this, I had my country seat, and I had now a tolerable
plantation there also; for, first, I had my little bower, as I called
it, which I kept in repair; that is to say, I kept the hedge which
circled it in constantly fitted up to its usual height, the ladder
standing always in the inside. I kept the trees, which at first were no
more than my stakes, but were now grown very firm and tall, I kept them
always so cut, that they might spread and grow thick and wild, and make
the more agreeable shade, which they did effectually to my mind. In the
middle of this, I had my tent always standing, being a piece of a sail,
spread over poles, set up for that purpose, and which never wanted any
repair or renewing; and under this I had made me a squab or couch, with
the skins of the creatures I had killed, and with other soft things,
and a blanket laid on them, such as belonged to our sea-bedding, which
I had saved, and a great watch-coat to cover me; and here, whenever
I had occasion to be absent from my chief seat, I took up my country
habitation.
Adjoining to this I had my enclosures for my cattle, that is to say, my
goats. And as I had taken an inconceivable deal of pains to fence and
enclose this ground, so I was so uneasy to see it kept entire, lest the
goats should break through, that I never left off till, with infinite
labor, I had stuck the outside of the hedge so full of small stakes,
and so near to one another, that it was rather a pale than a hedge,
and there was scarce room to put a hand through between them; which
afterwards, when those stakes grew, as they all did in the next rainy
season, made the enclosure strong like a wall, indeed, stronger than
any wall.
This will testify for me that I was not idle, and that I spared no
pains to bring to pass whatever appeared necessary for my comfortable
support; for I considered the keeping up a breed of tame creatures
thus at my hand would be a living magazine of flesh, milk, butter,
and cheese for me as long as I lived in the place, if it were to be
forty years; and that keeping them in my reach depended entirely upon
my perfecting my enclosures to such a degree, that I might be sure of
keeping them together; which, by this method, indeed, I so effectually
secured, that when these little stakes began to grow, I had planted
them so very thick, I was forced to pull some of them up again.
In this place also I had my grapes growing, which I principally
depended on for my winter store of raisins, and which I never failed
to preserve very carefully, as the best and most agreeable dainty of
my whole diet. And indeed they were not agreeable only, but physical,
wholesome, nourishing, and refreshing to the last degree.
As this was also about half-way between my other habitation and the
place where I had laid up my boat, I generally stayed and lay here in
my way thither; for I used frequently to visit my boat, and I kept all
things about, or belonging to her, in very good order. Sometimes I went
out in her to divert myself, but no more hazardous voyages would I go,
nor scarce ever above a stone’s cast or two from the shore, I was so
apprehensive of being hurried out of my knowledge again by the currents
or winds, or any other accident. But now I come to a new scene of my
life.