the thieves sitting upon all the trees about me, as if they only waited
till I was gone away, and the event proved it to be so; for as I walked
off as if I was gone, I was no sooner out of their sight, but they
dropped down one by one into the corn again. I was so provoked, that I
could not have patience to stay till more came on, knowing that every
grain that they ate now was, as it might be said, a peck loaf to me in
the consequence; but coming up to the hedge, I fired again, and killed
three of them. This was what I wished for; so I took them up, and served
them as we serve notorious thieves in England, viz. hanged them in
chains for a terror to others. It is impossible to imagine almost, that
this should have such an effect as it had; for the fowls would not only
not come at the corn, but in short they forsook all that part of the
island, and I could never see a bird near the place as long as my
scarecrows hung there.
This I was very glad of, you may be sure; and about the latter end of
December, which was our second harvest of the year, I reaped my corn.
I was sadly put to it for a scythe or a sickle to cut it down, and all I
could do was to make one as well as I could out of one of the
broad-swords, or cutlasses, which I saved among the arms out of the
ship. However, as my crop was but small, I had no great difficulty to
cut it down: in short, I reaped it my way, for I cut nothing off but the
ears, and carried it away in a great basket which I had made, and so
rubbed it out with my hands: and at the end of all my harvesting I
found, that out of my half-peck of seed I had near two bushels of rice,
and above two bushels and a half of barley, that is to say, by my guess,
for I had no measure at that time.
However, this was a great encouragement to me; and I foresaw, that in
time it would please God to supply me with bread: and yet here I was
perplexed again; for I neither knew how to grind or make meal of my
corn, or indeed how to clean it and part it; nor, if made into meal, how
to make bread of it; and if how to make it, yet. I knew not how to bake
it. These things being added to my desire of having a good quantity for
store, and to secure a constant supply, I resolved not to taste any of
this crop, but to preserve it all for seed against the next season, and
in the meantime to employ all my study and hours of working to
accomplish this great work of providing myself with corn and bread.
It might be truly said, that I now worked for my bread. It is a little
wonderful, and what I believe few people have thought much upon; viz.
the strange multitude of little things necessary in the providing,
producing, curing, dressing, making, and finishing this one article
of bread.
I, that was reduced to a mere state of nature, found this to be my daily
discouragement, and was made more and more sensible of it every hour,
even after I got the first handful of seed corn, which, as I have said,
came up unexpectedly, and indeed to a surprise. First, I had no plough
to turn the earth, no spade or shovel to dig it. Well, this I conquered
by making a wooden spade, as I observed before; but this did my work but
in a wooden manner; and though it cost me a great many days to make it,
yet, for want of iron, it not only wore out the sooner, but made my work
the harder, and made it be performed much worse.
However, this I bore with too, and was content to work it out with
patience, and bear with the badness of the performance. When the corn
was sowed, I had no harrow, but was forced to go over it myself, and
drag a great heavy bough of a tree over it, to scratch the earth, as it
may be called, rather than rake or harrow it.
When it was growing or grown, I have observed already how many things I
wanted, to fence it, secure it, mow or reap it, cure or carry it home,
thresh, part it from the chaff, and save it. Then I wanted a mill to
grind it, sieves to dress it, yeast and salt to make it into bread, and
an oven to bake it in; and all these things I did without, as shall be
observed; and yet the corn was an inestimable comfort and advantage to
me too; but all this, as I said, made every thing laborious and tedious
to me, but that there was no help for; neither was my time so much loss
to me, because I had divided it; a certain part of it was every day
appointed to these works; and as I resolved to use none of the corn for
bread till I had a greater quantity by me, I had the next six months to
apply myself wholly by labour and invention, to furnish myself with
utensils proper for the performing all the operations necessary for the
making the corn, when I had it, fit for my use.
But first I was to prepare more land, for I had now seed enough to sow
above an acre of ground. Before I did this, I had a week’s work at least
to make me a spade, which, when it was done, was a very sorry one
indeed, and very heavy, and required double labour to work with it;
however, I went through that, and sowed my seeds in two large flat
pieces of ground, as near my house as I could find them to my mind, and
fenced them in with a good hedge, the stakes of which were all cut off
that wood which I had set before, which I knew would grow; so that in
one year’s time I knew I should have a quick or living hedge, that would
want but little repair. This work was not so little as to take me up
less than three months; because great part of that time was in the wet
season, when I could not go abroad.
Within-door, that is, when it rained, and I could not go out, I found
employment on the following occasion, always observing, that all the
while I was at work, I diverted myself with talking to my parrot, and
teaching him to speak; and I quickly learnt him to know his own name; at
last, to speak it out pretty loud, Pol; which was the first word I ever
heard spoken in the island by any mouth but my own. This therefore was
not my work, but an assistant to my work; for now, as I said, I had a
great employment upon my hands, as follows: viz. I had long studied, by
some means or other, to make myself some earthen vessels, which indeed I
wanted sorely, but knew not where to come at them: however, considering
the heat of the climate, I did not doubt but, if I could find out any
such clay, I might botch up some such pot as might, being dried by the
sun, be hard enough and strong enough to bear handling, and to hold any
thing that was dry, and required to be kept so; and as this was
necessary in preparing corn, meal, &c. which was the thing I was upon, I
resolved to make some as large as I could, and fit only to stand like
jars to hold what should be put into them.
It would make the reader pity me, or rather laugh at me, to tell how
many awkward ways I took to raise this paste, what odd misshapen ugly
things I made, how many of them fell in, and how many fell out, the clay
not being stiff enough to bear its own weight; how many cracked by the
over-violent heat of the sun, being set out too hastily; and how many
fell to pieces with only removing, as well before as after they were
dried; and, in a word, how, after having laboured hard to find the clay,
to dig it, to temper it, to bring it home, and work it, I could not make
above two large earthen ugly things, I cannot call them jars, in about
two months labour.
However, as the sun baked these two very dry and hard, I lifted them
very gently up and set them down again in two great wicker-baskets,
which I had made on purpose for them that they might not break; and, as
between the pot and the basket there was a little room to spare, I
stuffed it full of the rice and barley-straw; and these two pots being
to stand always dry, I thought would hold my dry corn, and perhaps the
meal when the corn was bruised.
Though I miscarried so much in my design for large pots, yet I made
several smaller things with better success; such as little round pots,
flat dishes, pitchers, and pipkins, and any thing my hand turned to; and
the heat of the sun baked them strangely hard.
But all this would not answer my end, which was to get an earthen pot to
hold what was liquid, and bear the fire, which none of these could do.
It happened after some time, making a pretty large fire for cooking my
meat, when I went to put it out, after I had done with it, I found a
broken piece of one of my earthenware vessels in the fire, burnt as hard
as a stone, and red as a tile. I was agreeably surprised to see it, and
said to myself, that certainly they might be made to burn whole, if they
would burn broken.
This set me to study how to order my fire, so as to make it burn me some
pots. I had no notion of a kiln such as the potters burn in, or of
glazing them with lead, though I had some lead to do it with; but I
placed three large pipkins, and two or three pots, in a pile one upon
another, and placed my fire-wood all round it with a great heap of
embers under them: I piled the fire with fresh fuel round the outside,
and upon the top, till I saw the pots in the inside red-hot quite
through, and observed that they did not crack at all: when I saw them
clear red, I let them stand in that heat about five or six hours, till I
found one of them, though it did not crack, did melt or run; for the
sand which was mixed with the clay melted by the violence of the heat,
and would have run into glass, if I had gone on; so I slacked my fire
gradually, till the pots began to abate of the red colour; and watching
them all night that I might not let the fire abate too fast, in the
morning I had three very good, I will not say handsome pipkins, and two
other earthen pots, as hard burnt as could be desired; and one of them
perfectly glazed with the running of the sand.
After this experiment I need not say that I wanted no sort of
earthenware for my use; but I must needs say, as to the shapes of them,
they were very indifferent, as any one may suppose, when I had no way of
making them, but as the children make dirt-pies, or as a woman would
make pies that never learnt to raise paste.
No joy at a thing of so mean a nature was ever equal to mine, when I
found I had made an earthen pot that would bear the fire; and I had
hardly patience to stay till they were cold, before I set one upon the
fire again with some water in it, to boil me some meat, which I did
admirably well; and with a piece of a kid I made some very good broth,
though I wanted oatmeal, and several other ingredients requisite to
make it so good as I would have had it.
My next concern was to get me a stone mortar to stamp or beat some corn
in; for as to the mill, there was no thought of arriving to that
perfection of art with one pair of hands. To supply this want, I was at
a great loss; for of all trades in the world I was as perfectly
unqualified for a stone-cutter, as for any whatever; neither had I any
tools to go about it with. I spent many a day to find out a great stone
big enough to cut hollow, and make fit for a mortar, and could find none
at all except what was in the solid rock, and which I had no way to dig
or cut out; nor indeed were the rocks in the island of hardness
sufficient, but were all of a sandy crumbling stone, which would neither
bear the weight of an heavy pestle, nor would break the corn without
filling it with sand; so, after a great deal of time lost in searching
for a stone, I gave it over, and resolved to look out a great block of
hard wood, which I found indeed much easier; and getting one as big as I
had strength to stir, I rounded it, and formed it on the outside with my
axe and hatchet; and then with the help of fire and infinite labour,
made an hollow place in it, as the Indians in Brasil make their canoes.
After this, I made a great heavy pestle or beater of the wood called the
iron-wood, and this I prepared and laid by against I had my next crop of
corn, when I proposed to myself to grind, or rather pound, my corn or
meal to make my bread.
My next difficulty was to make a sieve or searce, to dress my meal, and
part it from the bran and the husk, without which I did not see it
possible I could have any bread. This was a most difficult thing, so
much as but to think on; for to be sure I had nothing like the necessary
things to make it with; I mean fine thin canvass, or stuff, to searce
the meal through. And here I was at a full stop for many months; nor did
I really know what to do: linen I had none left but what was mere rags;
I had goat’s hair, but neither knew I how to weave or spin it; and had
I known how, here were no tools to work it with. All the remedy that I
found for this, was, that at last I did remember I had among the
seamen’s clothes which were saved out of the ship, some neckcloths of
calico or muslin; and with some pieces of these I made three small
sieves, but proper enough for the work; and thus I made shift for some
years; how I did afterwards, I shall shew in its place.
The baking part was the next thing to be considered, and how I should
make bread when I came to have corn; for, first, I had no yeast: as to
that part, there was no supplying the want, so I did not concern myself
much about it. But for an oven, I was indeed in great pain. At length I
found out an experiment for that also, which was this; I made some
earthen vessels very broad, but not deep; that is to say, about two feet
diameter, and not above nine inches deep; these I burnt in the fire, as
I had done the other, and laid them by; and when I wanted to bake, I
made a great fire upon the hearth, which I had paved with some square
tiles of my own making and burning also; but I should not call
them square.
When the fire-wood was burnt pretty much into embers, or live coals, I
drew them forward upon this hearth, so as to cover it all over; and
there I let them lie, till the hearth was very hot; then sweeping away
all the embers, I set down my loaf, or loaves; and whelming down the
earthen pot upon them, drew the embers all round the outside of the pot,
to keep in, and add to the heat; and thus, as well as in the best oven
in the world, I baked my barley-loaves, and became in a little time a
mere pastry-cook into the bargain; for I made myself several cakes of
the rice, and puddings; indeed I made no pies, neither had I any thing
to put into them, supposing I had, except the flesh either of fowls
or goats.
It need not be wondered at, if all these things took me up most part of
the third year of my abode here; for it is to be observed, that in the
intervals of these things I had my new harvest and husbandry to manage:
for I reaped my corn in its season, and carried it home as well as I
could, and laid it up in the ear, in my large baskets, till I had time
to rub it out; for I had no floor to thresh it on, or instrument to
thresh it with.
And now indeed my stock of corn increasing, I really wanted to build my
barns bigger: I wanted a place to lay it up in; for the increase of the
corn now yielded me so much, that I had of the barley about twenty
bushels, and of the rice as much, or more; insomuch that I now resolved
to begin to use it freely, for my bread had been quite gone a great
while; also I resolved to see what quantity would be sufficient for me a
whole year, and to sow but once a year.
Upon the whole, I found that the forty bushels of barley and rice were
much more than I could consume in a year: so I resolved to sow just the
same quantity every year that I sowed the last, in hopes that such a
quantity would fully provide me with bread, &c.
All the while these things were doing, you may be sure my thoughts ran
many times upon the prospect of land which I had seen from the other
side of the island; and I was not without secret wishes, that I was on
shore there, fancying that seeing the main land, and an inhabited
country, I might find some way or other to convey myself farther, and
perhaps at last find some means of escape.
But all this while I made no allowance for the dangers of such a
condition, and how I might fall into the hands of savages, and perhaps
such as I might have reason to think far worse than the lions and tigers
of Africa: that if I once came into their power, I should run an hazard
more than a thousand to one of being killed, and perhaps of being eaten;
for I had heard that the people of the Caribean coasts were cannibals,
or men-eaters; and I knew by the latitude that I could not be far off
from that shore: that, suppose they were not cannibals, yet they might
kill me, as many Europeans who had fallen into their hands had been
served, even when they had been ten or twenty together; much more I that
was but one, and could make little or no defence. All these things, I
say, which I ought to have considered well of, and I did cast up in my
thoughts afterwards, yet took none of my apprehensions at first; and my
head ran mightily upon the thoughts of getting over to that shore.
Now I wished for my boy Xury, and the long-boat, with the shoulder of
mutton sail, with which I sailed above a thousand miles on the coast of
Africa; but this was in vain. Then I thought I would go and look on our
ship’s boat, which, as I have said, was blown up upon the shore a great
way in the storm, when we were first cast away. She lay almost where she
did at first, but not quite; and was turned by the force of the waves
and the winds almost bottom upwards, against the high ridge of a beachy
rough sand, but no water about her as before.
If I had had hands to have refitted her, and have launched her into the
water, the boat would have done well enough, and I might have gone back
into the Brasils with her easy enough; but I might have easily foreseen,
that I could no more turn her, and set her upright upon her bottom, than
I could remove the island. However, I went to the wood, and cut levers
and rollers, and brought them to the boat, resolving to try what I could
do; suggesting to myself, that if I could but turn her down, I might
easily repair the damage she had received, and she would be a very good
boat, and I might go to sea in her very easily.
I spared no pains indeed in this piece of fruitless toil, and spent, I
think, three or four weeks about it; at last finding it impossible to
heave it up with my little strength, I fell to digging away the sand to
undermine it; and so to make it fall down, setting pieces of wood to
thrust and guide it right in the fall.
But when I had done this, I was unable to stir it up again, or to get
under it, much less to move it forwards towards the water; so I was
forced to give it over: and yet, though I gave over the hopes of the
boat, my desire to venture over for the main increased, rather than
decreased, as the means for it seemed impossible.
This at length set me upon thinking whether it was not possible to make
myself a canoe or periagua, such as the natives of those climates make,
even without tools, or, as I might say, without hands, viz. of the trunk
of a great tree. This I not only thought possible, but easy: and pleased
myself extremely with my thoughts of making it, and with my having much
more convenience for it than any of the Negroes or Indians; but not at
all considering the particular inconveniences which I lay under more
than the Indians did, viz. want of hands to move it into the water, when
it was made; a difficulty much harder for me to surmount than all the
consequences of want of tools could be to them: for what was it to me,
that when I had chosen a vast tree in the woods, I might with great
trouble cut it down, if after I might be able with my tools to hew and
dub the outside into a proper shape of a boat, and burn or cut out the
inside to make it hollow, so to make a boat of it, if, after all this, I
must leave it just there where I found it, and was not able to launch it
into the water?
One would have thought I could not have had the least reflection upon my
mind of this circumstance, while I was making this boat, but I should
have immediately thought how I should get it into the sea; but my
thoughts were so intent upon my voyage over the sea in it, that I never
once considered how I should get it off the land; and it was really in
its own nature more easy for me to guide it over forty-five miles of
sea, than about forty-five fathoms of land, where it lay, to set it
afloat in the water.
I went to work upon this boat the most like a fool that ever man did,
who had any of his senses awake. I pleased myself with the design,
without determining whether I was ever able to undertake it; not but
that the difficulty of launching my boat came often into my head; but I
put a stop to my own inquiries into it by this foolish answer, which I
gave myself; Let me first make it, I’ll warrant I’ll find some way or
other to get it along, when it is done.
This was a most preposterous method; but the eagerness of my fancy
prevailed, and to work I went, and felled a cedar-tree: I question much
whether Solomon ever had such an one for the building the temple at
Jerusalem; it was five feet ten inches diameter at the lower part next
the stump, and four feet eleven inches diameter at the end of twenty-two
feet, after which it lessened for a while, and then parted into
branches. It was not without infinite labour that I felled this tree: I
was twenty days hacking and hewing at it at the bottom; I was fourteen
more getting the branches and limbs, and the vast spreading head of it,
cut off, which I hacked and hewed through with my axe and hatchet, with
inexpressible labour: after this it cost me a month to shape it, and dub
it to a proportion, and to something like the bottom of a boat, that it
might swim upright as it ought to do. It cost me near three months more
to clear the inside, and work it out so as to make an exact boat of it:
this I did indeed without fire, by mere mallet and chissel, and by the
dint of hard labour; till I had brought it to be a very handsome
periagua, and big enough to have carried six-and-twenty men, and
consequently big enough to have carried me and all my cargo.
When I had gone through this work, I was extremely delighted with it:
the boat was really much bigger than I ever saw a canoe or periagua,
that was made of one tree, in my life; many a weary stroke it had cost,
you may be sure, for there remained nothing but to get it into the
water; and had I gotten it into the water, I make no question but I
should have begun the maddest voyage, and the most unlikely to be
performed, that ever was undertaken.
But all my devices to get it into the water failed me, though they cost
infinite labour too; it lay about one hundred yards from the water, and
not more; but the first inconvenience was, it was up hill towards the
creek. Well, to take away this discouragement, I resolved to dig into
the surface of the earth, and so make a declivity; this I began, and it
cost me a prodigious deal of pains: but who grudge pains, that have
their deliverance in view? but when this was worked through, and this
difficulty managed, it was still much at one; for I could no more stir
the canoe, than I could the other boat.
Then I measured the distance of ground, and resolved to cut a dock, or
canal, to bring the water up to the canoe, seeing I could not bring the
canoe down to the water: well, I began this work, and when I began to
enter into it, and calculated how deep it was to be dug, how broad, how
the stuff to be thrown out, I found, that by the number of hands I had,
being none but my own, it must have been ten or twelve years before I
should have gone through with it; for the shore lay high, so that at the
upper end it must have been at least twenty feet deep: so at length,
though with great reluctancy, I gave this attempt over also.
This grieved me heartily; and now I saw, though too late, the folly of
beginning a work before we count the cost, and before we judge lightly
of our own strength to go through with it.
In the middle of this work I finished my fourth year in this place, and
kept my anniversary with the same devotion, and with as much comfort, as
ever before; for by a constant study, and serious application of the
word of God, and by the assistance of his grace, I gained a different
knowledge from what I had before; I entertained different notions of
things; I looked now upon the world as a thing remote; which I had
nothing to do with, no expectation from, and indeed no desires about: in
a word, I had nothing indeed to do with it, nor was ever like to have;
so I thought it looked as we may perhaps look upon it hereafter; viz. as
a place I had lived in, but was come out of it; and well I might say,
as father Abraham to Dives, “Between me and thee there is a great
gulf fixed.”
In the first place, I was removed from all the wickedness of the world
here: I had neither the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, or the
pride of life: I had nothing to covet, for I had all I was now capable
of enjoying; I was lord of the whole manor, or, if I pleased, I might
call myself king or emperor over the whole country which I had
possession of: there were no rivals: I had no competitor, none to
dispute sovereignty or command with me; I might have raised
ship-loadings of corn, but I had no use for it; so I let as little grow
as I thought enough for my occasion: I had tortoises or turtles enough;
but now and then one was as much as I could put to any use: I had timber
enough to have built a fleet of ships; I had grapes enough to have made
wine, or to have cured into raisins, to have loaded that fleet when they
had been built.