eat, and to supply my wants, and what was all the rest to me? If I
killed more flesh than I could eat, the dog must eat it, or the vermin;
if I sowed more corn than I could eat, it must be spoiled. The trees
that I cut down were lying to rot on the ground, I could make no more
use of them, than for fuel; and that I had no occasion for, but to
dress my food.
In a word, the nature and experience of things dictated to me upon just
reflection, that all the good things of this world are no farther good
to us, than as they are for our use: and that whatever we may heap up
indeed to give to others, we enjoy as much as we can use, and no more.
The most covetous griping miser in the world would have been cured of
the vice of covetousness, if he had been in my case; for I possessed
infinitely more than I knew what to do with. I had no room for desire,
except it was of things which I had not, and they were but trifles,
though indeed of great use to me. I had, as I hinted before, a parcel
of money, as well gold as silver, about thirty-six pounds sterling;
alas! there the nasty, sorry, useless stuff lay; I had no manner of
business for it; and I often thought with myself, that I would have
given an handful of it for a gross of tobacco-pipes, or for an hand-mill
to grind my corn; nay, I would have given it all for six-penny-worth of
turnip and carrot seed out of England, or for an handful of peas and
beans, and a bottle of ink: as it was, I had not the least advantage by
it, or benefit from it; but there it lay in a drawer, and grew mouldy
with the damp of the cave, in the wet season; and if I had had the
drawer full of diamonds, it had been the same case; and they had been of
no manner of value to me, because of no use.
I had now brought my state of life to be much easier in itself than it
was at first, and much easier to my mind, as well as to my body. I
frequently sat down to my meat with thankfulness, and admired the hand
of God’s providence, which had thus spread my table in the wilderness: I
learnt to look more upon the bright side of my condition, and less upon
the dark side; and to consider what I enjoyed, rather than what I
wanted; and this gave me sometimes such secret comforts, that I cannot
express them; and which I take notice of here, to put those discontented
people in mind of it, who cannot enjoy comfortably what God hath given
them, because they see and covet something that he has not given them:
all our discontents about what we want, appeared to me to spring from
the want of thankfulness for what we have.
Another reflection was of great use to me, and doubtless would be so to
any one that should fall into such distress as mine was; and this was,
to compare my present condition with what I at first expected it should
be; nay, with what it would certainly have been, if the good providence
of God had not wonderfully ordered the ship to be cast up near to the
shore, where I not only could come at her, but could bring what I got
out of her to the shore for my relief and comfort; without which I had
wanted tools to work, weapons for defence, or gunpowder and shot for
getting my food.
I spent whole hours, I may say whole days, in representing to myself in
the most lively colours, how I must have acted, if I had got nothing out
of the ship; how I could not have so much as got any food, except fish
and turtles; and that, as it was long before I found any of them, I must
have perished first: that I should have lived, if I had not perished,
like a mere savage: that if I had killed a goat or a fowl by any
contrivance, I had no way to flay or open them, or part the flesh from
the skin and the bowels, or to cut it up; but must gnaw it with my
teeth, and pull it with my claws, like a beast.
These reflections made me very sensible of the goodness of Providence to
me, and very thankful for my present condition, with all its hardships
and misfortunes: and this part also I cannot but recommend to the
reflection of those who are apt in their misery to say, Is any
affliction like mine? Let them consider, how much worse the cases of
some people are, and what their case might have been, if Providence had
thought fit.
I had another reflection which assisted me also to comfort my mind with
hopes; and this was, comparing my present condition with what I had
deserved, and had therefore reason to expect from the hand of
Providence. I had lived a dreadful life, perfectly destitute of the
knowledge and fear of God: I had been well instructed by father and
mother; neither had they been wanting to me in their early endeavours to
infuse a religious awe of God into my mind, a sense of my duty, and of
what the nature and end of my being required of me. But, alas! falling
early into the seafaring life, which of all the lives is the most
destitute of the fear of God, though his terrors are always before them;
I say, falling early into the seafaring life, and into seafaring
company, all that little sense of religion which I had entertained, was
laughed out of me by my messmates; by an hardened despising of dangers,
and the views of death, which grew habitual to me; by my long absence
from all manner of opportunities to converse with any thing but what was
like myself, or to hear any thing of what was good, or tended
towards it.
So void was I of every thing that was good, or of the least sense of
what I was, or was to be, that in the greatest deliverance I enjoyed,
such as my escape from Sallee, my being taken up by the Portuguese
master of the ship, my being planted so well in Brasil, my receiving the
cargo from England, and the like, I never once had the words, Thank God,
so much as on my mind, or in my mouth; nor in the greatest distress had
I so much thought as to pray to him; nor so much as to say, Lord, have
mercy upon me! no, not to mention the name of God, unless it was to
swear by, and blaspheme it.
I had terrible reflections upon my mind for many months, as I have
already observed, on the account of my wicked and hardened life past;
and when I looked about me, and considered what particular providences
had attended me, since my coming into this place, and how God had dealt
bountifully with me; had not only punished me less than my iniquity
deserved, but had so plentifully provided for me; this gave me great
hopes that my repentance was accepted, and that God had yet mercies in
store for me.
With these reflections I worked my mind up, not only to resignation to
the will of God in the present disposition of my circumstances, but even
to a sincere thankfulness of my condition; and that I, who was yet a
living man, ought not to complain, seeing I had not the due punishment
of my sins; that I enjoyed so many mercies, which I had no reason to
have expected in that place, that I ought never more to repine at my
condition, but to rejoice, and to give daily thanks, for that daily
bread, which nothing but a cloud of wonders could have brought: that I
ought to consider I had been fed even by a miracle, even as great as
that of feeding Elijah by ravens; nay, by a long series of miracles; and
that I could hardly have named a place in the uninhabited part of the
world, where I could have been cast more to my advantage: a place, where
as I had no society, which was my affliction on one hand, so I found no
ravenous beasts, no furious wolves or tigers, to threaten my life; no
venomous creatures, or poisonous, which I might have fed on to my hurt;
no savages to murder and devour me.
In a word, as my life was a life of sorrow one way, so it was a life of
mercy another; and I wanted nothing to make it a life of comfort, but to
be able to make my sense of God’s goodness to me, and care over me in
this condition, be my daily consolation; and after I made a just
improvement of these things, I went away, and was no more sad.
I had now been here so long, that many things which I brought on shore
for my help, were either quite gone, or very much wasted, and
near spent.
My ink, as I observed, had been gone for some time, all but a very
little, which I eked out with water a little and a little, till it was
so pale it scarce left any appearance of black upon the paper: as long
as it lasted, I made use of it to minute down the days of the month on
which any remarkable thing happened to me; and first, by casting up
times past, I remember that there was a strange concurrence of days, in
the various providences which befel me, and which, if I had been
superstitiously inclined to observe days as fatal or fortunate, I might
have had reason to have looked upon with a great deal of curiosity.
First, I had observed, that the same day that I broke away from my
father and my friends, and ran away to Hull in order to go to sea, the
same day afterwards I was taken by the Sallee man of war, and made
a slave.
The same day of the year that I escaped out of the wreck of the ship in
Yarmouth Roads, that same day of the year afterwards I made my escape
from Sallee in the boat.
The same day of the year I was born on, viz. the 20th of September, the
same day I had my life so miraculously saved twenty-six years after,
when I was cast on shore in this island; so that my wicked life, and
solitary life, both began on a day.
The next thing to my ink’s being wasted, was that of my bread, I mean
the biscuit which I brought out of the ship. This I had husbanded to the
last degree, allowing myself but one cake of bread a day, for above a
year: and yet I was quite without bread for a year before I got any corn
of my own: and great reason I had to be thankful that I had any at all,
the getting it being, as has been already observed, next to miraculous.
My clothes too began to decay mightily: as to linen, I had none a good
while, except some chequered shirts which I found in the chests of the
other seamen, and which I carefully preserved, because many times I
could bear no other clothes on but a shirt; and it was a very great help
to me, that I had among all the men’s clothes of the ship almost three
dozen of shirts. There were also several thick watch-coats of the
seamen, which were left behind, but they were too hot to wear; and
though it is true, that the weather was so violent hot, that there was
no need of clothes, yet I could not go quite naked; no, though I had
been inclined to it, which I was not; nor could I abide the thought of
it, though I was all alone.
One reason why I could not go quite naked, was, I could not bear the
heat of the sun so well when quite naked as with some clothes on; nay,
the very heat frequently blistered my skin; whereas, with a shirt on,
the air itself made some motion, and whistling under the shirt, was
twofold cooler than without it: no more could I ever bring myself to go
out in the heat of the sun without a cap or a hat; the heat of the sun
beating with such violence as it does in that place, would give me the
headach presently, by darting so directly on my head, without a cap or
hat on, so that I could not bear it; whereas, if I put on my hat, it
would presently go away.
Upon these views I began to consider about putting the few rags I had,
which I called clothes, into some order; I had worn out all the
waistcoats I had, and my business was now to try if I could not make
jackets out of the great watch-coats which I had by me, and with such
other materials as I had; so I set to work a-tailoring, or rather indeed
a-botching; for I made most piteous work of it. However, I made shift to
make two or three waistcoats, which I hoped would serve me a great
while; as for breeches or drawers, I made but very sorry shift indeed,
till afterwards.
I have mentioned that I saved the skins of all the creatures that I
killed, I mean four-footed ones; and I had hung them up stretched out
with sticks in the sun; by which means some of them were so dry and
hard, that they were fit for little; but others, it seems, were very
useful. The first thing I made of these was a great cap for my head,
with the hair on the outside to shoot off the rain; and this I performed
so well, that after this I made a suit of clothes wholly of those skins;
that is to say, a waistcoat and breeches open at the knees, and both
loose; for they were rather wanted to keep me cool, than to keep me
warm. I must not omit to acknowledge, that they were wretchedly made;
for if I was a bad carpenter, I was a worse tailor; however, they were
such as I made a very good shift with; and when I was abroad, if it
happened to rain, the hair of the waistcoat and cap being outmost, I was
kept very dry.
After this I spent a deal of time and pains to make me an umbrella: I
was indeed in great want of one, and had a great mind to make one: I had
seen them made in the Brasils, where they are very useful in the great
heats which are there; and I felt the heats every jot as great here, and
greater too, being nearer the equinox; besides, as I was obliged to be
much abroad, it was a most useful thing to me, as well for the rains as
the heats. I took a world of pains at it, and was a great while before I
could make any thing likely to hold; nay, after I thought I had hit the
way, I spoiled two or three before I made one to my mind; but at last I
made one that answered indifferently well. The main difficulty I found
was to make it to let down: I could make it to spread; but if it did not
let down too, and draw in, it would not be portable for me any way, but
just over my head, which would not do. However, at last, as I said, I
made one to answer; I covered it with skins, the hair upwards, so that
it cast off the rain like a penthouse, and kept off the sun so
effectually, that I could walk out in the hottest of the weather, with
greater advantage than I could before in the coolest; and when I had no
need of it, I could close it, and carry it under my arm.
Thus I lived mighty comfortably, my mind being entirely composed by
resigning to the will of God, and throwing myself wholly upon the
disposal of his providence: this made my life better than sociable; for
when I began to regret the want of conversation, I would ask myself,
whether thus conversing mutually with my own thoughts, and, as I hope I
may say, with even my Maker, by ejaculations and petitions, was not
better than the utmost enjoyment of human society in the world?
I cannot say, that after this, for five years, any extraordinary thing
happened to me; but I lived on in the same course, in the same posture
and place, just as before. The chief thing I was employed in, besides my
yearly labour of planting my barley and rice, and curing my raisins, of
both which I always kept up just enough to have sufficient stock of the
year’s provisions beforehand; I say, besides this yearly labour, and my
daily labour of going out with my gun, I had one labour to make me a
canoe, which at last I finished: so that by digging a canal to it, six
feet wide, and four feet deep, I brought it into the creek, almost half
a mile. As for the first, that was so vastly big, as I made it without
considering beforehand, as I ought to do, how I should be able to launch
it; so never being able to bring it to the water, or bring the water to
it, I was obliged to let it lie where it was, as a memorandum to teach
me to be wiser next time. Indeed the next time, though I could not get a
tree proper for it, and was in a place where I could not get the water
to it, at any less distance than, as I have said, of near half a mile;
yet as I saw it was practicable at last, I never gave it over; and
though I was near two years about it, yet I never grudged my labour, in
hopes of having a boat to go off to sea at last.
However, though my little periagua was finished, yet the size of it was
not at all answerable to the design which I had in view, when I made the
first; I mean of venturing over to the Terra Firma, where it was above
forty miles broad; accordingly, the smallness of my boat assisted to put
an end to that design, and now I thought no more of it. But as I had a
boat, my next design was to make a tour round the island: for as I had
been on the other side, in one place, crossing, as I have already
described it, over the land, so the discoveries I made in that journey
made me very eager to see the other parts of the coast; and now I had a
boat, I thought of nothing but sailing round the island.
For this purpose, and that I might do every thing with discretion and
consideration, I fitted up a little mast to my boat, and made a sail to
it out of some of the pieces of the ship’s sails, which lay in store,
and of which I had a great store by me.
Having fitted my mast and sail, and tried the boat, I found she would
sail very well. Then I made little lockers and boxes at each end of my
boat, to put provisions, necessaries, and ammunition, &c. into, to be
kept dry, either from rain, or the spray of the sea; and a little long
hollow place I cut in the inside of the boat, where I could lay my gun,
making a flap to hang down over it to keep it dry.
I fixed my umbrella also in a step at the stern, like a mast, to stand
over my head, and keep the heat of the sun off me, like an awning; and
thus I every now and then took a little voyage upon the sea, but never
went far out, nor far from the little creek; but at last, being eager to
view the circumference of my little kingdom, I resolved upon my tour,
and accordingly I victualled my ship for the voyage; putting in two
dozen of my loaves (cakes I should rather call them) of barley-bread; an
earthen pot full of parched rice, a food I ate a great deal of, a little
bottle of rum, half a goat, and powder with shot for killing more, and
two large watch-coats, of those which, as I mentioned before, I had
saved out of the seamen’s chests; these I took, one to lie upon, and the
other to cover me in the night.
It was the 6th of November, in the sixth year of my reign, or my
captivity, which you please, that I set out on this voyage, and I found
it much longer than I expected; for though the island itself was not
very large, yet when I came to the east side of it, I found a great
ledge of rocks lie out about two leagues into the sea, some above water,
some under it; and beyond this a shoal of sand, lying dry half a league
more; so that I was obliged to go a great way out to sea to double
that point.
When I first discovered them, I was going to give over my enterprise,
and come back again, not knowing how far it might oblige me to go out to
sea, and above all, doubting how I should get back again; so I came to
an anchor, for I had made me a kind of an anchor with a piece of broken
grappling which I got out of the ship.
Having secured my boat, I took my gun, and went on shore, climbing up an
hill, which seemed to over-look that point, where I saw the full extent
of it, and resolved to venture.
In my viewing the sea from that hill where I stood, I perceived a
strong, and indeed a most furious current, which ran to the east, even
came close to the point; and I took the more notice of it, because I
saw there might be some danger, that when I came into it, I might be
carried out to sea by the strength of it, and not be able to make the
island again. And indeed, had I not gotten first upon this hill, I
believe it would have been so; for there was the same current on the
other side of the island, only that it set off at a farther distance;
and I saw there was a strong eddy under the shore; so I had nothing to
do but to get out of the first current, and I should presently be in
an eddy.
I lay here, however, two days; because the wind blowing pretty fresh (at
E.S.E. and that being just contrary to the said current) made a great
breach of the sea upon the point; so that it was not safe for me to keep
too close to the shore for the breach, nor to go too far off because of
the stream.
The third day in the morning, the wind having abated over-night, the sea
was calm, and I ventured; but I am a warning-piece again to all rash and
ignorant pilots; for no sooner was I come to the point, when I was not
my boat’s length from the shore, but I found myself in a great depth of
water, and a current like a sluice of a mill. It carried my boat along
with it with such violence, that all I could do could not keep her so
much as on the edge of it: but I found it hurried me farther and farther
out from the eddy, which was on the left hand. There was no wind
stirring to help me, and all that I could do with my paddles signified
nothing; and now I began to give myself over for lost; for, as the
current was on both sides the island, I knew in a few leagues distance
they must join again, and then I was irrecoverably gone; nor did I see
any possibility of avoiding it; so that I had no prospect before me but
of perishing; not by the sea, for that was calm enough, but of starving
for hunger. I had indeed found a tortoise on the shore, as big almost as
I could lift, and had tossed it into the boat; and I had a great jar of
fresh water, that is to say, one of my earthen pots; but what was all
this to being driven into the vast ocean, where, to be sure, there was
no shore, no main land or island, for a thousand leagues at least?
And now I saw how easy it was for the providence of God to make the most
miserable condition that mankind could be in, worse. Now I looked back
upon my desolate solitary island, as the most pleasant place in the
world, and all the happiness my heart could wish for, was to be there
again: I stretched out my hands to it with eager wishes; “O happy
desert!” said I, “I shall never see thee more! O miserable creature!”
said I, “whither am I going!” Then I reproached myself with my
unthankful temper, and how I had repined at my solitary condition; and
now what would I give to be on shore there again? Thus we never see the
true state of our condition, till it is illustrated to us by its
contraries; nor know how to value what we enjoy, but by the want of it.
It is scarce possible to imagine the consternation I was now in, being
driven from my beloved island (for so it appeared to me now to be) into
the wide ocean, almost two leagues, and in the utmost despair of ever
recovering it again: however, I worked hard, till indeed my strength was
almost exhausted; and kept my boat as much to the northward, that is,
towards the side of the current which the eddy lay on, as possibly I
could; when about noon, as the sun passed the meridian, I thought I felt
a little breeze of wind in my face, springing up from the S.S.E. This
cheered my heart a little, and especially when in about half an hour
more it blew a pretty small gentle gale. By this time I was gotten at a
frightful distance from the island; and, had the least cloud or hazy
weather intervened, I had been undone another way too; for I had no
compass on board, and should never have known how to have steered
towards the island, if I had but once lost sight of it; but the weather
continuing clear, I applied myself to get up my mast again, and spread
my sail, standing away to the north as much as possible, to get out of
the current.
Just as I had set my mast and sail, and the boat began to stretch away,
I saw even by the clearness of the water, some alteration of the current
was near; where the current was so strong, the water was foul; but
perceiving the water clear, I found the current abate, and presently I
found to the east, at about half a mile, a breach of the sea upon some
rocks: these rocks I found caused the current to part again; and as the
main stress of it ran away more southerly, leaving the rocks to the
north-east, so the other returned by the repulse of the rock, and made a
strong eddy, which ran back again to the north-west with a very
sharp stream.
They who know what it is to have a reprieve brought to them upon the
ladder, or to be rescued from thieves just going to murder them, or who
have been in such like extremities, may guess what my present surprise
of joy was, and how gladly I put my boat into the stream of this eddy;
and the wind also freshening, how gladly I spread my sail to it, running
cheerfully before the wind, and with a strong tide or eddy under foot.
This eddy carried me about a league in my way back again directly
towards the island, but about two leagues more towards the northward
than the current lay, which carried me away at first; so that when I
came near the island, I found myself open to the northern shore of it,
that is to say, the other end of the island, opposite to that which I
went out from.
When I had made something more than a league of way by the help of this
current or eddy, I found it was spent, and served me no farther. However
I found, that being between the two great currents, viz. that on the
south side which had hurried me away, and that on the north which lay
about two leagues on the other side; I say, between these two, in the
west of the island, I found the water at least still, and running no
way; and having still a breeze of wind fair for me, I kept on steering
directly for the island, though not making such fresh way as I
did before.