devour all my hopes; that I should be starved, and never be able to
raise a crop at all; and what to do I could not tell: however, I
resolved not to lose my corn, if possible, though I should watch it
night and day. In the first place, I went among it, to see what damage
was already done, and found they had spoiled a good deal of it; but that
as it was yet too green for them, the loss was not so great, but that
the remainder was likely to be a good crop, if it could be saved.
I staid by it to load my gun, and then coming away, I could easily see
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 gone, I was no sooner out of their sight, than they dropt
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
they eat now was, as it might be said, a peck-loaf to me in the
consequence; so 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 that this should
have such an effect as it had; for the fowls not only never came to 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 scare-crows 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 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 first 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.
However, this was 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 mean tune, 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 now I 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 my daily
discouragement, and was made more sensible of it every hour, even after
I had 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 up 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 performed it much
worse. However, this I bore with, and was content to work it out with
patience, and bear with the badness of the performance. When the corn
was sown, 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 it, as it may be
called, rather than rake or harrow it. When it was growing and grown, I
have observed already how many things I wanted to fence it, secure it,
mow or reap it, cure and carry it home, thrash, 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; and yet all
these things I did without, as shall be observed; and the corn was an
inestimable comfort and advantage to me: 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, as 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 making corn fit for my use.
But now I was to prepare more land; for I had 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 but a sorry one indeed,
and very heavy, and required double labour to work with it: however, I
went through that, and sowed my seed 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, and knew it 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 took me up full three months; because a great part of
the time was in the wet season, when I could not go abroad. Within
doors, that is, when it rained, and I could not go out, I found
employment on the following occasions; always observing, that while I
was at work, I diverted myself with talking to my parrot, and teaching
him to speak; and I quickly learned him to know his own name, and 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: I had long studied, by some
means or other, to make myself some earthen vessels, which indeed I
wanted much, 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
clay, I might botch up some such pot as might, being dried in the sun,
be hard 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 the
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 pastil; 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 in 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 very hard.
But all this would not answer my end, which was to get an earthen pot to
hold liquids, and bear the fire, which none of these could do. It
happened some time after, 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 earthen-ware 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 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 plied 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
earthen-ware for my use; but I must needs say, as to the shapes of them,
they were very indifferent, as any one may suppose, as I had no way of
making them but as the children make dirt pies, or as a woman would make
pies that never learned 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 on the
fire again, with some water in it, to boil me some meat, which it 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 been.
My next concern was to get 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 stonecutter, 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; but 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 sufficient hardness,
as they were all of a sandy crumbling stone, which would neither bear
the weight of a 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
a hollow place in it, as the Indians in Brazil make their canoes. After
this, I made a great heavy pestle, or beater, of the wood called
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 into
meal, to make my bread.
My next difficulty was to make a sieve, or searce, to dress my meal,
and to 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,
even but to think on; for I had nothing like the necessary thing to make
it; I mean fine thin canvass or stuff, to searce the meal through. 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 goats'-hair, but
neither knew how to weave it nor spin it; and had I known how, here were
no tools to work it with: all the remedy I found for this was, at last
recollecting I had, among the seamen's clothes which were saved out of
the ship, some neckcloths of calico or muslin, with some pieces of these
I made three small sieves, proper enough for the work; and thus I made
shift for some years: how I did afterwards, I shall show 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 puzzled. At length I found
out an expedient 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 burned 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 my 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 burned into embers, or live coals, I drew them
forward upon the hearth, so as to cover it all over, and there let them
lie till the hearth was very hot; then sweeping away all the embers, I
set down my loaf, or loaves, and covering them with the earthen pot,
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 good pastry-cook into the
bargain; for I made myself several cakes and puddings of the rice; but
made no pies, as I had nothing to put into them except the flesh 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, in the
intervals of these things, I had my new harvest and husbandry to manage:
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 thrash it on, or instrument to thrash
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 rice as much, or more, insomuch that now I resolved to
begin to use it freely; for my bread had been quite gone a great while:
I resolved also 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 some 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 that 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 in their power, I should run a hazard of
more than a thousand to one of being killed, and perhaps of being eaten;
for I had heard that the people of the Caribbean coast were cannibals,
or man-eaters; and I knew, by the latitude, that I could not be far off
from that shore. Then supposing they were not cannibals, yet that they
might kill me, as they had many Europeans who had fallen into their
hands, even when they have been ten or twenty together; much more I, who
was but one, and could makee little or no defence; all these things, I
say, which I ought to have considered well of, and did cast up in my
thoughts afterwards, took up none of my apprehensions at first; yet my
head ran mightily upon the thought of getting over to the 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 at 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
nearly where she did at first, but not quite; having turned, by the
force of the waves and the winds, almost bottom upward, against a high
ridge of beachy rough sand; but no water about her, as before. If I had
had hands to have refitted her, and to have launched her into the water,
the boat would have done very well, and I might have gone back into the
Brazils with her easily enough; but I might have 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 woods, 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, and repair the
damage she had received, she would be a very good boat, and I might
venture to sea in her.
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 her up with my little strength, I fell to digging away the sand,
to undermine her, and so as to make her fall down, setting pieces of
wood to thrust and guide her right in the fall.
But when I had done this, I was unable to stir her up again, or to get
under her, much less to move her forward 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 the main increased, rather than
diminished, as the means for it seemed impossible.
At length, I began to think 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, of the trunk of a
great tree. This I not only thought possible, but easy, and pleased
myself extremely with the idea 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. the 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 could it
avail me, if, after I had chosen my tree, and with much trouble cut it
down, and might be able with my tools to hew and dub the outside into
the proper shape of a boat, and burn or cut out the inside to make it
hollow, so as to make a boat of it; if, after all this, I must leave it
just where I found it, and was not able to launch it into the water?
One would imagine, if I had had the least reflection upon my mind of my
circumstances while I was making this boat, I should have immediately
thought how I was to get it into the sea: but my thoughts were so intent
upon my voyage 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 the 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 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: Let me first
make it; I warrant I will 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. I felled a cedar tree, and I question
much whether Solomon ever had such a one for the building of 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, where it lessened, and then parted into branches. It
was not without infinite labour that I felled this tree; I was twenty
days hacking and hewing at the bottom, and fourteen more getting the
branches and limbs, and the vast spreading head of it, cut off: 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 chisel, 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 ever I 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; and there remained nothing but to get it into the
water; which, had I accomplished, 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
me inexpressible 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
begun, and it cost me a prodigious deal of pains; (but who grudge pains
that have their deliverance in view?) when this was worked through, and
this difficulty managed, it was still much the same, 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 upon it, and calculate how
deep it was to be dug, how broad, how the stuff was to be thrown out, I
found by the number of hands I had, having none but my own, that it must
have been ten or twelve years before I could have gone through with it;
for the shore lay so high, that at the upper end it must have been at
least twenty feet deep; this attempt, though with great reluctancy, I
was at length obliged to give 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 rightly
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
before; for, by a constant study and serious application to 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 to do with it, nor was ever likely to have; 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 might I say, as father
Abraham to Dives, "Between me and thee is a great gulf fixed."