current or eddy, I found it was spent, and served me no farther.
However, I found that being between two great currents, viz. that on the
south side, which had hurried me away, and that on the north, which lay
about a league on the other side; I say, between these two, in the wake
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.
About four o'clock in the evening, being then within a league of the
island, I found the point of the rocks which occasioned this disaster,
stretching out, as is described before, to the southward, and casting
off the current more southerly, had, of course, made another eddy to the
north, and this I found very strong, but not directly setting the way my
course lay, which was due west, but almost full north. However, having a
fresh gale, I stretched across this eddy, slanting north-west: and, in
about an hour, came within about a mile of the shore, where, it being
smooth water, I soon got to land.
When I was on shore, I fell on my knees, and gave God thanks for my
deliverance, resolving to lay aside all thoughts of my deliverance by my
boat; and refreshing myself with such things as I had, I brought my boat
close to the shore, in a little cove that I had spied under some trees,
and laid me down to sleep, being quite spent with the labour and fatigue
of the voyage.
I was now at a great loss which way to get home with my boat: I had run
so much hazard, and knew too much of the case, to think of attempting it
by the way I went out; and what might be at the other side (I mean the
west side) I knew not, nor had I any mind to run any more ventures; so I
only resolved in the morning to make my way westward along the shore,
and to see if there was no creek where I might lay up my frigate in
safety, so as to have her again, if I wanted her. In about three miles,
or thereabouts, coasting the shore, I came to a very good inlet or bay,
about a mile over, which narrowed till it came to a very little rivulet
or brook, where I found a very convenient harbour for my boat, and where
she lay as if she had been in a little dock made on purpose for her.
Here I put in, and having stowed my boat very safe, I went on shore, to
look about me, and see where I was.
I soon found I had but a little passed by the place where I had been
before, when I travelled on foot to that shore; so taking nothing out of
my boat but my gun and umbrella, for it was exceeding hot, I began my
march. The way was comfortable enough after such a voyage as I had been
upon, and I reached my old bower in the evening, where I found every
thing standing as I left it; for I always kept it in good order, being,
as I said before, my country house.
I got over the fence, and laid me down in the shade, to rest my limbs,
for I was very weary, and fell asleep: but judge you, if you can, that
read my story, what a surprise I must be in, when I was awaked out of my
sleep by a voice, calling me by my name several times, "Robin, Robin,
Robin Crusoe; poor Robin Crusoe! Where are you, Robin Crusoe? Where are
you? Where have you been!"
I was so dead asleep at first, being fatigued with rowing, or paddling,
as it is called, the first part of the day, and with walking the latter
part, that I did not wake thoroughly; but dozing between sleeping and
waking, thought I dreamed that somebody spoke to me; but as the voice
continued to repeat Robin Crusoe, Robin Crusoe, at last I began to wake
more perfectly, and was at first dreadfully frightened, and started up
in the utmost consternation; but no sooner were my eyes open, but I saw
my Pol sitting on the top of the hedge; and immediately knew it was he
that spoke to me; for just in such bemoaning language I had used to talk
to him, and teach him; and he had learned it so perfectly, that he would
sit upon my finger, and lay his bill close to my face, and cry, "Poor
Robin Crusoe! Where are you? Where have you been? How came you here?"
and such things as I had taught him.
However, even though I knew it was the parrot, and that indeed it could
be nobody else, it was a good while before I could compose myself.
First, I was amazed how the creature got thither, and then, how he
should just keep about the place, and no where else: but as I was well
satisfied it could be nobody but honest Pol, I got over it; and holding
out my hand, and calling him by his name, Pol, the sociable creature
came to me, and sat upon my thumb, as he used to do and continued
talking to me, Poor Robin Crusoe! and how did I come here? and where had
I been? just as if he had been overjoyed to see me again: and so I
carried him home along with me.
I now had enough of rambling to sea for some time, and had enough to do
for many days, to sit still, and reflect upon the danger I had been in.
I would have been very glad to have had my boat again on my side of the
island; but I knew not how it was practicable to get it about. As to the
east side of the island, which I had gone round, I knew well enough
there was no venturing that way; my very heart would shrink, and my very
blood run chill, but to think of it; and as to the other side of the
island, I did not know how it might be there; but supposing the current
ran with the same force against the shore at the east as it passed by it
on the other, I might run the same risk of being driven down the stream,
and carried by the island, as I had been before of being carried away
from it; so, with these thoughts, I contented myself to be without any
boat, though it had been the product of so many months' labour to make
it, and of so many more to get it into the sea.
In this government of my temper I remained near a year, lived a very
sedate, retired life, as you may well suppose; and my thoughts being
very much composed, as to my condition, and fully comforted in resigning
myself to the dispositions of Providence, I thought I lived really very
happily in all things, except that of society.
I improved myself in this time in all the mechanic exercises which my
necessities put me upon applying myself to; and I believe I could, upon
occasion, have made a very good carpenter, especially considering how
few tools I had.
Besides this, I arrived at an unexpected perfection in my earthen-ware,
and contrived well enough to make them with a wheel, which I found
infinitely easier and better; because I made things round and shapable,
which before were filthy things indeed to look on. But I think I was
never more vain of my own performance, or more joyful for any thing I
found out, than for my being able to make a tobacco-pipe; and though it
was a very ugly clumsy thing when it was done, and only burnt red, like
other earthen-ware, yet as it was hard and firm, and would draw the
smoke, I was exceedingly comforted with it, for I had been always used
to smoke: and there were pipes in the ship, but I forgot them at first,
not thinking that there was tobacco in the island; and afterwards, when
I searched the ship again, I could not come at any pipes at all.
In my wicker-ware also I improved much, and made abundance of necessary
baskets, as well as my invention showed me; though not very handsome,
yet they were such as were very handy and convenient for my laying
things up in, or fetching things home. For example, if I killed a goat
abroad, I could hang it up in a tree, flay it, dress it, and cut it in
pieces, and bring it home in a basket; and the like by a turtle: I could
cut it up, take out the eggs, and a piece or two of the flesh, which was
enough for me, and bring them home in a basket, and leave the rest
behind me. Also large deep baskets were the receivers of my corn, which
I always rubbed out as soon as it was dry, and cured, and kept it in
great baskets.
I began now to perceive my powder abated considerably; this was a want
which it was impossible for me to supply, and I began seriously to
consider what I must do when I should have no more powder; that is to
say, how I should do to kill any goats. I had, as is observed, in the
third year of my being here, kept a young kid, and bred her up tame, and
I was in hopes of getting a he-goat: but I could not by any means bring
it to pass, till my kid grew an old goat; and as I could never find in
my heart to kill her, she died at last of mere age.
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. For 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 those 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 marks 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 traps; and, not to trouble you with particulars,
going one morning to see my traps, 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 did not then know what I afterwards learnt, 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's 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 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 for doing it, my first work was to find out a
proper piece of ground, 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 savannah, 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 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 stock 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 a 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. 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 the 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, only when I was a boy, after a great many essays
and miscarriages, made me both butter and cheese at last, and also salt
(though I found it partly made to my hand by the heat of the sun upon
some of the rocks of the sea,) and never wanted it afterwards. How
mercifully can our 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! Pol, as if he had been my favourite, 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 of the table, and
one on the other, expecting now and then a bit from my hand, as a mark
of special favour.
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
run 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 any thing but society: and of that, 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 him, 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 the 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 inded 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 dagger, hung a little saw
and a hatchet; one on one side, and 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, and on my shoulder my
gun; and over my head a great clumsy ugly goat's skin umbrella, but
which, after all, was the most necessary thing I had about me, next to
my gun. As for my face, the colour of it was really not so mulatto-like
as one might expect from a man not at all careful of it, and living
within nine or ten 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
scissars 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 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 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 any 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 nearer, 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 land, 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
encircled 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, always cut
so, 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, I was so anxious to see it kept entire, lest the
goats should break through, that I never left off, till, with infinite
labour, 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, that I was forced to pull some of them up again.