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CHAPTER IX A BOAT
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 but a sorry one indeed, and very heavy, and required double labour to
work with it.
However, I got 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 a year's time, I
knew I should have a quick or living hedge, that would want but little repair.
This work did not take me up less than three months, because a great part of that
time was 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 in the
following occupations-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 taught him to know his own name, and at last to
speak it out pretty loud, "Poll," 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 assistance to my work; for now, as I said,
I had a great employment upon my hands, as follows: I had long studied to make, by
some means or other, 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 clay, I might make some pots that might, being dried in the sun, be hard
enough and strong enough to bear handling,
and to hold anything 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 doing, 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 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 things my hand turned to;
and the heat of the sun baked them quite 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 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 firewood 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 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 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 as good as I would have had it been.
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 at that perfection of art with one
pair of hands.
To supply this want, I was at a great loss; for, of all the 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 neither would 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 for 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 *** of the wood called the iron-wood;
and this I prepared and laid by against I had my next crop of corn, which I proposed
to myself to grind, or rather pound into meal to make 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 to think on, for to be sure I had nothing like
the necessary thing to make it-I mean fine thin canvas 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
how to weave it 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 ***'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 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 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 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 baking and burning also; but I should not call them square.
When the firewood was burned 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 little time a
good pastrycook into the bargain; for I made myself several cakes and puddings of
the rice; but I made no pies, neither had I
anything 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 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 the 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;
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 were on shore
there, fancying that, seeing the mainland, and an inhabited country, I might find some
way or other to convey myself further, and perhaps at last find some means of escape.
But all this while I made no allowance for the dangers of such an undertaking, 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 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 from that
shore.
Then, supposing 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; and did come into my thoughts afterwards, yet gave me no
apprehensions at first, and 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 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 almost where she did at first, but not quite; and was 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.
If I had had hands to have refitted her, and to have launched her into the water,
the boat would have done well enough, 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, I might
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 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 for the main increased, rather than decreased, as the
means for it seemed impossible.
This at length put 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, of the trunk of a great tree.
This I not only thought possible, but easy, and pleased myself extremely with the
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, when it was made, into the water-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, if when I had
chosen a vast tree in the woods, and with much trouble cut it down, if I had been
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 there
where I found it, and not be able to launch it into the water?
One would have thought I could not have had the least reflection upon my mind of my
circumstances 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 inquiries into
it by this foolish answer which I gave myself-"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 of 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 cut off,
which I hacked and hewed through with axe and hatchet, and 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 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 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 me 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 who have their
deliverance in view?); but 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 that, by the
number of hands I had, being none but my
own, 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; 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 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 ever 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
expectations from, and, indeed, no desires about: in a word, I had nothing indeed to
do with it, nor was ever likely 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 might I say, as Father Abraham to Dives,
"Between me and thee is a great gulf fixed."
In the first place, I was removed from all the wickedness of the world here; I had
neither the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eye, nor the pride of life.
I had nothing to covet, for I had all that 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 tortoise or turtle 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; and I had grapes enough
to have made wine, or to have cured into
raisins, to have loaded that fleet when it had been built.
But all I could make use of was all that was valuable: I had enough to eat and
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 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 but 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
they are for our use; and that, whatever we
may heap up to give others, we enjoy just 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 sorry, useless stuff lay; I had no more manner of business for it; and
often thought with myself that I would have given a handful of it for a gross of
tobacco-pipes; or for a hand-mill to grind
my corn; nay, I would have given it all for a sixpenny-worth of turnip and carrot seed
out of England, or for a 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 seasons; and if I had
had the drawer full of diamonds, it had
been the same case-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 meat with thankfulness, and admired the hand of God's
providence, which had thus spread my table in the wilderness.
I learned 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 has 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
would 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 nearer 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 for tools to work, weapons for defence, and 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 it, 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 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 situation 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 what the nature and end of my being required of me.
But, alas! falling early into the seafaring life, which of all 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 a 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 anything but
what was like myself, or to hear anything that was good or tended towards it.
So void was I of everything that was good, or the least sense of what I was, or was to
be, that, in the greatest deliverances 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 the Brazils; my receiving the cargo from
England, and the like-I never had once the words "Thank God!" so much as on my mind,
or in my mouth; nor in the greatest
distress had I so much as a thought to pray to Him, or so much as to say, "Lord, have
mercy upon me!" no, nor 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
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 had deserved, but had so
plentifully provided for me-this gave me
great hopes that my repentance was accepted, and that God had yet mercy in
store for me.
With these reflections I worked my mind up, not only to a resignation to the will of
God in the present disposition of my circumstances, but even to a sincere
thankfulness for 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 crowd 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 uninhabitable 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 poisons,
which I might feed on to my hurt; no savages to *** 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 did make a just improvement on
these things, I went away, and was no more sad.
I had now been here so long that many things which I had 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 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
remembered that there was a strange
concurrence of days in the various providences which befell 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
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 that ship in
Yarmouth Roads, that same day-year afterwards I made my escape from Sallee in
a boat; the same day of the year I was born
on-viz. the 30th of September, that 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 my solitary life began both on a day.
The next thing to my ink 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 near 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; as to linen, I had had none a good while, except
some chequered shirts which I found in the chests of the other ***, 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, indeed, several thick watch-coats of the ***'s which were
left, but they were too hot to wear; and though it is true that the weather was so
violently 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 alone.
The reason why I could not go 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 headache 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, tailoring, or rather, indeed, botching, for I made most piteous
work of it.
However, I made shift to make two or three new waistcoats, which I hoped would serve
me a great while: as for breeches or drawers, I made but a 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 them hung 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 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 I made me a
suit of clothes wholly of these skins-that
is to say, a waistcoat, and breeches open at the knees, and both loose, for they were
rather wanting 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 very good shift with, and when I was out, if it
happened to rain, the hair of my waistcoat and cap being outermost, I was kept very
dry.
After this, I spent a great deal of time and pains to make 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 Brazils, where they are very
useful in the great heats 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 with it, and was a great while before I could make anything
likely to hold: nay, after I had 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
let down.
I could make it spread, but if it did not let down too, and draw in, it was not
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, and covered it with skins, the hair
upwards, so that it cast off the rain like a pent-house, 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 could close it, and carry it under my arm.
Thus I lived mighty comfortably, my mind being entirely composed by resigning myself
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 God Himself, by ejaculations, was not better than the utmost enjoyment of human
society in the world?