Chapter 7
The rainy season of the autumnal equinox had now come, and I kept the 30th of September in the same solemn manner as before; being the anniversary of my landing on the island, having now been there two years, and no more prospect of being delivered than the first day I came there. I spent the whole day in humble and thankful acknowledgments of the many wonderful mercies which my solitary, condition was attended with, and without which it might have been infinitely more miserable.
With patience and labour I went through many things and, indeed, everything that my circumstances made necessary to me to do, as will appear by what follows. I was now—in the months of November and December—expecting my crop of barley and rice. The ground I had manured or dug up for them was not great; for, as I observed, my seed of each was not above the quantity of half a peck, for I had lost one whole crop by sowing in the dry season. But now my crop promised very well, when on a sudden I found I was in danger of losing it all again by enemies of several sorts, which it was scarce possible to keep from it; as, first, goats and wild creatures which I called hares, who, tasting the sweetness of the blade, lay in it night and day as soon as it came up, and ate it so close that it could get no time to shoot up into stalk. This I saw no remedy for but making an enclosure about it with a hedge; which I did with a great deal of toil, and the more because it required speed. However, as my arable land was but small, suited to my crop, I got it totally well fenced in about three weeks’ time; and shooting some of the creatures in the daytime, I set my dog to guard it in the night, tying him up to a stake at the gate, where he would stand and bark all night long. So in a little time the enemies forsook the place, and the corn grew very strong and well, and began to ripen apace.
But, as the beasts ruined me before while my corn was in the blade, so the birds were as likely to ruin me now when it was in the ear; for going along by the place to see how it thrived, I saw my little crop surrounded with fowls of I knew not how many sorts, who stood as it were watching till I should be gone. I immediately let fly among them, for I always had my gun with me. I had no sooner shot but there rose up a little cloud of fowls—which I had not seen at all—from among the corn itself.
This touched me sensibly, for I foresaw that in a few days they would 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 stayed 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 had gone away. And the event proved it to be so; for as I walked off as if I were gone, I was no sooner out of their sight but they dropped down one by one into the corn again. I was so provoked that I could not have patience to stay till more came on, knowing that every grain that they ate now was, as it might be said, a peck loaf to me in the consequence; but coming up to the hedge I fired again and killed three of them. This was what I wished for: so I took them up, and served them as we serve notorious thieves in England—namely, hanged them in chains for a terror to others. It is impossible to imagine almost that this should have such an effect as it had; for the fowls would not only stay away from the corn, but in short, they forsook all that part of the island, and I could never see a bird near the place as long as my scarecrows hung there.
I was very glad of, and about the latter end of December, which was our second harvest of the year, I reaped my crop. I was sadly put to it for a scythe or a sickle to cut it down; and all I could do was to make one as well as I could out of one of the broad swords or cutlasses which I saved among the arms out of the ship. However, as my first crop was but small, I had no great difficulty to cut it down. In short, I reaped it my way, for I cut off nothing but the ears, and carried it away in a great basket which I had made, and so rubbed it out with my hands; and at the end of all my harvesting I found that out of my half-peck of seed I had near two bushels of rice and above two bushels and a half of barley—that is to say, by my guess, for I had no measure at that time.
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 of store, and to secure a constant supply, I resolved not to taste any of this crop, but to preserve it all for seed against the next season; and in the meantime to employ all my study and hours of working to accomplish this great work of providing myself with corn and bread.
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 in but a wooden manner; and though it cost me a great many days to make it, yet for want of iron it not only wore out the sooner, but made my work the harder, and made it be performed much worse. However, this I bore with, 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 had 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 yet the corn was an inestimable comfort and advantage to me too. All this, as I said, made everything 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 performing all the operations necessary for the making the corn (when I had it) fit for my use.
But, first, I was to prepare more land, for I had now seed enough to sow above an acre of ground. Before I did this I had a week’s work at least to make me a spade; which, when it was done, was 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 of 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 was not so little as to take me up less than three months, because great part of that time was of 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 all the while I was at work I diverted myself with talking to my parrot, and teaching him to speak; and I quickly made him learn 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 assistant to my work; for now, as I said, I had a great employment upon my hands, as follows—namely, I had long studied by some means or other to make myself some earthen vessels, which indeed I wanted sorely, but knew not where to come at them. However, considering the heat of the climate, I did not doubt but if I could find out any such clay, I might botch up some such pot as might, being dried 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 etc, which was the thing I was upon, I resolved to make some as large as I could, and fit only to stand like jars to hold what should be put into them.
It would make the reader pity me, or rather laugh at me, to tell how many awkward ways I took to raise this paste; what odd, 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 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 anything my hand turned to; and the heat of the sun baked them strangely hard.
But all this would not answer my end, which was to get an earthen pot to hold what was liquid, and bear the fire, which none of these could do. It happened after some time, making a pretty large fire for cooking my meat, when I went to put it out after I had done with it, I found a broken piece of one of my earthenware vessels in the fire burned 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 studying how to order my fire, so as to make it burn me some pots. I had no notion of a kiln, such as the potters burn in; or of glazing them with lead, though I had some lead to do it with; but I placed three large pipkins and two or three pots in a pile, one upon another, and placed my firewood all round it, with a heap of embers under them. I piled the fire with fresh fuel round the outside and upon the top, till I saw the pots in the inside red hot quite through, and observed that they did not crack at all. When I saw them cleared, 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 burned as could be desired, and one of them perfectly glazed with the running of the sand.
No joy at a thing of so mean a nature was ever equal to mine when I found I had made an earthen pot that would bear the fire; and I had hardly patience to stay till they were cold before I set one upon the fire again with some water in it to boil me some meat, which 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 me a stone mortar to stamp or beat some corn in; for as to the mill, there was no thought at arriving to that perfection of art with one pair of bands. To supply this want I was at a great loss; for of all trades in the world, I was as perfectly unqualified for a stone-cutter as for any whatever; neither had I any tools to go about it with. I spent many a day to find out a great stone big enough to cut hollow, and make fit for a mortar, and could find none at all, except what was in the solid rock, and which I had no way to dig or cut out; nor indeed, were the rocks in the island of hardness sufficient, but were all of a sandy crumbling stone, which neither would bear the weight of a heavy pestle, or 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 in 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 the iron wood, and this I prepared and laid by against I had my next crop of corn, when I proposed to myself to grind, or rather pound, my corn into meal to make my bread.
My next difficulty was to make a sieve, or search, 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 so much as but 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 search 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 goats’ 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 seamen’s clothes which were saved out of the ship some neck cloths of calico or muslin; and with some pieces of these I made three small sieves, but proper enough for the work. And thus I made shift for some years. How I did afterwards I shall 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, as 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 foot 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 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 earth was very hot; then sweeping away all the embers, I set down my loaf or loaves, and whelming down the earthenpot upon them, drew the embers all round the outside of the pot, to keep in and add to the heat; and thus, as well as in the best oven in the world, I baked my barley loaves, and became in a little time a mere pastry-cook into the bargain; for I made myself several cakes of the rice, and puddings. Indeed I made no pies, neither had I 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 was 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 hope that such a quantity every year would fully provide me with bread, etc.
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 the seeing the mainland, and thinking that in an inhabited country I might find some way or other to convey myself farther, and perhaps at last find some means of escape.
But all this while I made no allowance for the dangers of such a condition, and how I might fall into the hands of savages, and perhaps such as I might have reason to think far worse than the lions and tigers of Africa. That if I once came into their power I should run a hazard more than a thousand to one of being killed, and perhaps of being eaten; for I had heard that the people of the Caribbean coasts were cannibals, or man-eaters; and I knew by the latitude that I could not be far off from that shore. Then I thought I would go and look at the boat of our ship 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 as before.
If I had had bands 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 Brazil 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, resolved to try what I could do, suggesting to myself that if I could but turn her down, I might easily repair the damage she had received, and she would be a very good boat, and I might go to sea in her very easily.
I spared no pains indeed in this piece of fruitless toil, and spent, I think three or four weeks about it. At last, finding it impossible to heave it up with my little strength, I fell to digging away the sand to undermine it, and so to make it fall down, setting pieces of wood to thrust and guide it right in the fall.
But when I had done this I was unable to stir it up again or to get under it, much less to move it forward towards the water. so I was forced to give it over; and yet, though I gave over the hope 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, such as the natives of those climates make, even without tools, or, as I might say, without hands—namely, of the trunk of a great tree.
I went to work upon this boat the most like a fool that ever man did who had any of his senses awake. I pleased myself with the design, without determining whether I was ever able to undertake it; not but that the difficulty of launching my boat came often into my head, but I put a stop to my own enquiries into it, by this foolish answer which I gave myself, “Let’s first make it; I’ll warrant I’ll find some way or other to get it along when it is done.”
I felled a cedar-tree—I questioned much whether Solomon ever had such a one for a 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 after which it had lessened for a while and parted into branches. It was not without infinite labour that I felled this tree. I was twenty days backing and hewing at it at the bottom. I was fourteen more getting the branches and limbs and the vast spreading head of it cut off, which I hacked and hewed through with 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.
But all my devices to get in 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 uphill towards the creek. Well, to take away this discouragement, I resolved to dig into the surface of the earth, and to make a declivity. This I began, and it cost me a prodigious deal of pains—but who grudge pains that have their deliverance in view? But when this was worked through, and this difficulty managed, it was still much at one; for I could no more stir the canoe than I could the other boat.
Then I measured the distance of ground, and resolved to cut a dock or canal to bring the water up to the canoe, seeing I could not bring the canoe down to the water. Well, I began this work, and when I began to enter into it, and calculate how deep it was to be dug, how broad, how the stuff to be thrown out, I found that, by the number of hands I had, being none but my own, it must have been ten or twelve years before I should have gone through with it; for the shore lay high, so that at the upper end it must have been at least twenty feet deep. So at length, though with great reluctancy, I gave this attempt over also.
This grieved me heartily; and now I saw, though too late, the folly of beginning a work before we count the cost, and before we judge 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 of the word of God, and by the assistance of His grace, I gained a different knowledge from what I had before.
