United Public Domain Gold 2/United Public Domain Gold 2.iso/literature/lit021.dms/lit021.adf/Part1

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                                      1719
                                ROBINSON CRUSOE
                                by Daniel Defoe

  I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good
family, though not of that country, my father being a foreigner of
Bremen, who settled first at Hull. He got a good estate by
merchandise, and leaving off his trade lived afterward at York, from
whence he had married my mother, whose relations were named
Robinson, a good family in that country, and from whom I was called
Robinson Kreutznear; but by the usual corruption of words in England
we are now called, nay, we call ourselves, and write our name, Crusoe,
and so my companions always called me.
  I had two elder brothers, one of which was lieutenant-colonel to
an English regiment of foot in Flanders, formerly commanded by the
famous Colonel Lockhart, and was killed at the battle near Dunkirk
against the Spaniards; what became of my second brother I never
knew, any more than my father and mother did know what was become of
me.
  Being the third son of the family, and not bred to any trade, my
head began to be filled very early with rambling thoughts. My
father, who was very ancient, had given me a competent share of
learning, as far as house-education and a country free school
generally goes, and designed me for the law, but I would be
satisfied with nothing but going to sea; and my inclination to this
led me so strongly against the will, nay, the commands, of my
father, and against all the entreaties and persuasions of my mother
and other friends, that there seemed to be something fatal in that
propension of nature tending directly to the life of misery which
was to befall me.
  My father, a wise and grave man, gave me serious and excellent
counsel against what he foresaw was my design. He called me one
morning into his chamber, where he was confined by the gout, and
expostulated very warmly with me upon this subject. He asked me what
reasons more than a mere wandering inclination I had for leaving my
father's house and my native country, where I might be well
introduced, and had a prospect of raising my fortunes by application
and industry, with a life of ease and pleasure. He told me it was
for men of desperate fortunes on one hand, or of aspiring, superior
fortunes on the other, who went abroad upon adventures, to rise by
enterprise, and make themselves famous in undertakings of a nature out
of the common road; that these things were all either too far above
me, or too far below me; that mine was the middle state, or what might
be called the upper station of low life, which he had found by long
experience was the best state in the world, the most suited to human
happiness, not exposed to the miseries and hardships, the labor and
sufferings, of the mechanic part of mankind, and not embarrassed
with the pride, luxury, ambition, and envy of the upper part of
mankind. He told me I might judge of the happiness of this state by
one thing, viz., that this was the state of life which all other
people envied; that kings have frequently lamented the miserable
consequences of being born to great things, and wished they had been
placed in the middle of the two extremes, between the mean and the
great; that the wise man gave his testimony to this as the just
standard of true felicity, when he prayed to have neither poverty
nor riches.
  He bid me observe it, and I should always find that the calamities
of life were shared among the upper and lower part of mankind; but
that the middle station had the fewest disasters and was not exposed
to so many vicissitudes as the higher or lower part of mankind. Nay,
they were not subjected to so many distempers and uneasiness either of
body or mind as those were who, by vicious living, luxury, and
extravagancies on one hand, or by hard labor, want of necessaries, and
mean or insufficient diet on the other hand, bring distempers upon
themselves by the natural consequences of their way of living; that
the middle station of life was calculated for all kind of virtues
and all kind of enjoyments; that peace and plenty were the handmaids
of a middle fortune; that temperance, moderation, quietness, health,
society, all agreeable diversions, and all desirable pleasures, were
the blessings attending the middle station of life; that this way
men went silently and smoothly through the world, and comfortably
out of it, not embarrassed with the labors of the hands or of the
head, not sold to the life of slavery for daily bread, or harassed
with perplexed circumstances, which rob the soul of peace, and the
body of rest; not enraged with the passion of envy, or secret
burning lust of ambition for great things; but in easy circumstances
sliding gently through the world, and sensibly tasting the sweets of
living, without the bitter, feeling that they are happy, and
learning by every day's experience to know it more sensibly.
  After this, he pressed me earnestly, and in the most affectionate
manner, not to play the young man, not to precipitate myself into
miseries which Nature and the station of life I was born in seemed
to have provided against; that I was under no necessity of seeking
my bread; that he would do well for me, and endeavor to enter me
fairly into the station of life which he had been just recommending to
me; and that if I was not very easy and happy in the world it must
be my mere fate or fault that must hinder it, and that he should
have nothing to answer for, having thus discharged his duty in warning
me against measures which he knew would be to my hurt; in a word, that
as he would do very kind things for me if I would stay and settle at
home as he directed, so he would not have so much hand in my
misfortunes, as to give me any encouragement to go away. And to
close all, he told me I had my elder brother for an example, to whom
he had used the same earnest persuasions to keep him from going into
the Low Country wars, but could not prevail, his young desires
prompting him to run into the army, where he was killed; and though he
said he would not cease to pray for me, yet he would venture to say to
me, that if I did take this foolish step, God would not bless me,
and I would have leisure hereafter to reflect upon having neglected
his counsel when there might be none to assist in my recovery.
  I observed in this last part of his discourse, which was truly
prophetic, though I suppose my father did not know it to be so himself
- I say, I observed the tears run down his face very plentifully,
and especially when he spoke of my brother who was killed; and that
when he spoke of my having leisure to repent, and none to assist me,
he was so moved that he broke off the discourse, and told me his heart
was so full he could say no more to me.
  I was sincerely affected with this discourse, as indeed who could be
otherwise? and I resolved not to think of going abroad any more, but
to settle at home according to my father's desire. But alas! a few
days wore it all off; and, in short, to prevent any of my father's
farther importunities, in a few weeks after I resolved to run quite
away from him. However, I did not act so hastily neither as my first
heat of resolution prompted, but I took my mother, at a time when I
thought her a little pleasanter than ordinary, and told her that my
thoughts were so entirely bent upon seeing the world that I should
never settle to anything with resolution enough to go through with it,
and my father had better give me his consent than force me to go
without it; that I was now eighteen years old, which was too late to
go apprentice to a trade, or clerk to an attorney; that I was sure
if I did, I should never serve out my time, and I should certainly run
away from my master before my time was out, and go to sea; and if
she would speak to my father to let me go but one voyage abroad, if
I came home again and did not like it, I would go no more, and I would
promise by a double diligence to recover that time I had lost.
  This put my mother into a great passion. She told me she knew it
would be to no purpose to speak to my father upon any such subject;
that he knew too well what was my interest to give his consent to
anything so much for my hurt, and that she wondered how I could
think of any such thing after such a discourse as I had had with my
father, and such kind and tender expressions as she knew my father had
used to me; and that, in short, if I would ruin myself there was no
help for me; but I might depend I should never have their consent to
it; that for her part, she should not have so much hand in my
destruction, and I should never have it to say, that my mother was
willing when my father was not.
  Though my mother refused to move it to my father, yet, as I have
heard afterwards, she reported all the discourse to him, and that my
father, after showing a great concern at it, said to her with a
sigh, "That boy might be happy if he would stay at home, but if he
goes abroad he will be the miserablest wretch that was ever born: I
can give no consent to it."
  It was not till almost a year after this that I broke loose,
though in the meantime I continued obstinately deaf to all proposals
of settling to business, and frequently expostulating with my father
and mother about their being so positively determined against what
they knew my inclinations prompted me to. But being one day at Hull,
where I went casually, and without any purpose of making an
elopement that time; but I say, being there, and one of my
companions being going by sea to London, in his father's ship, and
prompting me to go with them, with the common allurement of sea-faring
men, viz., that it should cost me nothing for my passage, I
consulted neither father nor mother any more, nor so much as sent them
word of it; but leaving them to hear of it as they might, without
asking God's blessing, or my father's, without any consideration of
circumstances or consequences, and in an ill hour, God knows, on the
first of September, 1651, I went on board a ship bound for London.
Never any young adventurer's misfortunes, I believe began sooner, or
continued longer than mine. The ship was no sooner gotten out of the
Humber, but the wind began to blow, and the waves to rise in a most
frightful manner; and as I had never been at sea before, I was most
inexpressibly sick in body, and terrified in my mind. I began now
seriously to reflect upon what I had done, and how justly I was
overtaken by the judgment of Heaven for my wicked leaving my
father's house, and abandoning my duty; all the good counsel of my
parents, my father's tears and my mother's entreaties, came now
fresh into my mind, and my conscience, which was not yet come to the
pitch of hardness which it has been since, reproached me with the
contempt of advice and the breach of my duty to God and my father.
  All this while the storm increased, and the sea, which I had never
been upon before, went very high, though nothing like what I have seen
many times since; no, nor like what I saw a few days after. But it was
enough to affect me then, who was but a young sailor, and had never
known anything of the matter. I expected every wave would have
swallowed us up, and that every time the ship fell down, as I thought,
in the trough or hollow of the sea, we should never rise more; and
in this agony of mind I made many vows of resolutions, that if it
would please God here to spare my life this one voyage, if ever I
got once my foot upon dry land again, I would go directly home to my
father, and never set it into a ship again while I lived; that I would
take his advice, and never run myself into such miseries as these
any more. Now I saw plainly the goodness of his observations about the
middle station of life, how easy, how comfortably he had lived all his
days, and never had been exposed to tempests at sea, or troubles on
shore; and I resolved that I would, like a true repenting prodigal, go
home to my father.
  These wise and sober thoughts continued all the while the storm
continued, and indeed some time after; but the next day the wind was
abated and the sea calmer, and I began to be a little inured to it.
However, I was very grave for all that day, being also a little
sea-sick still; but towards night the weather cleared up, the wind was
quite over, and a charming fine evening followed; the sun went down
perfectly clear, and rose so the next morning; and having little or no
wind, and a smooth sea, the sun shining upon it, the sight was, as I
thought, the most delightful that ever I saw.
  I had slept well in the night, and was now no more sea-sick but very
cheerful, looking with wonder upon the sea that was so wrought and
terrible the day before, and could be so calm and so pleasant in so
little time after. And now lest my good resolutions should continue,
my companion, who had indeed enticed me away, comes to me: "Well,
Bob," says he, clapping me on the shoulder, "how do you do after it? I
warrant you were frighted, wa'n't you, last night, when it blew but
a capful of wind?" "A capful, d'you call it?" said I; It was a
terrible storm." "A storm, you fool you," replied he; "do you call
that a storm? Why, it was nothing at all; give us but a good ship
and sea-room, and we think nothing at all; give us but a good ship and
sea-room, and we think nothing of such a squall of wind as that; but
you're but a fresh-water sailor, Bob. Come, let us make a bowl of
punch, and we'll forget all that; d'ye see what charming weather
'tis now?" To make short this sad part of my story, we went the old
way of all sailors; the punch was made, and I was made drunk with
it, and in that one night's wickedness I drowned all my repentance,
all my reflections upon my past conduct, and all my resolutions for my
future. In a word, as the sea was returned to its smoothness of
surface and settled calmness by the abatement of that storm, so the
hurry of my thoughts being over, my fears and apprehensions of being
swallowed up by the sea being forgotten, and the current of my
former desires returned, I entirely forgot the vows and promises
that I made in my distress. I found indeed some intervals of
reflection, and the serious thoughts did, as it were, endeavor to
return again sometime; but I shook them off, and roused myself from
them as it were from a distemper, and applying myself to drink and
company, soon mastered the return of those fits, for so I called them,
and I had in five or six days got as complete a victory over
conscience as any young fellow that resolved not to be troubled with
it could desire. But I was to have another trial for it still; and
Providence, as in such cases generally it does, resolved to leave me
entirely without excuse. For if I would not take this for a
deliverance, the next was to be such a one as the worst and most
hardened wretch among us would confess both the danger and the mercy.
  The sixth day of our being at sea we came into Yarmouth roads; the
wind having been contrary and the weather calm, we made but little way
since the storm. Here we were obliged to come to an anchor, and here
we lay, the wind continuing contrary, viz., at southwest, for seven or
eight days, during which time a great many ships from Newcastle came
into the same roads, as the common harbor where the ships might wait
for a wind for the river.
  We had not, however, rid here so long, but should have tided it up
the river, but that the wind blew too fresh; and after we had lain
four or five days, blew very hard. However, the roads .being
reckoned as good as a harbor, the anchorage good, and our
ground-tackle very strong, our men were unconcerned, and not in the
least apprehensive of danger, but spent the time in rest and mirth,
after the manner of the sea; but the eighth day in the morning the
wind increased, and we had all hands at work to strike our topmasts,
and make everything snug and close, that the ship might ride as easy
as possible. By noon the sea went very high indeed, and our ship rid
forecastle in, shipped several seas, and we thought once or twice
our anchor had come home; upon which our master ordered out the
sheet anchor, so that we rode with two anchors ahead, and the cables
veered out to the better end.
  By this time it blew a terrible storm indeed, and now I began to see
terror and amazement in the faces even of the seamen themselves. The
master, though vigilant to the business of perserving the ship, yet as
he went in and out of his cabin by me, I could hear him softly to
himself say several times, "Lord be merciful to us, we shall be all
lost, we shall be all undone"; and the like. During these first
hurries I was stupid, lying still in my cabin, which was in the
steerage, and cannot describe my temper; I could ill reassume the
first penitence, which I had so apparently trampled upon, and hardened
myself against; I though the bitterness of death had been past, and
that this would be nothing too, like the first. But when the master
himself came by me, as I said just now, and said we should be all
lost, I was dreadfully frighted; I got up out of my cabin, and
looked out but such a dismal sight I never saw: the sea went mountains
high, and broke upon us every three or four minutes; when I could look
about, I could see nothing but distress round us. Two ships that rid
near us we found had cut their masts by the board, being deep
loaden; and our men cried out that a ship which rid about's mile ahead
of us was foundered. Two more ships being driven from their anchors,
were run out of the roads to sea at all adventures, and that with
not a mast standing. The light ships fared the best, as not so much
laboring in the sea; but two or three of them drove, and came close by
us, running away with only their sprit-sail out before the wind.
  Towards evening the mate and boatswain begged the master of our ship
to let them cut away the foremast, which he was very unwilling to. But
the boatswain, protesting to him that if he did not the ship would
founder, he consented; and when they had cut away the foremast, the
mainmast stood so loose, and shook the ship so much, they were obliged
to cut her away also, and make a clear deck.
  Any one may judge what a condition I must be in all this, who was
but a young sailor, and who had been in such a fright before at but
a little. But if I can express at this distance the thoughts I had
about me at that time, I was in tenfold more horror of mind upon
account of my former convictions, and then having returned from them
to the resolutions I had wickedly taken at first, than I was at
death itself; and these, added to the terror of the storm, put me into
such a condition that I can by no words describe it. But the worst was
not come yet; the storm continued with such fury that the seamen
themselves acknowledged they had never known a worse. We had a good
ship, but she was deep loaden, and wallowed in the sea, that the
seamen every now and then cried out she would founder. It was my
advantage in one respect, that I did not know what they meant by
founder till I inquired. However, the storm was so violent 'that I saw
what is not often seen, the master, the boatswain, and some others
more sensible than the rest, at their prayers, and expecting every
moment when the ship would go to the bottom. In the middle of the
night, and under all the rest of our distresses, one of the men that
had been down on purpose to see, cried out we had sprung a leak;
another said there was four foot water in the hold. Then all hands
were called to the pump. At that very word my heart, as I thought,
died within me, and I fell backwards upon the side of my bed where I
sat, into the cabin. However, the men aroused me, and told me that
I, that was able to do nothing before, was as well able to pump as
another; at which I stirred up and went to the pump and worked very
heartily. While this was doing, the master seeing some light colliers,
who, not able to ride out the storm, were obliged to slip and run away
to sea, and would come near us, ordered to fire a gun as a signal of
distress. I, who knew nothing what that meant, was so surprised that I
thought the ship had broke, or some dreadful thing had happened. In
a word, I was so surprised that I fell down in a swoon. As this was
a time when everybody had his own life to think of, nobody minded
me, or what was become of me; but another man stepped up to the
pump, and thrusting me aside with his foot, let me lie, thinking I had
been dead; and it was a great while before I came to myself.
  We worked on, but the water increasing in the hold, it was
apparent that the ship would founder, and though the storm began to
abate a little, yet as it was not possible she could swim till we
might run into a port, so the master continued firing guns for help;
and a light ship, who had rid it out just ahead of us, ventured a boat
out to help us. It was with the utmost hazard the boat came near us,
but it was impossible for us to get on board, or for the boat to lie
near the ship's side, till at last the men rowing very heartily, and
venturing their lives to save ours, our men cast them a rope over
the stern with a buoy to it, and then veered it out a great length,
which they after great labor and hazard took hold of, and we hauled
them close under our stern, and got all into their boat. It was to
no purpose for them or us after we were in the boat to think of
reaching to their own ship, so all agreed to let her drive, and only
to pull her in towards shore as much as we could, and our master
promised them that if the boat was staved upon shore he would make
it good to their master; so partly rowing and partly driving, our boat
went away to the norward, sloping towards the shore almost as far as
Winterton Ness.
  We were not much more than a quarter of an hour out of our ship
but we saw her sink, and then I understood for the first time what was
meant by a ship foundering in the sea. I must acknowledge I had hardly
eyes to look up when the seamen told me she was sinking; for from that
moment they rather put me into the boat than that I might be said to
go in; my heart was, as it were, dead within me, partly with fright,
partly with horror of mind and the thoughts of what was yet before me.
  While we were in this condition, the men yet laboring at the oar
to bring the boat near the shore, we could see, when, our boat,
mounting the waves, we were able to see the shore" great many people
running along the shore to assist us when we should come near. But
we made but slow way towards the shore, nor were we able to reach
the shore, till being past the lighthouse at Winterton, the shore
falls off to the westward towards Cromer, and so the land broke off
a little the violence of the wind. Here we got in, and though not
without much difficulty got all safe on shore, and walked afterwards
on foot to Yarmouth, where, as unfortunate men, we were used with
great humanity as well by the magistrates of the town, who assigned us
good quarters, as by particular merchants and owners of ships, and had
money given us sufficient to carry us either to London or back to
Hull, as we thought fit.
  Had I now had the sense to have gone back to Hull, and have gone
home, I had been happy, and my father, an emblem of our blessed
Saviour's parable, had even killed the fatted calf for me; for hearing
the ship I went away in was cast away in Yarmouth road, it was a great
while before he had any assurance that I was not drowned.
  But my ill fate pushed me on now with an obstinacy that nothing
could resist; and though I had several times loud calls from my reason
and my more composed judgment to get home, yet I had no power to do
it. I knew not what to call this, nor will I urge that it is a
secret overruling decree that hurries us on to be the instruments of
our own destruction, even though it be before us, and that we rush
upon it with our eyes open. Certainly nothing but some such decreed
unavoidable misery attending, and which it was impossible for me to
escape, could have pushed me forward against the calm reasonings and
persuasions of my most retired thoughts, and against two such
visible instructions as I had met with in my first attempt.
  My comrade, who had helped to harden me before, and who was the
master's son, was now less forward than I. The first time he spoke
to me after we were at Yarmouth, which was not till two or three days,
for we were separated in the town to several quarters - I say, the
first time he was me, it appeared his tone was altered, and looking
very melancholy and shaking his head, asked me how I did, and
telling his father who I was, and how I had came this voyage only
for a trial in order to go farther abroad, his father turning to me
with a very grave and concerned tone, "Young man," says he, "you ought
never to go to sea any more, you ought to take this for a plain and
visible token, that you are not to be a seafaring man." "Why, sir,"
said I, "will you go to sea no more?" "That is another case," said he;
"it is my calling, and therefore my duty; but as you made this
voyage for a trial, you see what a task Heaven has given you of what
you are to expect if you persist; perhaps this is all befallen us on
your account, like Jonah in the ship of Tarshish. Pray," continues he,
"what are you? and on what account did you go to sea?" Upon that I
told him some of my story, at the end of which he burst out with a
strange kind of passion. "What had I done," says he, "that such an
unhappy wretch should come into my ship? I would not set my foot in
the same ship with thee again for a thousand pounds." This, indeed,
was, as I said, an excursion of his spirits, which were got agitated
by the sense of his loss, and was farther than he could have authority
to go. However, he afterwards talked very gravely to me, exhorted me
to go back to my father, and not tempt Providence to my ruin; told
me I might see a visible hand of Heaven against me. "And, young
man," said he, "depend upon it, if you do not go back, wherever you go
you will meet with nothing but disasters and disappointments, till
your father's words are fulfilled upon you."
  We parted soon after; for I made him little answer, and I saw him no
more; which way he went, I know not. As for me, having some money in
my pocket, I travelled to London by land; and there, as well as on the
road, had many struggles with myself what course of life I should
take, and whether I should go home or go to sea.
  As to going home, shame opposed the best motions that offered to
my thoughts; and it immediately occurred to me how I should be laughed
at among the neighbors, and should be ashamed to see, not my father
and mother only but even everybody else; from whence I have since
often observed how incongruous and irrational the common temper of
mankind is, especially of youth, to the reason which ought to guide
them in such cases, viz., that they are not ashamed to sin, and yet
are ashamed to repent; not ashamed of the action for which they
ought justly to be esteemed fools, but are ashamed of the returning,
which only can make them be esteemed wise men.
  In this state of life, however, I remained some time, uncertain what
measures to take, and what course of life to lead. An irresistible
reluctance continued to going home; and as I stayed a while, the
remembrance of the distress I had been in wore off, and as that
abated, the little motion I had in my desires to a return wore off
with it, till at last I quite laid aside the thoughts of it, and
looked out for a voyage.
  That evil influence which carried me first away from my father's
house, that hurried me into the wild and indigested notion of
raising my fortune, and that impressed those conceits so forcibly upon
me as to make me deaf to all good advice, and to the entreaties and
even command of my father - I say, the same influence, whatever it
was, presented the most unfortunate of all enterprises to my view; and
I went on board a vessel bound to the coast of Africa, or as our
sailors vulgarly call it, a voyage to Guinea.
  It was my great misfortune that in all these adventures I did not
ship myself as a sailor, whereby, though I might indeed have worked
a little harder than ordinary, yet at the same time I had learned
the duty and office of a foremast man, and in time might have
qualified myself for a mate or lieutenant, if not for a master. But as
it was always my fate to choose for the worse, so I did here; for
having money in my pocket, and good clothes upon my back, I would
always go on board in the habit of a gentleman; and so I neither had
any business in the ship, or learned to do any.
  It was my lot first of all to fall into pretty good company in
London, which does not always happen to such loose and misguided young
fellows as I then was; the devil generally not omitting to lay some
snare for them very early; but it was not so with me. I first fell
acquainted with the master of a ship who had been on the coast of
Guinea, and who, having had very good success there, was resolved to
go again; and who, taking a fancy to my conversation, which was not at
all disagreeable at that time, hearing me say I had a mind to see
the world, told me if I would go the voyage with him I should be at no
expense; I should be his messmate and his companion; and if I could
carry anything with me, I should have all the advantage of it that the
trade would admit, and perhaps I might meet with some encouragement.
  I embraced the offer; and, entering into a strict friendship with
this captain, who was an honest and plain-dealing man, I went the
voyage with him, and carried a small adventure with me, which by the
disinterested honesty of my friend the captain, I increased very
considerably, for I carried about L40 in such toys and trifles as
the captain directed me to buy. This L40 I had mustered together by
the assistance of some of my relations whom I corresponded with, and
who, I believe, got my father, or at least my mother, to contribute so
much as that to my first adventure.
  This was the only voyage which I may say was successful in all my
adventures, and which I owe to the integrity and honesty of my
friend the captain; under whom also I got a competent knowledge of the
mathematics and the rules of navigation, learned how to keep an
account of the ship's course, to take an observation, and, in short,
to understand some things that were needful to be understood by a
sailor. For, as he took delight to introduce me, I took delight to
learn; and, in a word, this voyage made me both a sailor and a
merchant; for I brought home five pounds nine ounces of gold dust
for my adventure, which yielded me in London at my return almost L300,
and this filled me with those aspiring thoughts which have since so
completed my ruin.
  Yet even in this voyage I had my misfortunes too; particularly, that
I was continually sick, being thrown into a violent calenture by the
excessive heat of the climate; our principal trading being upon the
coast, for the latitude of 15 degrees north even to the line itself.
  I was not set up for a Guinea trader; and my friend, to my great
misfortune, dying soon after his arrival, I resolved to go the same
voyage again, and I embarked in the same vessel with one who was his
mate in the former voyage, and had now got the command of the ship.
This was the unhappiest voyage that ever man made; for though I did
not carry quite L100 of my new-gained wealth, so that I had L200 left,
and which I lodged with my friend's widow, who was very just to me,
yet I fell into terrible misfortunes in this voyage; and from the
first was this, viz., our ship making her course towards the Canary
Islands, or rather between those islands and the African shore, was
surprised in the gray of the morning by a Turkish rover of Sallee, who
gave chase to us with all the sail she could make. We crowded also
as much canvas as our yards would spread, or our masts carry, to
have got clear; but finding the pirate gained upon us, and would
certainly come up with us in a few hours, we prepared to fight, our
ship having twelve guns, and the rogue eighteen. About three in the
afternoon he came up with us, and bringing to, by mistake, just
athwart our quarter, instead of athwart our stern, as he intended,
we brought eight of our guns to bear on that side, and poured in a
broadside upon him, which made him sheer off again, after returning
our fire and pouring in also his small-shot from near 200 men which he
had on board. However, we had not a man touched, all our men keeping
close. He prepared to attack us again, and we to defend ourselves; but
laying us on board the next time upon our other quarter, he entered
sixty men upon our decks, who immediately fell to cutting and
hacking the decks and rigging. We plied them with small-shot,
half-pikes, powder-chests, and such like, and cleared our deck of them
twice. However, to cut short this melancholy part of our story, our
ship being disabled, and three of our men killed and eight wounded, we
were obliged to yield, and were carried all prisoners into Sallee, a
port belonging to the Moors.
  The usage I had there was not so dreadful as at first I had
apprehended, nor was I carried up the country to the emperor's
court, as the rest of our men were, but was kept by the captain of the
rover as his proper prize, and made his slave, being young and nimble,
and fit for his business. At this surprising change of my
circumstances from a merchant to a miserable slave, I was perfectly
overwhelmed; and now I looked back upon my father's prophetic
discourse to me, that I should be miserable, and have none to
relieve me, which I thought was now so effectually brought to pass,
that it could not be worse; that now the hand of Heaven had
overtaken me, and I was undone without redemption. But alas! this
was but a taste of the misery I was to go through, as will appear in
the sequel of this story.
  As my new patron, or master, had taken me home to his house, so I
was in hopes that he would take me with him when he went to sea again,
believing that it would some time or other be his fate to be taken
by a Spanish or Portugal man-of-war; and that then I should be set
at liberty. But this hope of mine was soon taken away; for when he
went to sea, he left me on shore to look after his little garden,
and do the common drudgery of slaves about his house; and when he came
home again from his cruise, he ordered me to lie in the cabin to
look after the ship.
  Here I meditated nothing but my escape, and what method I might take
to effect it, but found no way that had the least probability in it.
Nothing presented to make the supposition of it rational; for I had
nobody to communicate it to that would embark with me, no
fellow-slave, no Englishman, Irishman, or Scotsman there but myself;
so that for two years, though I often pleased myself with the
imagination, yet I never had the least encouraging prospect of putting
it in practice.
  After about two years an odd circumstance presented itself, which
put the old thought of making some attempt for my liberty again in
my head. My patron lying at home longer than usual without fitting out
his ship, which, as I heard, was for want of money, he used
constantly, once or twice a week, sometimes oftener, if the weather
was fair, to take the ship's pinnace, and go out into the road
a-fishing; and as he always took me and a young Maresco with him to
row the boat, we made him very merry, and I proved very dexterous in
catching fish; insomuch, that sometimes he would send me with a
Moor, one of his kinsmen, and the youth the Maresco, as they called
him, to catch a dish of fish for him.
  It happened one time that, going a-fishing in a stark calm
morning, a fog rose so thick, that though we were not half a league
from the shore we lost sight of it; and rowing we knew not whither
or which way, we labored all day, and all the next night, and when the
morning came found we were pulled off to sea instead of pulling in for
the shore; and that we were at least two leagues from the shore.
However, we got well in again, though with a great deal of labor,
and some danger, for the wind began to blow pretty fresh in the
morning; but particularly we were all very hungry.
  But our patron, warned by this disaster, resolved to take more
care of himself for the future; and having lying by him the longboat
of our English ship which he had taken, he resolved he would not go
a-fishing any more without a compass and some provision; so he ordered
the carpenter of his ship, who was also an English slave, to build a
little state-room, or cabin, in the middle of the longboat, like
that of a barge, with a place to stand behind it to steer and haul
home the main-sheet, and room before for a hand or two to stand and
work the sails. She sailed with what we call a shoulder-of-mutton
sail; and the boom jabbed over the top of the cabin, which lay very
snug and low, and had in it room for him to lie, with a slave or
two, and a table to eat on, with some small lockers to put in some
bottles of such liquor as he thought fit to drink; particularly his
bread, rice, and coffee.
  We went frequently out with this boat a-fishing, and as I was most
dexterous to catch fish for him, he never went without me. It happened
that he had appointed to go out in this boat, either for pleasure or
for fish, with two or three Moors of some distinction in that place,
and for whom he had provided extraordinarily; and had therefore sent
on board the boat over night a larger store of provisions than
ordinary; and had ordered me to get ready three fuzees with powder and
shot, which were on board his ship, for that they designed some
sport of fowling as well as fishing.
  I got all things ready as he had directed, and waited the next
morning with the boat, washed clean, her ancient and pendants out, and
everything to accommodate his guests; when by and by my patron came on
board alone, and told me his guests had put off going, upon some
business that fell out, and ordered me with the man and boy, as usual,
to go out with the boat and catch them some fish, for that his friends
were to sup at his house; and commanded that as soon as I had got some
fish, I should bring it home to his house; all which I prepared to do.
  This moment my former notions of deliverance darted into my
thoughts, for now I found I was like to have a little ship at my
command; and my master being gone, I prepared to furnish myself, not
for a fishing business, but for a voyage; though I knew not, neither
did I so much as consider, whither I should steer; for anywhere, to
get out of that place, was my way.
  My first contrivance was to make a pretence to speak to this Moor,
to get something for our subsistence on board; for I told him we
must not presume to eat of our patron's bread. He said that was
true; so he brought a large basket of rusk or biscuit of their kind,
and three jars with fresh water, into the boat. I knew where my
patron's case of bottles stood, which it was evident by the make
were taken out of some English prize; and I conveyed them into the
boat while the Moor was on shore, as if they had been there before for
our master. I conveyed also a great lump of beeswax into the boat,
which weighed above half a hundredweight, with a parcel of twine or
thread, a hatchet, a saw, and a hammer, all of which were great use to
us afterwards, especially the wax to make candles. Another trick I
tried upon him, which he innocently came into also. His name was
Ishmael, who they call Muly, or Moely; so I called to him, "Moely,"
said I, "our patron's guns are on board the boat; can you not get a
little powder and shot? It may be we may kill some alcamies (a fowl
like our curlews) for ourselves, for I know he keeps the gunner's
stores in the ship." "Yes," says he, "I'll bring some"; and
accordingly he brought a great leather pouch which held about a
pound an a half of powder, or rather more; and another with shot, that
had five or six pounds, with some bullets, and put all into the
boat. At the same time I had found some powder of my master's in the
great cabin, with which I filled one of the large bottles in the case,
which was almost empty, pouring what was in it into another; and
thus furnished with everything needful, we sailed out of the port to
fish. The castle, which is at the entrance of the port, knew who we
were, and took no notice of us; and we were not above a mile out of
the port before we hauled in our sail, and set us down to fish. The
wind blew from the NNE., which was contrary to my desire; for had it
blown southerly I had been sure to have made the coast of Spain, and
at least reached to the bay of Cadiz; but my resolutions were, blow
which way it would, I would be gone from the horrid place where I was,
and leave the rest to Fate.
  After we had fished some time and catched nothing, for when I had
fish on my hook I would not pull them up, that he might not see
them, I said to the Moor, "This will not do; our master will not be
thus served; we must stand farther off." He, thinking no harm, agreed,
and being in the head of the boat set the sails; and as I had the helm
I run the boat out near a league farther, and then brought her to as
if I would fish; when giving the boy the helm, I stepped forward to
where the Moor was, and making as if I stooped for something behind
him, I took him by surprise with my arm under his twist, and tossed
him clear overboard into the sea. He rose immediately, for he swam
like a cork, and called to me, begged to be taken in, told me he would
go all the world over with me. He swam so strong after the boat,
that he would have reached me very quickly, there being but little
wind; upon which I stepped into the cabin, and fetching one of the
fowling-pieces, I presented it at him, and told him I had done him
no hurt, and if he would be quiet I would do him none. "But, said I,
"you swim well enough to reach to the shore, and the sea is calm; make
the best of your way to shore, and I will do you no harm; but if you
come near the boat I'll shoot you through the head, for I am
resolved to have my liberty." So he turned himself about, and swam for
the shore, and I make no doubt but he reached it with ease, for he was
an excellent swimmer.
  I could have been content to have taken this Moor with me, and
have drowned the boy, but there was no venturing to trust him. When he
was gone I turned to the boy, whom they called Xury, and said to
him, "Xury, if you will be faithful to me I'll make you a great man;
but if you will not stroke your face to be true to me," this is, swear
by Mahomet and his father's beard, "I must throw you into the sea
too." The boy smiled in my face, and spoke so innocently, that I could
not mistrust him, and swore to be faithful to me, and go all over
the world with me.
  While I was in view of the Moor that was swimming, I stood out
directly to sea with the boat, rather stretching to windward, that
they might think me gone towards the straits' mouth (as indeed any one
that had been in their wits must have been supposed to do); for who
would have supposed we were sailed on to the southward to the truly
barbarian coast, where whole nations of negroes were sure to
surround us with their canoes, and destroy us; where we could ne'er
once go on shore but we should be devoured by savage beasts, or more
merciless savages of humankind?
  But as soon as it grew dusk in the evening, I changed my course, and
steered directly south and by east, bending my course a little
toward the east, that I might keep in with the shore; and having a
fair, fresh gale of wind, and a smooth, quiet sea, I made such sail
that I believe by the next day at three o'clock in the afternoon, when
I first made the land, I could not be less than 150 miles south of
Sallee; quite beyond the Emperor of Morocco's dominions, or indeed
of any other king thereabouts, for we saw no people.
  Yet such was the fright I had taken at the Moors, and the dreadful
apprehensions I had of falling into their hands, that I would not
stop, or go on shore, or come to an anchor, the wind continuing
fair, till I had sailed in that manner five days; and then the wind
shifting to the southward, I concluded also that if any of our vessels
were in chase of me, they also would now give over; so I ventured to
make to the coast, and came to an anchor in the mouth of a little
river, I knew not what, or where; neither what latitude, what country,
what nations, or what river. I neither saw, nor desired to see, any
people; the principal thing I wanted was fresh water. We came into
this creek in the evening, resolving to swim on shore as soon as it
was dark, and discover the country; but as soon as it was quite dark
we heard such dreadful noises of the barking, roaring, and howling
of wild creatures, of we knew not what kinds, that the poor boy was
ready to die with fear, and begged me not to go on shore till day.
"Well, Xury," said I, "then I won't; but it may be we may see men by
day, who will be as bad to us as these lions." "Then we give them
the shoot gun," says Xury, laughing; "make them run 'way." Such
English Xury spoke by conversing among us slaves. However, I was
glad to see the boy so cheerful, and I gave him a dram (out of our
patron's case of bottles) to cheer him up. After all, Xury's advice
was good, and I took it; we dropped our little anchor and lay still
all night. I say still, for we slept none; for in two or three hours
we saw vast great creatures (we knew not what to call them) of many
sorts come down to the sea-shore and run into the water, wallowing and
washing themselves for the pleasure of cooling themselves; and they
made such hideous howlings and yellings, that I never indeed heard the
like.
  Xury was dreadfully frightened, and indeed so was I too; but we were
both more frighted when we heard one of these mighty creatures come
swimming towards our boat; we could not see him, but we might hear him
by his blowing to be a monstrous huge and furious beast. Xury said
it was a lion, and it might be so for aught I know; but poor Xury
cried to me to weigh the anchor and row away. "No," says I, "Xury;
we can slip our cable with the buoy to it, and go off to sea; they
cannot follow us far." I had no sooner said so, but I perceived the
creature (whatever it was) within two oars' length, which something
surprised me; however, I immediately stepped to the cabin door, and
taking up my gun, fired at him, upon which he immediately turned about
and swam towards the shore again.
  But is is impossible to describe the horrible noises, and hideous
cries and howlings, that were raised, as well upon the edge of the
shore as higher within the country, upon the noise or report of the
gun, a thing I have some reason to believe those creatures had never
heard before. This convinced me that there was no going on shore for
us in the night upon that coast; and how to venture on shore in the
day was another question too; for to have fallen into the hands of any
of the savages, had been as bad as to have fallen into the hands of
lions and tigers; at least we were equally apprehensive of the
danger of it.
  Be that as it would, we were obliged to go on shore somewhere or
other for water, for we had not a pint left in the boat; when or where
to get to it, was the point. Xury said if I would let him go on
shore with one the jars, he would find if there was any water, and
bring some to me. I asked him why he should go? Why I should not go
and he stay in the boat? The boy answered with so much affection, that
made me love him ever after. Says he, "If wild mans come, they eat me,
you go way." "Well, Xury," said I, "we will both go; and if the wild
mans come, we will kill them, they shall eat neither of us." So I gave
Xury a piece of rusk bread to eat, and a dram out of our patron's case
of bottles which I mentioned before; and we hauled in the boat as near
the shore as we thought was proper, and so waded on shore, carrying
nothing but our arms and two jars for water.
  I did not care to go out of sight of the boat, fearing the coming of
canoes with savages down the river; but the boy seeing a low place
about a mile up the country, rambled to it; and by and by I saw him
come running towards me. I thought he was pursued by some savage, or
frighted with some wild beast, and I ran forward towards him to help
him; but when I came nearer to him, I saw something hanging over his
shoulders, which was a creature that he had shot, like a hare, but
different in color, and longer legs. However, we were very glad of it,
and it was very good meat; but the great joy that poor Xury came
with was to tell me he had found good water, and seen no wild mans.
  But we found afterwards that we need not take such pains for
water, for a little higher up the creek where we were we found the
water fresh when the tide was out, which flowed but a little way up;
so we filled our jars, and feasted on the hare we had killed, and
prepared to go on our way, having seen no footsteps of any human
creatures in that part of the country.
  As I had been one voyage to this coast before, I knew very well that
the Islands of the Canaries, and the Cape de Verde Islands also, lay
not far off from the coast. But as I had no instruments to take an
observation to know what latitude we were in, and did not exactly
know, or at least remember, what latitude they were in, I knew not
where to look for them, or when to stand off to sea towards them;
otherwise I might now easily have found some of these islands. But
my hope was, that if I stood along this coast till I came to that part
where the English traded, I should find some of their vessels upon
their usual design of trade, that would relieve and take us in.
  By the best of my calculation, that place where I now was must be
that country which, lying between the Emperor of Morocco's dominions
and the negroes, lies waste and uninhabited, except by wild beasts;
the negroes having abandoned it and gone farther south for fear of the
Moors, and the Moors not thinking it worth inhabiting, by reason of
its barrenness; and indeed both forsaking it because of the prodigious
number of tigers, lions, leopards, and other furious creatures which
harbor there; so that the Moors use it for their hunting only, where
they go like an army, two or three thousand men at a time; and
indeed for near a hundred miles together upon this coast we saw
nothing but a waste uninhabited country by day, and heard nothing
but howlings and roarings of wild beasts by night.
  Once or twice in the daytime I thought I saw the Pico of being the
high top of the Mountain Teneriffe in the Canaries, and had a great
mind to venture out in hopes of reaching thither; but having tried
twice, I was forced in again by contrary winds, the sea also going too
high for my little vessel; so I resolved to pursue my first design,
and keep along the shore.
  Several times I was obliged to land for fresh water after we had
left this place; and once in particular, being early in the morning,
we came to an anchor under a little point of land which was pretty
high; and the tide beginning to flow, we lay still to go farther in.
Xury, whose eyes were more about them than it seems mine were, calls
softly to me, and tells me that we had best go farther off the
shore; "For," says he, "look, yonder lies a dreadful monster on the
side of that hillock fast asleep." I looked where he pointed, and
saw a dreadful monster indeed, for it was a terrible great lion that
lay on the side of the shore, under the shade of a piece of the hill
that hung as it were a little over him. "Xury," says I, "you shall
go on shore and kill him." Xury looked frighted, and said, "Me kill!
he eat me at one mouth;" one mouthful he meant. However, I said no
more to the boy, but bade him lie still, and I took our biggest gun,
which was almost musketbore, and loaded it with a good charge of
powder, and with two slugs, and laid it down; then I loaded another
gun with two bullets; and the third (for we had three pieces) I loaded
with five smaller bullets. I took the best aim I could with the
first piece to have him shot into the head, but he lay so with his leg
raised a little above his nose, that the slugs hit his leg about the
knee, and broke the bone. He started up growling at first, but finding
his leg broke, fell down again, and then got up upon three legs and
gave the most hideous roar that ever I heard. I was a little surprised
that I had not hit him on the head. However, I took up the second
piece immediately, and, though he began to move off, fired again,
and shot him into the head, and had the pleasure to him drop, and make
but little noise, but lay struggling for life. Then Xury took heart,
and would have me let him go on shore. "Well, go," said I; so the
boy jumped into the water, and taking a little gun in one hand, swam
to shore with the other hand, and coming close to the creature, put
the muzzle of the piece to his ear, and shot him into the head
again, which despatched him quite.
  This was game indeed to us, but this was no food; and I was very
sorry to lose three charges of powder and shot upon a creature that
was good for nothing to us. However, Xury said he would have some of
him; so he comes on board, and asked me to give him the hatchet.
"For what, Xury?" said I. "Me cut off his head," said he. However,
Xury could not cut off his head, but he cut off a foot, and brought it
with him, and it was a monstrous great one.
  I bethought myself, however, that perhaps the skin of him might
one way or other be of some value to us; and I resolved to take off
his skin if I could. So Xury and I went to work with him; but Xury was
much the better workman at it, for I knew very ill how to do it.
Indeed, it took us both the whole day, but at last we got off the hide
of him, and spreading it on the top of our cabin, the sun
effectually dried it in two days' time, and it afterwards served me to
lie upon.
  After this stop we made on to the southward continually for ten or
twelve days, living very sparing on our provisions, which began to
abate very much, and going no oftener into the shore than we were
obliged to for fresh water. My design in this was to make the river
Gambia or Senegal - that is to say, anywhere about the Cape de Verde -
where I was in hopes to meet with some European ship; and if I did
not, I knew not what course I had to take, but to seek out for the
lands, or perish there among the negroes. I knew that all the ships
from Europe, which sailed either to the coast of Guinea or to
Brazil, or to the East Indies, made this cape, or those islands; and
in a word, I put the whole of my fortune upon this single point,
either that I must meet with some ship, or must perish.
  When I had pursued this resolution about ten days longer, as I
have said, I began to see that the land was inhabited; and in two or
three places, as we sailed by, we saw people stand upon the shore to
look at us; we could also perceive they were quite black, and stark
naked. I was once inclined to have gone on shore to them; but Xury was
my better counsellor, and said to me. "No go, no go." However, I
hauled in nearer the shore that I might talk to them, and I found they
ran along the shore by me a good way. I observed they had no weapons
in their hands, except one, who had a long slender stick, which Xury
said was a lance, and that they would throw them a great way with good
aim. So I kept a distance, but talked with them by signs as well as
I could, and particularly made signs for something to eat; they
beckoned to me to stop my boat, and that they would fetch me some
meat. Upon this I lowered the top of my sail, and lay by, and two of
them ran up into the country, and in less than half an hour came back,
and brought with them two pieces of dried flesh and some corn, such as
is the produce of their country; but we neither knew what the one or
the other was. However, we were willing to accept it, but how to
come at it was our next dispute, for I was not for venturing on
shore to them, and they were as much afraid to us; but they took a
safe way for us all, for they brought it to the shore and laid it
down, and went and stood a great way off till we fetched it on
board, and then came close to us again.
  We made signs of thanks to them, for we had nothing to make them
amends. But an opportunity offered that very instant to oblige them
wonderfully; for while we were lying by the shore came two mighty
creatures, one pursuing the other (as we took it) with great fury from
the mountains towards the sea; whether it was the male pursuing the
female, or whether they were in sport or in rage, we could not tell,
any more than we could tell whether it was usual or strange, but I
believe it was the latter; because in the first place, those
ravenous creatures seldom appear but in the night; and in the second
place, we found the people terribly frightened, especially the
women. The man that had the lance or dart did not fly from them, but
the rest did; however, as the two creatures ran directly into the
water, they did not seem to offer to fall upon any of the negroes, but
plunged themselves into the sea, and swam about, as if they had come
for their diversion. At last, one of them began to come nearer our
boat than at first I expected; but I lay ready for him, for I had
loaded my gun with all possible expedition, and bade Xury load both
the others. As soon as he came fairly within my reach, I fired, and
shot him directly into the head; immediately he sunk down into the
water, but rose instantly, and plunged up and down, as if he was
struggling for life, and so indeed he was. He immediately made to
the shore; but between the wound, which was his mortal hurt, and the
strangling of the water, he died just before he reached the shore.
  It is impossible to express the astonishment of these poor
creatures, at the noise and the fire of my gun; some of them were even
ready to die for fear, and fell down as dead with the very terror. But
when they saw the creature dead, and sunk in the water, and that I
made signs to them to come to the shore, they took heart and came to
the shore, and began to search for the creature. I found him by his
blood staining the water: and by the help of a rope, which I slung
round him, and gave the negroes to haul, they dragged him on the
shore, and found that it was a most curious leopard, spotted, and fine
to an admirable degree; and the negroes held up their hands with
admiration, to think what it was I had killed him with.
  The other creature, frighted with the flash of fire and the noise of
the gun, swam on shore, and ran directly to the mountains from
whence they came; nor could I, at that distance, know what it was. I
found quickly the negroes were for eating the flesh of this
creature, so I was willing to have them take it as a favor from me;
which, when I made signs to them that they might take him, they were
very thankful for. Immediately they fell to work with him; and
though they had no knife yet, with a sharpened piece of wood, they
took off his skin as readily, and much more readily, than we could
have done it with a knife. They offered me some of the flesh, which
I declined, making as if I would give it them, but made signs for
the skin, which they gave me very freely, and brought me a great
deal more of their provision, which, though I did not understand,
yet I accepted. Then I made signs to them for some water, and held out
one of my jars to them, turning it bottom upward, to show that it
was empty, and that I wanted to have it filled. The called immediately
to some of their friends, and there came two women, and brought a
great vessel made of earth, and burnt, as I suppose, in the sun;
this they set down for me, as before, and I sent Xury on shore with my
jars, and filled them all three. There women were as stark naked as
the men.
  I was now furnished with roots and corn, such as it was, and
water; and leaving my friendly negroes, I made forward for about
eleven days more, without offering to go near the shore, till I saw
the land run out a great length into the sea, at about the distance of
four or five leagues before me; and the sea being very calm, I kept
a large offing, to make this point. At length, doubling the point,
at about two leagues from the land, I saw plainly land on the other
side, to seaward; then I concluded, as it was most certain indeed,
that this was the Cape de Verde, and those the islands, called from
thence Cape de Verde Islands. However, they were at a great
distance, and I could not well tell what I had best to do; for if I
should be taken with a fresh of wind, I might neither reach one or
other.
  In this dilemma, as I was very pensive, I stepped into the cabin,
and sat me down, Xury having the helm; when, on a sudden, the boy
cried out, "Master, master, a ship with a sail!" and the foolish boy
was frighted out of his wits, thinking it must needs be some of his
master's ships sent to pursue us, when I knew we were gotten far
enough out of their reach. I jumped out of the cabin, and
immediately saw, not only the ship, but what she was, viz., that it
was a Portuguese ship, and, as I thought, was bound to the coast of
Guinea, for negroes. But when I observed the course she steered, I was
soon convinced they were bound some other way, and did not design to
come any nearer to the shore; upon which I stretched out to sea as
much as I could, resolving to speak with them, if possible.
  With all the sail I could make, I found I should not be able to come
in their way, but they would be gone by before I could make any signal
to them; but after I had crowded to the utmost, and began to
despair, they, it seems, saw me by the help of their perspective
glasses, and that it was some European boat, which, as they
supposed, must belong to some ship that was lost, so they shortened
sail to let me come up. I was encouraged with this; and as I had my
patron's ancient on board, I made a waft of it to them for a signal of
distress, and fired a gun both of which they say; for they told me
they saw the smoke, though they did not hear the gun. Upon these
signals they very kindly brought to, and lay by for me; and in about
three hours' time I came up with them.
  They asked me what I was, in Portuguese, and in Spanish, and in
French, but I understood none of them; but at last a Scots sailor, who
was on board, called to me, and I answered him, and told him I was
an Englishman, that I had made my escape out of slavery from the
Moors, at Sallee. Then they bade me come on board, and very kindly
took me in, and all my goods.
  It was an inexpressible joy to me, that any one will believe, that I
was thus delivered, as I esteemed it, from such a miserable, and
almost hopeless, condition as I was in; and I immediately offered
all I had to the captain of the ship, as a return for my
deliverance. But he generously told me he would take nothing from
me, but that all I had should be delivered safe to me when I came to
the Brazils. "For," says he, "I have saved your life on no other terms
than I would be glad to be saved myself; and it may, one time or
other, be my lot to be taken up in the same condition. Besides,"
says he, "when I carry you to the Brazils, so great a way from your
own country, if I should take from you what you have, you will be
starved there, and then I only take away that life I have given. No,
no, Seignior Inglese," says he, "Mr. Englishman, I will carry you
thither in charity, and those things will help you to buy your
subsistence there, and your passage home again."
  As he was charitable in his proposal, so he was just in the
performance to a tittle; for he ordered the seamen that none should
offer to touch anything I had; then he took everything into his own
possession, and gave me back an exact inventory of them, that I
might have them, even so much as my three earthen jars.
  As to my boat, it was a very good one, and that he saw, and told
me he would buy it of me for the ship's use, and asked me what I would
have for it? I told him he had been so generous to me in everything,
that I could not offer to make any price of the boat, but left it
entirely to him; upon which he told me he would give me a note of
his hand to pay me eighty pieces of eight for it at Brazil, and when
it came there, if any one offered to give more, he would make it up.
He offered me also sixty pieces of eight for my boy Xury, which I
was loth to take; not that I was not willing to let the captain have
him, but I was very loth to sell the poor boy's liberty, who had
assisted me so faithfully in procuring my own. However, when I let him
know my reason, he owned it to be just, and offered me this medium,
that he would give the boy an obligation to set him free in ten
years if he turned Christian. Upon this, and Xury saying he was
willing to go to him, I let the captain have him.
  We had a very good voyage to the Brazils, and arrived in the Bay
de Todos los Santos, or All Saints' Bay, in about twenty-one days
after. And now I was once more delivered from the most miserable of
all conditions of life; and what to do next with myself I was now to
consider.
  The generous treatment the captain gave me, I can never enough
remember. He would take nothing of me for my passage, gave me twenty
ducats for the leopard's skin, and forty for the lion's skin, which
I had in my boat, and caused everything I had in the ship to be
punctually delivered me; and what I was willing to sell he bought,
such as the case of bottles, two of my guns, and a piece of the lump
of beeswax, -for I had made candles of the rest; in a word, I made
about 220 pieces of eight of all my cargo, and with this stock I
went on shore in the Brazils.
  I had not been long here, but being recommended to the house of a
good honest man like himself, who had an ingeino as they call it, that
is, a plantation and a sugar-house, I lived with him some time, and
acquainted myself by that means with the manner of their planting
and making of sugar; and seeing how well the planters lived, and how
they grew rich suddenly, I resolved, if I could get license to
settle there, I would turn planter among them, resolving in the
meantime to find out some way to get my money which I had left in
London remitted to me. To this purpose, getting a kind of a letter
of naturalization, I purchased as much land that was uncured as my
money would reach, and formed a plan for my planation and
settlement, and such a one as might be suitable to the stock which I
proposed to myself to receive from England.
  I had a neighbor, a Portuguese of Lisbon, but born of English
parents, whose name was Wells, and in much such circumstances as I
was. I call him my neighbor, because his plantation lay next to
mine, and we went on very sociably together. My stock was but low,
as well as his; and we rather planted for food than anything else, for
about two years. However, we began to increase, and our land began
to come into order; so that the third year we planted some tobacco,
and made each of us a large piece of ground ready for planting canes
in the year to come. But we both wanted help; and now I found, more
than before, I had done wrong in parting with my boy Xury.
  But alas! for me to do wrong that never did right was no great
wonder. I had no remedy but to go on. I was gotten into an
employment quite remote to my genius, and directly contrary to the
life I delighted in, and for which I forsook my father's house, and
broke through all his good advice; nay, I was coming into the very
middle station, or upper degree of low life, which my father advised
me to before; and which if I resolved to go on with, I might as well
have stayed at home, and never have fatigued myself in the world as
I had done. And I used often to say to myself I could have done this
as well in England among my friends, as have gone 5,000 miles off to
do it among strangers and savages, in a wilderness, and at such a
distance as never to hear from any part of the world that had the
least knowledge of me.
  In this manner I used to look upon my condition with the utmost
regret. I had nobody to converse with, but now and then this neighbor;
no work to be done, but by the labor of my hands; and I used to say, I
lived just like a man cast away upon some desolate island, that had
nobody there but himself. But how just has it been! and how should all
men reflect, that when they compare their present conditions with
others that are worse, Heaven may oblige them to make the exchange,
and be convinced of their former felicity by their experience; -I say,
how just has it been, that the truly solitary life I reflected on in
an island of mere desolation should be my lot, who had so often
unjustly compared it with the life which I then led, in which, had I
continued, I had in all probability been exceeding prosperous and
rich.
  I was in some degree settled in my measures for carrying on the
plantation before my kind friend, the captain of the ship that took me
up at sea, went back; for the ship remained there in providing his
loading, and preparing for his voyage, near three months; when telling
him what little stock I had left behind me in London, he gave me
this friendly and sincere advice: "Seignior Inglese," says he, for
so he always called me, "if you will give me letters, and a
procuration here in form to me, with orders to the person who has your
money in London to send your effects to Lisbon, to such persons as I
shall direct, and in such goods as are proper for this country, I will
bring you the produce of them, God willing, at my return. But since
human affairs are all subject to changes and disasters, I would have
you give orders but for one hundred pounds sterling, which, you say,
is half your stock, and let the hazard be run for the first; so that
if it come safe, you may order the rest the same way; and if it
miscarry, you may have the other half to have recourse to for your
supply."
  This was so wholesome advice, and looked so friendly, that I could
not but be convinced it was the best course I could take; so I
accordingly prepared letters to the gentlewoman with whom I left my
money, and a procuration to the Portuguese captain, as he desired.
  I wrote the English captain's widow a full account of all my
adventures; my slavery, escape, and how I had met with the Portugal
captain at sea, the humanity of his behavior, and in what consition
I was now in, with all necessary directions for my supply. And when
this honest captain came to Lisbon, he found means, by some of the
English merchants there, to send over not the order only, but a full
account of my story to a merchant at London, who represented it
effectually to her; whereupon, she not only delivered the money, but
out of her own pocket sent the Portugal captain a very handsome
present for his humanity and charity to me.
  The merchant in London vesting this hundred pounds in English goods,
such as the captain had writ for, sent them directly to him at Lisbon,
and he brought them all safe to me to the Brazils; among which,
without my direction (for I was too young in my business to think of
them), he had taken care to have all sorts of tools, iron-work, and
utensils necessary for my plantation, and which were of great use to
me.
  When this cargo arrived, I thought my fortune made, for I was
surprised with joy of it; and my good steward, the captain, had laid
out the five pounds, which my friend had sent him for a present for
himself, to purchase and bring me over a servant under bond for six
years' service, and would not accept of any consideration, except a
little tobacco, which I would have him accept, being of my own
produce.
  Neither was this all; but my goods being all English manufactures
such as cloth, stuffs, baise, and things particularly valuable and
desirable in the country, I found means to sell them to a very great
advantage; so that I may say I had more than four times the value of
my first cargo, and was now infinitely beyond my poor neighbor, I mean
in the advancement of my plantation; for the first thing I did, I
bought me a negro slave, and a European servant also; I mean another
besides that which the captain brought me from Lisbon.
  But as abused prosperity is oftentimes made the very means of our
greatest adversity, so was it with me. I went on the next year with
great success in my plantation. I raised fifty great rolls of
tobacco on my own ground, more than I had disposed of for
necessaries among my neighbors; and these fifty rolls, being each of a
hundredweight, were well cured, and laid by against the return of
the fleet from Lisbon. And now, increasing in business and in
wealth, my head began to be full of projects and undertakings beyond
my reach, such as are, indeed, often the ruin of the best heads in
business.
  Had I continued in the station I was now in, I had room for all
the happy things to have yet befallen me for which my father so
earnestly recommended a quiet, retired life, and of which he had so
sensibly described the middle station of life to be full of. But other
things attended me, and I was still to be the willful agent of all
my own miseries; and particularly to increase my fault and double
the reflections upon myself, which in my future sorrows I should
have leisure to make. All these miscarriages were procured by my
apparent obstinate adhering to my foolish inclination of wandering
abroad, and pursuing that inclination in contradiction to the clearest
views of doing myself good in a fair and plain pursuit of those
prospects, and those measures of life, which Nature and Providence
concurred to present me with, and to make my duty.
  As I had once done thus in my breaking away from my parents, so I
could not be content now, but I must go and leave the happy view I had
of being a rich and thriving man in my new plantation, only to
pursue a rash and immoderate desire of rising faster than the nature
of the thing admitted; and thus I cast myself down again into the
deepest gulf of human misery that ever man fell into, or perhaps could
be consistent with life and a state of health in the world.
  To come, then, by the just degrees to the particulars of this part
of my story. You may suppose, that having now lived almost four
years in the Brazils, and beginning to thrive and prosper very well
upon my plantation, I had not only learned the language, but had
contracted acquaintance and friendship among my fellow-planters, as
well as among the merchants at St. Salvador, which was our port, and
that in my discourses among them I had frequently given them an
account of my two voyages to the coast of Guinea, the manner of
trading with the negroes there, and how easy it was to purchase upon
the coast for trifles -  such as beads, toys, knives, scissors,
hatchets, bits of glass, and the like - not only gold-dust, Guinea
grains, elephants' teeth, etc. but negroes, for the service of the
Brazils in great numbers.
  They listened always very attentively to my discourses on these
heads, but especially to that part which related to the buying
negroes; which was a trade, at that time, not only not far entered
into, but, as far as it was, had been carried on by the assiento, or
permission, of the Kings of Spain and Portugal, and engrossed in the
public, so that few negroes were brought, and those excessive dear.
  It happened, being in company with some merchants and planters of my
acquaintance, and talking of those things very earnestly, three of
them came to ne the next morning, and told me they had been musing
very much upon what I had discoursed with them of, the last night, and
they came to make a secret proposal to me. And after enjoining me
secrecy, they told me that they had a mind to fit out a ship to go
to Guinea; that they had all plantations as well as I, and were
straitened for nothing so much as servants; that as it was a trade
that could not be carried on because they could not publicly sell
the negroes when they came home, so they desired to make but one
voyage, to bring the negroes on shore privately, and divide them among
their own plantations; and, in a word, the question was, whether I
would go their supercargo in the ship, to manage the trading part upon
the coast of Guinea; and they offered me that I should have my equal
share of the negroes without providing any part of the stock.
  This was a fair proposal, it must be confessed, had it been made
to any one that had not a settlement and plantation of his own to look
after, which was in a fair way of coming to be very considerable,
and with a good stock upon it. But for me, that was thus entered and
established, and had nothing to do but go on as I had begun, for three
or four years more, and to have sent for the other hundred pounds from
England; and who, in that time, and with that little addition, could
scarce have failed of being worth three or four thousand pounds
sterling, and that increasing too - for me to think of such a
voyage, was the most preposterous thing that ever man, in such
circumstances, could be guilty of.
  But I, that was born to be my own destroyer, could no more resist
the offer than I could restrain my first rambling designs, when my
father's good counsel was lost upon me. In a word, I told them I would
go with all my heart, if they would undertake to look after my
plantation in my absence, and would dispose of it to such as I
should direct if I miscarried. This they all engaged to do, and
entered into writings or covenants to do so; and I made a formal
will disposing of my plantation and effect, in case of my death;
making the captain of the ship that had saved my life, as before, my
universal heir, but obliging him to dispose of my effects as I had
directed in my will; one-half of the produce being to himself, and the
other to be shipped to England.
  In short, I took all possible caution to preserve my effects and
keep up my plantation. Had I used half as much prudence to have looked
into my own interest, and have made a judgment of what I ought to have
done and not to have done, I had certainly never gone away from so
prosperous an undertaking, leaving all the probably views of a
thriving circumstance, and gone upon a voyage to sea, attended with
all its common hazards, to say nothing of the reasons I had to
expect particular misfortunes to myself.
  But I was hurried on, and obeyed blindly the dictates of my fancy
rather than my reason. And accordingly, the ship being fitted out, and
the cargo furnished, and all things done as by agreement by my
partners in the voyage, I went on board in an evil hour, the (first)
of (September, 1659), being the same day eight year that I went from
my father and mother at Hull, in order to act the rebel to their
authority, and the fool to my own interest.
  Our ship was about 120 tons burthen, carried six guns and fourteen
men, besides the master, his boy, and myself. We had on board no large
cargo of goods, except of such toys as were fit for our trade with the
negroes - such as beads, bits of glass, shells, and odd trifles,
especially little looking-glasses, knives, scissors, hatchets, and the
like.
  The same day I went on board we set sail, standing away to the
northward upon our own coast, with design to stretch over for the
African coast, when they came about 10 or 12 degrees of northern
latitude, which, it seems, was the manner of their course in those
days. We had very good weather, only excessive hot, all the way upon
our own coast, till we came the height of Cape St. Augustino, from
whence, keeping farther off at sea, we lost sight of land, and steered
as if we was bound for the Isle Fernando de Noronha, holding our
course NE. by N., and leaving those isles on the east. In this
course we passed the line in about twelve days' time, and were, by our
last observation, in 7 degrees 22 minutes northern latitude, when a
violent tornado, or hurricane, took us quite out of our knowledge.
It began from the south-east, came about to the north-west, and then
settled into the north-east, from whence it blew in such a terrible
manner, that for twelve days together we could do nothing but drive,
and, scudding away before it, let it carry us wherever fate and the
fury of the winds directed; and during these twelve days I need not
say that I expected every day to be swallowed up, nor, indeed, did any
in the ship expect to save their lives.
  In this distress we had, besides the terror of the storm, one of our
men died of the calenture, and one man and the boy washed overboard.
About the twelfth day, the weather abating a little, the master made
an observation as well as he could, and found that he was in about
11 degrees north latitude, but that he was 22 degrees of longitude
difference west from Cape St. Augustino; so that he found he was
gotten upon the coast of Guiana, or the north part of Brazil, beyond
the river Amazon, toward that of the River Orinoco, commonly called
the Great River, and began to consult with me what course he should
take, for the ship was leaky and very much disabled, and he was
going directly back to the coast of Brazil.
  I was positively against that; and looking over the charts of the
sea-coast of America with him, we concluded there was no inhabited
country for us to have recourse to till we came within the circle of
the Caribbee Islands, and, therefore, resolved to stand away for
Barbadoes, which by keeping off at sea, to avoid the indraft of the
Bay or Gulf of Mexico, we might easily perform, as we hoped, in
about fifteen days' sail; whereas we could not possibly make our
voyage to the coast of Africa without some assistance, both to our
ship and to ourselves.
  With this design we changed our course, and steered away NW. by W.
in order to reach some of our English islands, where I hoped for
relief; but our voyage was otherwise determined; for being in the
latitude of 12 degrees 18 minutes, a second storm came upon us which
carried us away with the same impetuosity westward, and drove us so
out of the very way of all human commerce, that had all our lives been
saved, as to the sea, we were rather in danger of being devoured by
savages than ever returning to our own country.
  In this distress, the wind still blowing very hard, one of our men
early in the morning cried out, "Land!" and we had no sooner ran out
of the cabin to look out, in the hopes of seeing whereabouts in the
world we were, but the ship struck upon a sand, and in a moment, her
motion being so stopped, the sea broke over her in such a manner, that
we expected we should all have perished immediately; and we were
immediately driven into our close quarters, to shelter us from the
very foam and spray of the sea.
  It is not easy for any one, who has not been in the like
condition, to describe or conceive the consternation of men in such
circumstances. We knew nothing where we were, or upon what land it was
we were driven, whether an island or the main, whether inhabited or
not inhabited; and as the rage of the wind was still great, though
rather less than at first, we could not so much as hope to have the
ship hold many minutes without breaking in pieces, unless the winds,
by a kind of miracle, should turn immediately about. In a word, we sat
looking one upon another, and expecting death every moment, and
every man acting accordingly, as preparing for another world; for
there was little or nothing more for us to do in this. That which
was our present comfort, and all the comfort we had, was that,
contrary to our expectation, the ship did not break yet, and that
the master said the wind began to abate.
  Now, though we thought that the wind did a little abate, yet the
ship having thus struck upon the sand, and sticking too fast for us to
expect her getting off, we were in a dreadful condition indeed, and
had nothing to do but to think of saving our lives as well as we
could. We had a boat at our stern just before the storm, but she was
first staved by dashing against the ship's rudder, and in the next
place, she broke away, and either sunk, or was driven off to sea, so
there was no hope from her; we had another boat on board, but how to
get her off into the sea, was a doubtful thing. However, there was
no room to debate, for we fancied the ship would break to pieces every
minute, and some told us she was actually broken already.
  In this distress, the mate of our vessel lays hold of the boat,
and with the help of the rest of the men they got her slung over the
ship's side; and getting all into her, let go, and committed
ourselves, being eleven in number, to God's mercy, and the wild sea;
for though the storm was abated considerably, yet the sea went
dreadful high upon the shore, and might well be called den wild zee,
as the Dutch call the sea in a storm.
  And now our case was very dismal indeed, for we all saw plainly that
the sea went so high, that the boat could not live, and that we should
be inevitably drowned. As to making sail, we had none; nor, if we had,
could we have done anything with it; so we worked at the oar towards
the land, though with heavy hearts, like men going to execution, for
we all knew that when the boat came nearer the shore, she would be
dashed in a thousand pieces by the breach of the sea. However, we
committed our souls to God in the most earnest manner; and the wind
driving us towards the shore, we hastened our destruction with our own
hands, pulling as well as we could towards land.
  What the shore was, whether rock or sand, whether steep or shoal, we
knew not; the only hope that could rationally give us the least shadow
of expectation was, if we might happen into some bay or gulf, or the
mouth of some river, where by great chance we might have run our
boat in, or got under the lee of the land, and perhaps made smooth
water. But there was nothing of this appeared; but as we made nearer
and nearer the shore, the land looked more frightful than the sea.
  After we had rowed, or rather driven, about a league and a half,
as we reckoned it, a raging wave, mountain-like, came rolling astern
of us, and plainly bade us expect the coup de grace. In a word, it
took us with such a fury, that it overset the boat at once; and
separating us, as well from the boat as from one another, gave us
not time hardly to say, "O God!" for we were all swallowed up in a
moment.
  Nothing can describe the confusion of thought which I felt when I
sunk into the water; for though I swam very well, yet I could not
deliver myself from the waves so as to draw breath, till that wave
having driven me, or rather carried me, a vast way on towards the
shore, and having spent itself, went back, and left me upon the land
almost dry, but half dead with the water I took in. I had so much
presence of mind, as well as breath left, that seeing myself nearer
the mainland than I expected, I got upon my feet, and endeavored to
make on towards the land as fast as I could, before another wave
should return and take me up again. But I soon found it was impossible
to avoid it; for I saw the sea come after me as high as a great
hill, and as furious as an enemy, which I had no means or strength
to contend with. My business was to hold my breath, and raise myself
upon the water, if I could; and so, by swimming, to preserve my
breathing, and pilot myself towards the shore, if possible: my
greatest concern now being, that the sea, as it would carry me a great
way towards the shore when it came on, might not carry me back again
with it when it gave back towards the sea.
  The wave that came upon me again, buried me at once 20 or 30 feet
deep in its own body, and I could feel myself carried with a mighty
force and swiftness towards the shore a very great way; but I held
my breath, and assisted myself to swim still forward with all my
might. I was ready to burst with holding my breath, when, as I felt
myself rising up, so, to my immediate relief, I found my head and
hands shoot out above the surface of the water; and though it was
not two seconds of time that I could keep myself so, yet it relieved
me greatly, gave me breath and new courage. I was covered again with
water a good while, but not so long but I held it out; and finding the
water had spent itself, and began to return, I struck forward
against the return of the waves, and felt ground again with my feet. I
stood still a few moments to recover breath, and till the water went
from me, and then took to my heels and ran with what strength I had
farther towards the shore. But neither would this deliver me from
the fury of the sea, which came pouring in after me again, and twice
more I was lifted up by the waves and carried forwards as before,
the shore being very flat.
  The last time of these two had well near been fatal to me; for the
sea, having hurried me along as before, landed me, or rather dashed
me, against a piece of a rock, and that with such force, as it left me
senseless, and indeed helpless, as to my own deliverance; for the blow
taking my side and breast, beat the breath, as it were, quite out of
my body; and had it returned again immediately, I must have been
strangled in the water. But I recovered a little before the return
of the waves, and seeing I should be covered again with the water, I
resolved to hold fast by a piece of the rock, and so to hold my
breath, if possible, till the wave went back. Now, as the waves were
not so high as at first, being near land, I held my hold till the wave
abated, and then fetched another run, which brought me so near the
shore, that the next wave, though it went over me, yet did not so
swallow me up as to carry me away, and the next run I took I got to
the mainland, where, to my great comfort, I clambered up the cliffs of
the shore, and sat me down upon the grass, free from danger, and quite
out of the reach of the water.
  I was now landed, and safe on shore, and began to look up and
thank God that my life was saved in a case wherein there was some
minutes before scarce any room to hope. I believe it is impossible
to express to the life what the ecstacies and transports of the soul
are when it is so saved, as I may say, out of the very grave; and do
not wonder now at the custom, viz., that when a malefactor, who has
the halter about his neck, is tied up, and just going to be turned
off, and has a reprieve brought to him - I say, I do not wonder that
they bring a surgeon with it, to let him blood that very moment they
tell him of it, that the surprise may not drive the animal spirits
from the heart, and overwhelm him:

  "For sudden joys, like griefs, confound at first."

  I walked about on the shore, lifting up my hands, and my whole
being, as I may say, wrapt up in the contemplation of my
deliverance, making a thousand gestures and motions which I cannot
describe, reflecting upon all my comrades that were drowned, and
that there should not be one soul saved by myself; for, as for them, I
never saw them afterwards, or any sign of them except three of their
hats, one cap, and two shoes that were not fellows.
  I cast my eyes to the stranded vessel, when the breach and froth
of the sea being so big, I could hardly see it, it lay so far off, and
considered, Lord! how was it possible I could get on shore?
  After I had solaced my mind with the comfortable part of my
condition, I began to look round me to see what kind of place I was
in, and what was next to be done, and I soon found my comforts
abate, and that, in a word, I had a dreadful deliverance; for I was
wet, had no clothes to shift me, nor anything either to eat or drink
to comfort me, neither did I see any prospect before me but that of
perishing with hunger, of being devoured by wild beasts; and that
which was particularly afflicting to me was that I had no weapon
either to hunt and kill any creature for my sustenance, or to defend
myself against any other creature that might desire to kill me for
theirs. In a word, I had nothing about me but a knife, a tobacco-pipe,
and a little tobacco in a box. This was all my provision; and this
threw me into terrible agonies of mind, that for a while I ran about
like a madman. Night coming upon me, I began, with a heavy heart, to
consider what would be my lot if there were any ravenous beasts in
that country, seeing at night they always come abroad for their prey.
  All the remedy that offered to my thoughts at that time was to get
up into a thick bushy tree like a fir, but thorny, which grew near me,
and where I resolved to sit all night, and consider the next day
what death I should die, for as yet I saw no prospect of life. I
walked about a furlong from the shore to see if I could find my
fresh water to drink, which I did, to my great joy; having drank,
and put a little tobacco in my mouth to prevent hunger, I went to
the tree, and getting up into it, endeavored to place myself so as
that if I should sleep I might not fall; and having cut me a short
stick, like a truncheon, for my defence, I took up my lodging, and
having been excessively fatigued, I fell fast asleep, and slept as
comfortably as, I believe, few could have done in my condition, and
found myself the most refreshed with it that I think I ever was on
such an occasion.
  When I waked it was broad day, the weather clear, and the storm
abated, so that the sea did not rage and swell as before. But that
which surprised me most was, that the ship was lifted off in the night
from the sand where she lay, by the swelling of the tide, and was
driven up almost as far as the rock which I first mentioned, where I
had been so bruised by the dashing me against it. This being within
about a mile from the shore where I was, and the ship seeming to stand
upright still, I wished myself on board, that, at least, I might
have some necessary things for my use.
  When I came down from my apartment in the tree I looked about me
again, and the first thing I found was the boat, which lay as the wind
and the sea had tossed her up upon the land, about two miles on my
right hand. I walked as far as I could upon the shore to have got to
her, but found a neck or inlet of water between me and the boat, which
was about half a mile broad; so I came back for the present, being
more intent upon getting at the ship, where I hoped to find
something for my present subsistence.
  A little after noon I found the sea very calm, and the tide ebbed so
far out, that I could come within a quarter of a mile of the ship; and
here I found a fresh renewing of my grief, for I saw evidently, that
if we had kept on board we had been all safe, that is to say, we had
all got safe on shore, and I had not been so miserable as to be left
entirely destitute of all comfort and company, and I now was. This
forced tears from my eyes again; but as there was little relief in
that, I resolved, if possible, to get to the ship; so I pulled off
my clothes, for the weather was hot to extremity, and took the
water. But when I came to the ship, my difficulty was still greater to
know how to get on board; for as she lay aground, and high out of
the water, there was nothing within my reach to lay hold of. I swam
round her twice, and the second time I spied a small piece of rope,
which I wondered I did not see at first, hang down by the
fore-chains so low as that with great difficulty I got hold of it, and
by the help of that rope got up into the forecastle of the ship.
Here I found that the ship was bulged, and had a great deal of water
in her hold, but that she lay so on the side of a bank of hard sand,
or rather earth, that her stern lay lifted up upon the bank, and her
head low almost to the water. By this means all her quarter was
free, and all that was in that part was dry; for you may be sure my
first work was to search and to see what was spoiled and what was
free. And first I found that all the ship's provisions were dry and
untouched by the water; and being very well disposed to eat, I went to
the bread-room and filled my pockets with biscuit, and eat it as I
went about other things, for I had no time to lose. I also found
some rum in the great cabin, of which I took a large dram, and which I
had indeed need enough of to spirit me for what was before me. Now I
wanted nothing but a boat, to furnish myself with many things which
I foresaw would be very necessary to me.
  It was in vain to sit still and wish for what was not to be had, and
this extremity roused my application. We had several spare yards,
and two or three large spars of wood, and a spare topmast or two in
the ship. I resolved to fall to work with these, and flung as many
of them overboard as I could manage for their weight, tying every
one with a rope, that they might not drive away. When this was done
I went down the ship's side, and, pulling them to me, I tied four of
them fast together at both ends as well as I could, in the form of a
raft; and laying two or three short pieces of plank upon them,
crossways, I found I could walk upon it very well, but that it was not
able to bear any great weight, the pieces being too light. So I went
to work, and with the carpenter's saw I cut up a spare topmast into
three lengths, and added them to my raft, with a great deal of labor
and pains; but hope of furnishing myself with necessaries encouraged
me to go beyond what I should have been able to have done upon another
occasion.
  My raft was not strong enough to bear any reasonable weight. My next
care was what to load it with, and how to preserve what I laid upon it
from the surf of the sea; but I was not long considering this. I first
laid all the planks or boards upon it that I could get, and having
considered well what I most wanted, I first got three of the
seamen's chests, which I had broken open and emptied, and lowered them
down upon my raft. The first of these I filled with provisions,
viz., bread, rice, three Dutch cheeses, five pieces of dried goat's
flesh, which we lived much upon, and a little remainder of European
corn, which had been laid by for some fowls which we brought to sea
with us, but the fowls were killed. There had been some barley and
wheat together, but, to my great disappointment, I found afterwards
that the rats had eaten or spoiled it all. As for liquors, I found
several cases of bottles belonging to our skipper, in which were
some cordial waters, and, in all, about five or six gallons of rack.
These I stowed by themselves, there being no need to put them into the
chest, nor no room for them. While I was doing this, I found the
tide began to flow, though very calm, and I had the mortification to
see my coat, shirt, and waistcoat, which I had left on shore upon
the sand, swim away; as for my breeches, which were only linen, and
open-kneed, I swam on board in them, and my stockings. However, this
put me upon rummaging for clothes, of which I found enough, but took
no more than I wanted for present use; for I had other things which my
eye was more upon, as first tools to work with on shore; and it was
after long searching that I found out the carpenter's chest, which was
indeed a very useful prize to me, and much more valuable than a
ship-loading of gold would have been at that time. I got it down to my
raft, even whole as it was, without losing time to look into it, for I
knew in general what it contained.
  My next care was for some ammunition and arms; there were two very
good fowling-pieces in the great cabin, and two pistols; these I
secured first, with some powder-horns, and a small bag of shot, and
two old rusty swords. I knew there were three barrels of powder in the
ship, but knew not where our gunner had stowed them; but with much
search I found them, two of them dry and good, third had taken
water; those two I got to my raft with the arms. And now I thought
myself pretty well frighted, and began to think how I should get to
shore with them, having neither sail, oar, nor rudder; and the least
capful of wind would have overset all my navigation.
  I had three encouragements. 1. A smooth, calm sea. 2. The tide
rising and setting in to the shore. 3. What little wind there was blew
me towards the land. And thus, having found two or three broken oars
belonging to the boat, and besides the tools which were in the
chest, I found two saws, an axe, and a hammer, and with this cargo I
put to sea. For a mile or thereabouts my raft went very well, only
that I found it drive a little distant from the place where I had
landed before, by which I perceived that there was some indraft of
water, and consequently I hoped to find some creek or river there,
which I might make use of as a port to get to land with my cargo.
  As I imagined, so it was; there appeared before me a little
opening of the land, and I found a strong current of the tide set into
it, so I guided my raft as well as I could to keep in the middle of
the stream. But here I had like to have suffered a second shipwreck,
which, if I had, I think verily would have broke my heart, for knowing
nothing of the coast, my raft ran aground at one end of it upon a
shoal, and not being aground at the other end, it wanted but a
little that all my cargo had slipped off towards that end that was
afloat, and so fallen into the water. I did my utmost by setting my
back against the chests to keep them in their places, but could not
thrust off the raft with all my strength, neither durst I stir from
the posture I was in, but holding up the chests with all my might,
stood in that manner near half an hour, in which time the rising of
the water brought me a little more upon a level; and a little after,
the water still rising, my raft floated again, and I thrust her off
with the oar I had into the channel, and then driving up higher, I
at length found myself in the mouth of a little river, with land on
both sides, and a strong current or tide running up. I looked on
both sides for a proper place to get to shore, for I was not willing
to be driven too high up the river, hoping in time to see some ship at
sea, and therefore resolved to place myself as near the coast as I
could.
  At length I spied a little cove on the right shore of the creek,
to which, with great pain and difficulty, I guided my raft, and at
last got so near, as that, reaching ground with my oar, I could thrust
her directly in; but here I had like to have dipped all my cargo in
the sea again; for that shore lying pretty steep, that is to say,
sloping, there was no place to land but where one end of my float,
if it run on shore, would lie so high and the other sink lower, as
before, that it would endanger my cargo again. All that I could do was
to wait till the tide was at the highest, keeping the raft with my oar
like an anchor to hold the side of it fast to the shore, near a flat
piece of ground, which I expected the water would flow over; and so it
did. As soon as I found water enough, for my raft drew about a foot of
water, I thrust her on upon that flat piece of ground, and there
fastened or moored her by sticking my two broken oars into the ground;
one on one side near the end, and one on the other side near the other
end; and thus I lay till the water ebbed away, and left my raft and
all my cargo safe on shore.
  My next work was to view the country, and seek a proper place for my
habitation, and where to stow my goods to secure them from whatever
might happen. Where I was, I yet knew not; whether on the continent,
or on an island; whether inhabited, or not inhabited; whether in
danger of wild beasts, or not. There was a hill, not above a mile from
me, which rose up very steep and high, and which seemed to overtop
some other hills, which lay as in a ridge from it, northward. I took
out one of the fowling-pieces and one of the pistols, and a horn of
powder; and thus armed, I travelled for discovery up to the top of
that hill, where, after I had with great labor and  difficulty got
to the top, I saw my fate to my great affliction, viz., that I was
in an island environed every way with the sea, no land to be seen,
except some rocks which lay a great way off, and two small islands
less than this, which lay about three leagues to the west.
  I found also that the island I was in was barren, and, as I saw good
reason to believe, uninhabited, except by wild beasts, of whom,
however, I saw none; yet I saw abundance of fowls, but knew not
their kind; neither, when I killed them, could I tell what was fit for
food, and what not. At my coming back, I shot at a great bird which
I saw sitting upon a tree on the side of a great wood. I believe it
was the first gun that had been fired there since the creation of
the world. I had no sooner fired, but from all the parts of the wood
there arose an innumerable number of fowls of many sorts, making a
confused screaming, and crying, every one according to his usual note;
but not one of them of any kind that I knew. As for the creature I
killed, I took it to be a kind of a hawk, its color and beak
resembling it, but had no talons or claws more than common; its
flesh was carrion, and fit for nothing.
  Contented with this discovery, I came back to raft, and fell to work
to bring my cargo on shore, which took me up the rest of that day; and
what to do with myself at night, I knew not, or, indeed, where to
rest; for I was afraid to lie down on the ground, not knowing but some
wild beast might devour me, though, as I afterwards found, there was
really no need for those fears. However, as well as I could, I
barricaded myself round with the chests and boards that I had
brought on shore, and made a kind of a hut for that night's lodging;
as for food, I yet saw not which way to supply myself, except that I
had seen two or three creatures like hares run out of the wood where I
shot the fowl.
  I now began to consider that I might yet get a great many things out
of the ship, which would be useful to me, and particularly some of the
rigging and sails, and such other things as might come to land; and
I resolved to make another voyage on board the vessel, if possible.
And as I knew that the first storm that blew must necessarily break
her all in pieces, I resolved to set all other things apart till I got
everything out of the ship that I could get. Then I called a
council, that is to say, in my thoughts, whether I should take back
the raft, but this appeared impracticable; so I resolved to go as
before, when the tide was down: and I did so, only that I stripped
before I went from my hut, having nothing on but a checkered shirt and
a pair of linen drawers, and a pair of pumps on my feet.
  I got on board the ship as before, and prepared a second raft, and
having had experience of the first, I neither made this so unwieldy,
nor loaded it so hard; but yet I brought away several things very
useful to me; as, at first, in the carpenter's stores I found two or
three bags full of nails and spikes, a great screw-jack, a dozen or
two of hatchets, and above all, that most useful thing called a
grindstone. All these I secured, together with several things
belonging to the gunner, particularly two or three iron crows, and two
barrels of musket bullets, seven muskets, and another fowling-piece,
with some small quantity of powder more; a large bag full of
small-shot, and a great roll of sheet-lead; but this last was so
heavy, I could not hoist it up to get it over the ship's side. Besides
these things, I took all the men's clothes that I could find, and a
spare foretop sail, a hammock, and some bedding; and with this I
loaded my second raft, and brought them all safe on shore, to my
very great comfort.
  I was under some apprehensions during my absence from the land, that
at least my provisions might be devoured on shore; but when I came
back, I found no sign of any visitor, only there sat a creature like a
wild cat upon one of the chests, which, when I came towards it, ran
away a little distance, and then stood still. She sat very composed
and unconcerned, and looked full in my face, as if she had a mind to
be acquainted with me. I presented my gun at her; but as she did not
understand it, she was perfectly unconcerned at it, nor did she
offer to stir away; upon which I tossed her a bit of biscuit,
though, by the way, I was not very free of it, for my store was not
great. However, I spared her a bit, I say, and she went to it, smelled
of it, and ate it, and looked (as pleased) for more; but I thanked
her, and could spare no more, so she marched off.
  Having got my second cargo on shore, though I was fain to open the
barrels of powder and bring them by parcels, for they were too
heavy, being large casks, I went to work to make me a little tent with
the sail and some poles which I cut for that purpose; and into this
tent I brought everything that I knew would spoil either with rain
or sun; and I piled all the empty chests and casks up in a circle
round the tent, to fortify it from any sudden attempt, either from man
or beast.
  When I has done this I blocked up the door of the tent with some
boards within, and an empty chest set up on end without; and spreading
one of the beds upon the ground, laying my two pistols just at my
head, and my gun at length by me, I went to bed for the first time,
and slept very quietly all night, for I was very weary and heavy;
for the night before I had slept little, and had labored very hard all
day, as well to fetch all those things from the ship, as to get them
on shore.
  I had the biggest magazine of all kinds now that ever was laid up, I
believe, for one man; but I was not satisfied still, for while the
ship sat upright in that posture, I thought I ought to get
everything out of her that I could. So every day at low water I went
on board, and brought away something or other; but, particularly,
the third time I went I brought away as much of the rigging as I
could, as also all the small ropes and rope-twine I could get, with
a piece of spare canvas, which was to mend the sails upon occasion,
the barrel of wet gunpowder; in a word, I brought away all the sails
first and last; only that I was fain to cut them in pieces, and
bring as much at a time as I could; for they were no more useful to be
sails, but as mere canvas only.
  But that which comforted me more still was, that at last of all,
after I had made five or six such voyages as these, and thought I
had nothing more to expect from the ship that was worth my meddling
with; I say, after all this, I found a great hogshead of bread, and
three large runlets of rum or spirits, and a box of sugar, and a
barrel of fine flour; this was surprising to me, because I had given
over expecting any more provisions, except what was spoilt by the
water. I soon emptied the hogshead of that bread, and wrapped it up
parcel by parcel in pieces of the sails, which I cut out; and, in a
word, I got all this safe on shore also.
  The next day I made another voyage. And now, having plundered the
ship of what was portable and fit to hand out, I began with the
cables; and cutting the great cable into pieces, such as I could move,
I got two cables and a hawser on shore, with all the iron-work I could
get; and having cut down the spritsail-yard, and the mizzen-yard,
and everything I could to make a large raft, I loaded it with all
those heavy goods, and came away. But my good luck began now to
leave me; for this raft was so unwieldy, and so overladen, that
after I was entered the little cove where I had landed the rest of
my goods, not being able to guide it so handily as I did the other, it
overset, and, threw me and all my cargo into the water. As for myself,
it was no great harm, for I was near the shore; but as to my cargo, it
was great part of it lost, especially the iron, which I expected would
have been great use to me. However, when the tide was out I got most
of the pieces of cable ashore, and some of the iron, though with
infinite labor; for I was fain to dip for it into the water, a work
which fatigued me very much. After this I went every day on board, and
brought away what I could get.
  I have been now thirteen days on shore, and had been eleven times on
board the ship; in which time I had brought away all that one pair
of hands could well be supposed capable to bring, though I believe
verily, had the calm weather held, I should have brought away the
whole ship piece by piece. But preparing the twelfth time to go on
board, I found the wind begin to rise. However, at low water I went on
board, and though I thought I had rummaged the cabin so effectually as
that nothing more could be found, yet I discovered a locker with
drawers in it, in one of which I found two or three razors, and one
pair of large scissors, with some ten or a dozen of good knives and
forks; in another, I found some thirty-six pounds value in money, some
European coin, some Brazil, some pieces of eight, some gold, some
silver.
  I smiled to myself at the sight of this money. "O drug!" said I
aloud, "what art thou good for? Thou art not worth to me, no, not
the taking off of the ground; one of those knives is worth all this
heap. I have no manner of use for thee; even remain where thou art,
and go to the bottom as a creature whose life is not worth saving."
However, upon second thoughts, I took it away; and wrapping all this
in a piece of canvas, I began to think of making another raft; but
while I was preparing this, I found the sky overcast, and the wind
began to rise, and in a quarter of an hour it blew a fresh gale from
the shore. It presently occurred to me that it was in vain to
pretend to make a raft with the wind off shore, and that it was my
business to be gone before the tide of flood began, otherwise I
might not be able to reach the shore at all. Accordingly I let
myself down into the water, and swam across the channel, which lay
between the ship and the sands, and even that with difficulty
enough, partly with the weight of the things I had about me, and
partly the roughness of the water; for the wind rose very hastily, and
before it was quite high water it blew a storm.
  But I was gotten home to my little tent, where I lay with all my
wealth about me very secure. It blew very hard all that night, and
in the morning, when I looked out, behold, no more ship was to be
seen. I was a little surprised, but recovered myself with this
satisfactory reflection, viz., that I had lost no time, nor abated
no diligence, to get everything out of her that could be useful to me,
and that indeed there was little left in her that I was able to
bring away if I had had more time.
  I now gave over any more thoughts of the ship, or of anything out of
her, except what might drive on there from her wreck, as indeed divers
pieces of her afterwards did; but those things were of small use to
me.
  My thoughts were now wholly employed about securing myself against
either savages, if any should appear, or wild beasts, if any were in
the island; and I had many thoughts of the method how to do this,
and what kind of dwelling to make, whether I should make me a cave
in the earth, or a tent upon the earth; and, in short, I resolved upon
both, the manner and description of which it may not be improper to
give an account of.
  I soon found the place I was in was not for my settlement,
particularly because it was upon a low moorish ground near the sea,
and I believed would not be wholesome; and more particularly because
there was no fresh water near it. So I resolved to find a more healthy
and more convenient spot of ground.
  I consulted several things in my situation, which I found would be
proper for me. First, health and fresh water, I just now mentioned.
Secondly, shelter from the heat of the sun. Thirdly security from
ravenous creatures, whether men or beasts. Fourthly, a view to the
sea, that if God sent any ship in sight I might not lose any advantage
for my deliverance, of which I was not willing to banish all my
expectation yet.
  In search of a place proper for this, I found a little plain on
the side of a rising hill, whose front towards this little plain was
steep as a house-side, so that nothing could come down upon me from
the top; on the side of this rock there was a hollow place, worn a
little way in, like the entrance or door of a cave; but there was
not really any cave, or way into the rock at all.
  On the flat of the green, just before this hollow place, I
resolved to pitch my tent. This plain was not above a hundred yards
broad, and about twice as long, and lay like a green before my door,
and at the end of it descended irregularly every way down into the low
grounds by the seaside. It was on the NNW. side of the hill, so that I
was sheltered from the heat every day, till it came to a W. and by
S. sun, or thereabouts, which in those countries is near setting.
  Before I set up my tent, I drew a half circle before the hollow
place, which took in about ten yards in its semi-diameter from the
rock, and twenty yards in its diameter from its beginning and
ending. In this half circle I pitched two rows of strong stakes,
driving them into the ground till they stood very firm like piles, the
biggest end being out of the ground about five feet and a half, and
sharpened on the top. The two rows did not stand above six inches from
one another.
  Then I took the pieces of cable which I had cut in the ship, and
laid them in rows one upon another, within the circle, between these
two rows of stakes, up to the top, placing other stakes in the
inside leaning against them, about two feet and a half high, like a
spur to a post; and this fence was so strong that neither man or beast
could get into it, or over it. This cost me a great deal of time and
labor, especially to cut the piles in the woods, bring them to the
place, and drive them into the earth.
  The entrance into this place I made to be not by a door, but by a
short ladder to go over the top; which ladder, when I was in, I lifted
over after me, and so I was completely fenced in, and fortified, as
I thought, from all the world, and consequently slept secure in the
night, which otherwise I could not have done; though as it appeared
afterward, there was no need of all this caution from the enemies that
I apprehended danger from.
  Into this fence or fortress, with infinite labor, I carried all my
riches, all my provisions, ammunition, and stores, of which you have
the account above; and I made me a large tent, which, to preserve me
from the rains that in one part of the year are very violent there,
I made double, viz., one smaller tent within, and one larger tent
above it, and covered the uppermost with a large tarpaulin, which I
had saved among the sails. And now I lay no more for a while in the
bed which I had brought on shore, but in a hammock, which was indeed a
very good one, and belonged to the mate of the ship.
  Into this tent I brought all my provisions, and everything that
would spoil by the wet; and having thus enclosed all my goods I made
up the entrance, which, till now, I had left open, and so passed and
repassed, as I said, by a short ladder.
  When I had done this, I began to work my way into the rock; and
bringing all the earth and stones that I dug down out through my tent,
I laid them up within my fence in the nature of a terrace, so that
it raised the ground within about a foot and a half; and thus I made
me a cave just behind my tent, which served me like a cellar to my
house.
  It cost me much labor, and many days, before all these things were
brought to perfection, and therefore I must go back to some other
things which took up some of my thoughts. At the same time it
happened, after I had laid my scheme for the setting up my tent, and
making the cave, that a storm of rain falling from a thick dark cloud,
a sudden flash of lightning happened, and after that a great clap of
thunder, as is naturally the effect of it. I was not so much surprised
with the lightning, as I was with a thought which darted into my
mind as swift as the lightning itself. O my powder! My very heart sunk
within me when I thought that at one blast all my powder might be
destroyed, on which, not my defence only, but the providing me food,
as I thought, entirely depended. I was nothing near so anxious about
my own danger; though had the powder took fire, I had never known
who had hurt me.
  Such impression did this make upon me, that after the storm was over
I laid aside all my works, my building, and fortifying, and applied
myself to make bags and boxes to separate the powder, and keep it a
little and a little in a parcel, in hope that whatever might come it
might not all take fire at once, and to keep it so apart that it
should not be possible to make one part fire another. I finished
this work in about a fortnight; and I think my powder, which in all
was about 240 pounds weight, was divided in not less than a hundred
parcels. As to the barrel that had been wet, I did not apprehend any
danger from that, so I placed it in my new cave, which in my fancy I
called my kitchen, and the rest I hid up and down and in holes among
the rocks, so that no wet might come to it, marking very carefully
where I laid it.
  In the interval of time while this was doing, I went out once, at
least, every day with my gun, as well to divert myself, as to see if I
could kill anything fit for food, and as near as I could to acquaint
myself with what the island produced. The first time I went out, I
presently discovered that there were goats in the island, which was
a great satisfaction to me; but then it was attended with this
misfortune to me, viz., that they were so shy, so subtle, and so swift
of foot, that it was the difficultest thing in the world to come at
them. But I was not discouraged at this, not doubting but I might
now and then shoot one, as it soon happened; for after I had found
their haunts a little, I laid wait in this manner for them. I observed
if they saw me in the valleys, though they were upon the rocks, they
would run away as in a terrible fright; but if they were feeding in
the valleys, and I was upon the rocks, they took no notice of me, from
whence I concluded that, by the position of their optics, their
sight was so directed downward, that they did not readily see
objects that were above them. So afterward I took this method: I
always climbed the rocks first to get above them, and then had
frequently a fair mark. The first shot I made among these creatures
I killed a she-goat, which had a little kid by her, which she gave
suck to, which grieved me heartily; but when the old one fell, the kid
stood stock still by her till I came and took her up; and not only so,
but when I carried the old one with me upon my shoulders, the kid
followed me quite to my enclosure; upon which I laid down the dam, and
took the kid in my arms, and carried it over my pale, in hopes to have
bred it up tame; but it would not eat, so I was forced to kill it, and
eat it myself. These two supplied me with flesh a great while, for I
eat sparingly, and saved my provisions, my bread especially, as much
as possibly I could.
  Having now fixed my habitation, I found it absolutely necessary to
provide a place to make a fire in, and fuel to burn; and what I did
for that, as also how I enlarged my cave, and what conveniences I
made, I shall give a full account of in its place. But I must first
give some little account of myself, and of my thoughts about living,
which it may well be supposed were not a few. I had a dismal
prospect of my condition; for as I was not cast away upon that
island without being driven, as is said, by a violent storm, quite out
of the course of our intended voyage, and a great way, viz., some
hundreds of leagues out of the ordinary course of the trade of
mankind, I had great reason to consider it as a determination of
Heaven, that in this desolate place, and in this desolate manner, I
should end my life. The tears would run plentifully down face when I
made these reflections, and sometimes I would expostulate with myself,
why Providence should thus completely ruin its creatures, and render
them so absolutely miserable, so without help abandoned, so entirely
depressed, that it could hardly be rational to be thankful for such
a life.
  But something always returned swift upon me to check these thoughts,
and to reprove me; and particularly one day, walking with my gun in my
hand by the seaside, I was very pensive upon the subject of my present
condition, when reason, as it were, expostulated with me t'other
way, thus: "Well, you are in a desolate condition it is true, but pray
remember, where are the rest of you? Did not you come eleven of you in
the boat? Where are the ten? Why were not they saved, and you lost?
Why were you singled out? Is it better to be here, or there?" And then
I pointed to the sea. All evils are to be considered with the good
that is in them, and with what worse attends them.
  Then it occurred to me again, how well I was furnished for my
subsistence, and what would have been my case if it had not
happened, which was a hundred thousand to one, that the ship had
floated from the place where she first struck and was driven so near
to the shore that I had time to get all these things out of her;
what would have been my case, if I had been to have lived in the
condition in which I first came on shore, without necessaries of life,
or necessaries to supply and procure them? "Particularly," said I
aloud (though to myself), "what should I have done without a gun,
without ammunition, without any tools to make anything or to work
with, without clothes, bedding, a tent, or any manner of covering?"
and that now I had all these to a sufficient quantity, and was in a
fair way to provide myself in such a manner, as to live without my gun
when my ammunition was spent; so that I had a tolerable view of
subsisting without any want as long as I lived. For I considered
from the beginning how I would provide for the accidents that might
happen, and for the time that was to come, even not only after my
ammunition should be spent, but even after my health or strength
should decay.
  I confess I had not entertained any notion of my ammunition being
destroyed at one blast - I mean, my powder being blown up by
lightning; and this made the thoughts of it so surprising to me when
it lightened and thundered, as I observed just now.
  And now being to enter into a melancholy relation of a scene of
silent life, such, perhaps, as was never heard of in the world before,
I shall take it from its beginning and continue it in its order. It
was by my account, the 30th of September when, in the manner as
above said, I first set foot upon this horrid island, when the sun
being to us in its autumnal equinox, was almost just over my head, for
I reckoned myself, by observation, to be in the latitude of 9
degrees 22 minutes north of the line.
  After I had been there about ten or twelve days it came into my
thoughts that I should lose my reckoning of time for want of books and
pen and ink, and should even forget the Sabbath days from the
working days; but to prevent this, I cut it with my knife upon a large
post, in capital letters; and making it into a great cross, I set it
up on the shore where I first landed, viz., "I came on shore here
the 30th of September 1659." Upon the sides of this square post I
cut every day a notch with my knife, and every seventh notch was as
long again as the rest, and every first day of the month as long again
as that long one; and thus I kept my calendar, or weekly, monthly, and
yearly reckoning of time.
  In the next place we are to observe that among the many things which
I brought out of the ship in the several voyages, which, as above
mentioned, I made to it, I got several things of less value, but not
all less useful to me, which I omitted setting down before; as in
particular, pens, ink, and paper, several parcels in the captain's,
mate's, gunner's, and carpenter's keeping, three or four compasses,
some mathematical instruments, dials, perspectives, charts, and
books of navigation, all of which I huddled together, whether I
might want them or no. Also I found three very good Bibles, which came
to me in my cargo from England and which I had packed up among my
things; some Portuguese books, also, and among them two or three
Popish prayer-books, and several other books, all of which I carefully
secured. And I must not forget, that we had in the ship a dog and
two cats, of whose eminent history I may have occasion to say
something in its place; for I carried both the cats with me; and as
for the dog he jumped out of the ship of himself, and swam on shore to
me the day after I went on shore with my first cargo, and was a trusty
servant to me many years. I wanted nothing that he could fetch me, nor
any company that he could make up to me; I only wanted to have him
talk to me, but that would not do. As I observed before, I found
pen, ink, and paper, and I husbanded them to the utmost; and I shall
show that while my ink lasted, I kept things very exact; but after
that was gone, I could not, for I could not make any ink by any
means that I could devise.
  And this put me in mind that I wanted many things, notwithstanding
all that I had amassed together; and of these, this of ink was one, as
also spade, pick-axe, and shovel, to dig or remove the earth, needles,
pins, and thread; as for linen, I soon learned to want that without
much difficulty.
  This want of tools made every work I did go on heavily; and it was
near a whole year before I had entirely finished my little pale or
surrounded habitation. The piles or stakes, which were as heavy as I
could well lift, were a long time in cutting and preparing in the
woods, and more by far in bringing home; so that I spent sometimes two
days in cutting and bringing home one of those posts, and a third
day in driving it into the ground; for which purpose I got a heavy
piece of wood at first, but at last bethought myself of one of the
iron crows, which, however, though I found it, yet it made driving
those posts or piles very laborious and tedious work.
  But what need I have been concerned at the tediousness of anything I
had to do, seeing I had time enough to do it in? Nor had I any other
employment, if that had been over, at least that I could foresee,
except the ranging the island to seek for food, which I did more or
less every day.
  I now began to consider seriously my condition, and the circumstance
I was reduced to; and I drew up the state of my affairs in writing;
not so much to leave them to any that were to come after me, for I was
like to have but few heirs, as to deliver my thoughts from daily
poring upon them; and afflicting my mind. And as my reason began now
to master my despondency, I began to comfort myself as well as I
could, and to set the good against the evil, that I might have
something to distinguish my case from worse; and I stated it very
impartially, like a debtor and creditor, the comforts I enjoyed
against the miseries I suffered, thus:

                              Evil
  I am cast upon a horrible desolate island, void of all hope of
recovery.
                              Good
  But I am alive, and not drowned, as all my ship's company was.
                              Evil
  I am singled out and separated, as it were, from all the world to be
miserable.
                              Good
  But I am singled out, too, from all the ship's crew to be spared
from death; and He that miraculously saved me from death, can
deliver me from this condition.
                              Evil
  I am divided from mankind, a solitaire, one banished from human
society.
                              Good
  But I am not starved and perishing on a barren place, affording no
sustenance.
                              Evil
  I have not clothes to cover me.
                              Good
  But I am in a hot climate, where if I had clothes I could hardly
wear them.
                              Evil
  I am without any defence or means to resist any violence of man or
beast.
                              Good
  But I am cast on an island, where I see no wild beasts to hurt me,
as I saw on the coast of Africa; and what if I had been shipwrecked
there?
                              Evil
  I have no soul to speak to, or relieve me.
                              Good
  But God wonderfully sent the ship in near enough to the shore,
that I have gotten out so many necessary things as will either
supply my wants, or enable me to supply myself even as long as I live.

  Upon the whole, here was an undoubted testimony, that there was
scarce any condition in the world so miserable but there was something
negative or something positive to be thankful for in it; and let
this stand as a direction from the experience of the most miserable of
all conditions in this world, that we may always find in it
something to comfort ourselves from, and to set in the description
of good and evil on the credit side of the account.
  Having now brought my mind a little to relish my condition, and
given over looking out to sea, to see if I could spy a ship; I say,
giving over these things, I began to apply myself to accomodate my way
of living, and to make things as easy to me as I could.
  I have already described my habitation, which was a tent under the
side of a rock, surrounded with a strong pale of posts and cables; but
I might now rather call it a wall, for I raised a kind of wall up
against it of turfs, about two feet thick on the outside, and after
some time - I think it was a year and a half - I raised rafters from
it leaning to the rock, and thatched or covered it with boughs of
trees and such things as I could get to keep out the rain, which I
found at some times of the year very violent.
  I have already observed how I brought all my goods into this pale,
and into the cave which I had made behind me. But I must observe, too,
that at first this was a confused heap of goods, which as they lay
in no order, so they took up all my place; I had no room to turn
myself. So I set myself to enlarge my cave and works farther into
the earth; for it was a loose sandy rock which yielded easily to the
labor I bestowed on it. And so, when I found I was pretty safe as to
beasts of prey, I worked sideways to the right hand into the rock; and
then, turning to the right again, working quite out, and made me a
door to come out on the outside of my pale or fortification. This gave
me not only egress and regress, as it were a back-way to my tent and
to my storehouse, but gave me room to stow my goods.
  And now I began to apply myself to make such necessary things as I
found I most wanted, as particularly a chair and a table; for
without these I was not able to enjoy the few comforts I had in the
world. I could not write or eat, or do several things with so much
pleasure without a table.
  So I went to work: and here I must needs observe, that as reason
is the substance and original of the mathematics, so by stating and
squaring everything by reason, and by making the most rational
judgment of things, every man may be in time master of every
mechanic art. I had never handled a tool in my life; and yet in
time, by labor, application, and contrivance, I found at last that I
wanted nothing but I could have made it, especially if I had had
more tools. However, I made abundance of things even without tools,
and some with no more tools than an adze and a hatchet, which,
perhaps, were never made that way before, and that with infinite
labor. For example, if I wanted a board, I had no other way but to cut
down a tree, set it on an edge before me, and hew it flat on either
side with my axe, till I had brought it to be thick as a plank, and
then dub it smooth with my adze. It is true, by this method I could
make but one board out of a whole tree; but this I had no remedy for
but patience, any more than I had for the prodigious deal of time
and labor which it took me up to make a plank or board. But my time or
labor was little worth, and so it was as well employed one way as
another.
  However, I made me a table and a chair, as I observed above, in
the first place, and this I did out of the short pieces of boards that
I brought on my raft from the ship. But when I had wrought out some
boards, as above, I made large shelves of the breadth of a foot and
a half one over another, all along one side of my cave, to lay all
my tools, nails, and ironwork; and, in a word, to separate
everything at large in their places, that I might come easily at them.
I knocked pieces into the wall of the rock to hang my guns and all
things that would hang up; so that had my cave been to be seen, it
looked like a general magazine of all necessary things; and I had
everything so ready at my hand, that it was a great pleasure to me
to see all my goods in such order, and especially to find my stock
of all necessaries so great.
  And now it was when I began to keep a journal of every day's
employment; for, indeed, at first, I was in too much hurry, and not
only hurry as to labor, but in too much discomposure of mind; and my
journal would have been full of many dull things. For example, I
must have said thus: September the 30th. -After I got to shore, and
had escaped drowning, instead of being thankful to God for my
deliverance, having first vomited with the great quantity of salt
water which was gotten into my stomach, and recovering myself a
little, I ran about the shore, wringing my hands, and beating my
head and face, exclaiming at my misery, and crying out, I was
undone, undone, till, tired and faint, I was forced to lie down on the
ground to repose; but durst not sleep, for fear of being devoured.
  Some days after this, and after I had been on board the ship and got
all that I could out of her, yet I could not forbear getting up to the
top of a little mountain, and looking out to sea, in hopes of seeing a
ship; then fancy at a vast distance I spied a sail, please myself with
the hopes of it, and then, after looking steadily till I was almost
blind, lose it quite, and sit down and weep like a child, and thus
increase my misery by my folly.
  But having gotten over these things in some measure, and having
settled my household stuff and habitation, made me a table and a
chair, and all as handsome about me as I could, I began to keep my
journal, of which I shall here give you the copy (though in it will be
told all these particulars over again) as long as it lasted; for,
having no more ink, I was forced to leave it off.

                      THE JOURNAL

  September 30, 1659. - I, poor miserable Robinson Crusoe, being
shipwrecked, during a dreadful storm, in the offing, came on shore
in this dismal unfortunate island, which I called the Island of
Despair, all the rest of the ship's company being drowned, and
myself almost dead.
  All the rest of that day I spent in afflicting myself at the
dismal circumstances I was brought to, viz., I had neither food,
house, clothes, weapon, or place to fly to; and in despair of any
relief, saw nothing but death before me; either that I should be
devoured by wild beasts, murdered by savages, or starved to death
for want of food. At the approach of night, I slept in a tree for fear
of wild creatures, but slept soundly, though it rained all night.
  October 1. - In the morning I saw, to my great surprise, the ship
had floated with the high tide, and was driven on shore again much
nearer the island; which, as it was some comfort on one hand, for
seeing her sit upright, and not broken to pieces, I hoped, if the wind
abated, I might get on board, and get some food and necessaries out of
her for my relief; so, on the other hand, it renewed my grief at the
loss of my comrades, who, I imagined, if we had all stayed on board,
might have saved the ship, or at least that they would not have been
all drowned as they were; and that had the men been saved, we might
perhaps have built us a boat out of the ruins of the ship, to have
carried us to some other part of the world. I spent great part of this
day in perplexing myself on these things; but at length seeing the
ship almost dry, I went upon the sand as near as I could, and then
swam on board; this day also it continued raining, though with no wind
at all.
  From the 1st of October to the 24th. - All these days entirely spent
in many several voyages to get all I could out of the ship, which I
brought on shore, every tide of flood, upon rafts. Much rain also in
these days, though with some intervals of fair weather; but, it seems,
this was the rainy season.
  October 20. - I overset my raft, and all the goods I had got upon
it; but being in shoal water, and the things being chiefly heavy, I
recovered many of them when the tide was out.
  October 25. - It rained all night and all day, with some gusts of
wind, during which time the ship broke in pieces, the wind blowing a
little harder than before, and was no more to be seen, except the
wreck of her, and that only at low water. I spent this day in covering
and securing the goods which I had saved, that the rain might not
spoil them.
  October 26. - I walked about the shore almost all day to find out
a place to fix my habitation, greatly concerned to secure myself
from an attack in the night, either from wild beasts or men. Towards
night I fixed upon a proper place under a rock, and marked out a
semicircle for my encampment, which I resolved to strengthen with a
work, wall, or fortification made of double piles, lined within with
cables, and without with turf.
  From the 26th to the 30th I worked very hard in carrying all my
goods to my new habitation, though some part of the time it rained
exceeding hard.
  The 31st, in the morning, I went out into the island with my gun
to see for some food, and discover the country; when I killed a
she-goat, and her kid followed me home, which I afterwards killed
also, because it would not feed.
  November 1. - I set up my tent under a rock, and lay there for the
first night, making it as large as I could, with stakes driven in to
swing my hammock upon.
  November 2. - I set up all my chests and boards, and the pieces of
timber which made my rafts, and with them formed a fence round me, a
little within the place I had marked out for my  fortification.
  November 3. - I went out with my gun, and killed two fowls like
ducks, which were very good food. In the afternoon went to work to
make me a table.
  November 4. - This morning I began to order my times of work, of
going out with my gun, time of sleep, and time of diversion, viz.,
every morning I walked out with my gun for two or three hours, if it
did not rain; then employed myself to work till about eleven
o'clock; then eat what I had to live on; and from twelve to two I
lay down to sleep, the weather being excessive hot; and then in the
evening to work again. The working part of this day and of the next
were wholly employed in making my table; for I was yet but a very
sorry workman, though time and necessity made me a complete natural
mechanic soon after, as I believe it would do any one else.
  November 5. - This day went abroad with my gun and my dog, and
killed a wild-cat; her skin pretty soft, but her flesh good for
nothing. Every creature I killed, I took off the skins and preserved
them. Coming back by the seashore, I saw many sorts of seafowls, which
I did not understand; but was surprised, and almost frighted, with two
or three seals, which, while I was gazing at, not well knowing what
they were, got into the sea, and escaped me for that time.
  November 6. - After my morning walk I went to work with my table
again, and finished it, though not to my liking; nor was it long
before I learned to mend it.
  November 7. - Now it began to be settled fair weather. The 7th, 8th,
9th, 10th, and part of the 12th (for the 11th was Sunday) I took
wholly up to make me a chair, and with much ado, brought it to a
tolerable shape, but never to please me; and even in the making I
pulled it to pieces several times. Note, I soon neglected my keeping
Sundays; for, omitting my mark for them on my post, I forgot which was
which.
  November 13. - This day it rained, which refreshed me exceedingly,
and cooled the earth; but it was accompanied with terrible thunder and
lightning, which frighted me dreadfully, for fear of my powder. As
soon as it was over, I resolved to separate my stock of powder into as
many little parcels as possible, that it might not be in danger.
  November 14, 15, 16. - These three days I spent in making little
square chests or boxes, which might hold about a pound, or two pound
at most, of powder; and so putting the powder in, I stowed it in
places as secure and remote from one another as possible. On one of
these three days I killed a large bird that was good to eat, but I
know not what to call it.
  November 17. - This day I began to dig behind my tent into the rock,
to make room for my farther conveniency. Note, three things I wanted
exceeding for this work, viz., a pick-axe, a shovel, and a wheelbarrow
or basket; so I desisted from my work, and began to consider how to
supply that want, and make me some tools. As for a pick-axe, I made
use of the iron crows, which were proper enough, though heavy; but the
next thing was a shovel or spade. This was so absolutely necessary,
that indeed I could no nothing effectually without it; but what kind
of one to make, I knew not.
  November 18. - The next day, in searching the woods, I found a
tree of that wood, or like it, which in the Brazils they call the iron
tree, for its exceeding hardness; of this, with great labor, and
almost spoiling my axe, I cut a piece, and brought it home, too, was
difficulty enough, for it was exceeding heavy.
  The excessive hardness of the wood, and having no other way, made me
a long while upon this machine, for I worked it effectually, by little
and little, into the form of a shovel or spade, the handle exactly
shaped like ours in England, only that the broad part having no iron
shod upon it at bottom, it would not last me so long. However, it
served well enough for the uses which I had occasion to put it to; but
never was a shovel, I believe, made after that fashion, or so long
a-making.
  I was still deficient, for I wanted a basket or a wheel-barrow. A
basket I could not make by any means, having no such things as twigs
that would bend to make wicker ware, at least none yet found out.
And as to a wheelbarrow, I fancied I could make all but the wheel, but
that I had no notion of, neither did I know how to go about it;
besides, I had no possible way to make the iron gudgeons for the
spindle or axis of the wheel to run in, so I gave it over; and so
for carrying away the earth which I dug out of the cave, I made me a
thing like a hod which the laborers carry mortar in, when they serve
the bricklayers.
  This was not so difficult to me as the making the shovel; and yet
this, and the shovel, and the attempt which I made in vain to make a
wheelbarrow, took me up no less than four days; I mean always,
excepting my morning walk with my gun, which I seldom failed, and very
seldom failed also bringing home something fit to eat.
  November 23. - My other work having now stood still because of my
making these tools, when they were finished I went on, and working
every day, as my strength and time allowed, I spent eighteen days
entirely in widening and deepening my cave, that it might hold my
goods commodiously.
  Note: During all this time I worked to make this room or cave
spacious enough to accomodate me as a warehouse or magazine, a
kitchen, a dining-room, and a cellar; as for my lodging, I kept to the
tent, except that sometimes in the wet season of the year it rained so
hard that I could not keep myself dry, which caused me afterwards to
cover all my place within my pale with long poles, in the form of
rafters, leaning against the rock, and load them with flags and
large leaves of trees, like a thatch.
  December 10. - I began now to think my cave or vault finished when
on a sudden (it seems I had made it too large) a great quantity of
earth fell down from the top and one side, so much, that, in short, it
frighted me, and not without reason too; for if I had been under it, I
had never wanted a grave-digger. Upon this disaster I had a great deal
of work to do over again; for I had the loose earth to carry out; and,
which was of more importance, I had the ceiling to prop up, so that
I might be sure no more would come down.
  December 11. - This day I went to work with it accordingly, and
got two shores or posts pitched upright to the top, with two pieces of
boards across over each post. This I finished the next day; and
setting more posts up with boards, in about a week more I had the roof
secured; and the posts standing in rows, served me for partitions to
part of my house.
  December 17. - From this day to the twentieth I placed shelves,
and knocked up nails on the posts to hang everything up that could
be hung up; and now I began to be in some order within doors.
  December 20. - Now I carried everything into the cave, and began
to furnish my house, and set up some pieces of boards, like a dresser,
to order my victuals upon; but boards began to be very scarce with me;
also I made me another table.
  December 24. - Much rain all night and all day; no stirring out.
  December 25. - Rain all day.
  December 26. - No rain, and the earth much cooler than before, and
pleasanter.
  December 27. - Killed a young goat, and lamed another, so that I
catched it, and led it home in a string. When I had it home, I bound
and splintered up its leg, which was broke. N.B. - I took such care of
it, that it lived; and the leg grew well and as strong as ever; but by
my nursing it so long it grew tame, and fed upon the little green at
my door, and would not go away. This was the first time that I
entertained a thought of breed up some tame creatures, that I might
have food when my powder and shot was all spent.
  December 28, 29, 30. - Great heats and no breeze, so that there
was no stirring abroad, except in the evening, for food. This time I
spent in putting all my things in order within doors.
  January 1. - Very hot still, but I went abroad early and late with
my gun, and lay still in the middle of the day. This evening, going
farther into the valleys which lay towards the centre of the island, I
found there was plenty of goats, though exceeding shy, and hard to
come at. However, I resolved to try if I could not bring my dog to
hunt them down.
  January 2. - Accordingly, the next day, I went out with my dog,
and set him upon the goats; but I was mistaken, for they all faced
about upon the dog; and he knew his danger too well, for he would
not come near them.
  January 3. - I began my fence or wall; which being still jealous
of my being attacked by somebody, I resolved to make very thick and
strong.
  N.B. - This wall being described before, I purposely omit what was
said in the journal. It is sufficient to observe that I was no less
time than from the 3rd of January to the 14th of April working,
finishing, and perfecting this wall, though it was no more than
about twenty-four yards in length, being a half circle from one
place in the rock to another place about eight yards from it, the door
of the cave being in the centre behind it.

  All this time I worked very hard, the rains hindering me many
days, nay, sometimes weeks together; but I thought I should never be
perfectly secure till this wall was finished. And it is scarce
credible what inexpressible labor everything was done with, especially
the bringing piles of the woods, and driving them into the ground; for
I made them much bigger than I need to have done.
  When this wall was finished, and the outside double-fenced with a
turf-wall raised up close to it, I persuaded myself that if any people
were to come on shore there, they would not perceive anything like a
habitation; and it was very well I did so, as may be observed
hereafter upon a very remarkable occasion.
  During this time, I made my round in the woods for game every day,
when the rain admitted me, and made frequent discoveries in these
walks of something or other to my advantage; particularly I found a
kind of wild pigeons, who built, not as wood pigeons in a tree, but
rather as house pigeons, in the holes of the rocks. And taking some
young ones, I endeavored to breed them up tame, and did so; but when
they grew older they flew all away, which, perhaps, was at first for
want of feeding them, for I had nothing to give them. However, I
frequently found their nests, and got their young ones, which were
very good meat.
  And now in the managing my household affairs I found myself
wanting in many things, which I thought at first it was impossible for
me to make, as indeed, as to some of them, it was. For instance, I
could never make a cask to be hooped; I had a small runlet or two,
as I observed before, but I could never arrive to the capacity of
making one of them, though I spent many weeks about it. I could
neither put in the heads, nor joint the staves so true to one
another as to make them hold water; so I gave that also over.
  In the next place, I was at a great loss for candle; so that as soon
as ever it was dark, which was generally by seven o'clock, I was
obliged to go to bed. I remembered the lump of beeswax with which I
made candles in my African adventure, but I had none of that now.
The only remedy I had was, that when I had killed a goat I saved the
tallow, and with a little dish made of clay, which I baked in the sun,
to which I added a wick of some oakum, I made me a lamp; and this gave
me light, though not a clear steady light like a candle.
  In the middle of all my labors it happened that rummaging my things,
I found a little bag, which, as I hinted before, had been filled
with corn for the feeding of poultry, not for this voyage, but before,
as I suppose, when the ship came from Lisbon. What little remainder of
corn had been in the bag was all devoured with the rats, and I saw
nothing in the bag but husks and dust; and being willing to have the
bag for some other use, I think it was to put powder in, when I
divided it for fear of the lightning, or some such use, I shook the
husks of corn out of it on one side of my fortification, under the
rock. It was a little before the great rains, just now mentioned, that
I threw this stuff away, taking no notice of anything there; when,
about a month after, or thereabout, I saw some few stalks of something
green shooting out of the ground, which I fancied might be some
plant I had not seen; but I was surprised, and perfectly astonished,
when, after a little longer time, I saw about ten or twelve ears
come out, which were perfect green barley of the same kind as or
European, nay, as our English barley.
  It is impossible to express the astonishment and confusion of my
thoughts on this occasion. I had hitherto acted upon no religious
foundation at all; indeed, I had very few notions of religion in my
head, or had entertained any sense of anything that had befallen me
otherwise than as a chance, or as we lightly say, what pleases God;
without so much as inquiring into the end of Providence in these
things, or His order in governing events in the world. But after I saw
barley grow there in a climate which I knew was not proper for corn,
and especially that I knew not how it came there, it startled me
strangely, and I began to suggest that God had miraculously caused
this grain to grow without any help of seed sown, and it was so
directed purely for my sustenance on that wild miserable place.
  This touched my heart a little, and brought tears out of my eyes;
and I began to bless myself, that such a prodigy of Nature should
happen upon my account, and this was the more strange to me, because I
saw near it still, all along by the side of the rock, some other
straggling stalks, which proved to be stalks of rice, and which I
knew, because I had seen it grow in Africa, when I was ashore there.
  I not only thought these the pure productions of Providence for my
support, but, not doubting but that there was more in the place, I
went all over that part of the island where I had been before, peering
in every corner, and under every rock, to see for more of it; but I
could not find any. At last it occurred to my thoughts that I had
shook a bag of chicken's meat out in that place, and then the wonder
began to cease; and I must confess, my religious thankfulness to God's
providence began to abate too, upon the discovering that all this
was nothing but what was common; I ought to have been as thankful
for so strange and unforseen providence, as if it had been miraculous;
for it was really the work of Providence as to me, that should order
or appoint, that ten or twelve grains of corn should remain
unspoiled (when the rats had destroyed all the rest), as if it had
been dropped from heaven; as also that I should throw it out in that
particular place, where, it being in the shade of a high rock, it
sprang up immediately; whereas, if I had thrown it anywhere else at
that time, it had been burnt up and destroyed.
  I carefully saved the ears of this corn, you may be sure, in their
season, which was about the end of June; and laying up every corn, I
resolved to sow them all again, hoping in time to have some quantity
sufficient to supply me with bread. But it was not till the fourth
year that I could allow myself the least grain of this corn to eat,
and even then but sparingly, as I shall say afterwards in its order;
for I lost all that I sowed the first season, by not observing the
proper time; for I sowed it just before the dry season, so that it
never came up at all, at least not as it would have done; of which
in its place.
  Besides this barley, there was, as above, twenty or thirty stalks of
rice, which I preserved with the same care, and whose use was of the
same kind, or to the same purpose, viz., to make me bread, or rather
food; for I found ways to cook it up without baking, though I did that
also after some time. But to return to my journal.
  I worked excessive hard these three or four months to get my wall
done; and the 14th of April I closed it up, contriving to go into
it, not by a door, but over the wall by a ladder, that there might
be no sign in the outside of my habitation.
  April 16. - I finished the ladder, so I went up with the ladder to
the top, and then pulled it up after me, and let it down on the
inside. This was a complete enclosure to me; for within I had room
enough, and nothing could come at me from without, unless it could
first mount my wall.
  The very next day after this wall was finished, I had almost had all
my labor overthrown at once, and myself killed. The case was thus:
As I was busy in the inside of it, behind my tent, just in the
entrance into my cave, I was terribly frightened with a most
dreadful surprising thing indeed; for all on a sudden I found the
earth come crumbling down from the roof of my cave, and from the
edge of the hill over my head, and two of the posts I had set up in
the cave cracked in a frightful manner. I was heartily scared, but
thought nothing of what was really the cause, only thinking that the
top of my cave was falling in, as some of it had done before; and
for fear I should be buried in it, I ran forward to my ladder; and not
thinking myself safe there neither, I got over my wall for fear of the
pieces of the hill which I expected might roll down upon me. I was
no sooner stepped down upon the firm ground, but I plainly saw it
was a terrible earthquake; for the ground I stood on shook three times
at about eight minutes' distance, with three such shocks as would have
overturned the strongest building that could be supposed to have stood
on the earth; and a great piece of the top of a rock which stood about
half a mile from me next the sea, fell down with such a terrible
noise, as I never heard in all my life. I perceived also the very
sea was put into violent motion by it; and I believe the shocks were
stronger under the water than on the island.
  I was so amazed with the thing itself, having never felt the like,
or discoursed with any one that had, that I was like one dead or
stupefied; and the motion of the earth made my stomach sick, like
one that was tossed at sea. But the noise of the falling of the rock
awaked me, as it were, and rousing me from the stupefied condition I
was in, filled me with horror, and I thought of nothing then but the
hill falling upon my tent and all my household goods, and burying
all at once; and this sunk my very soul within me a second time.
  After the third shock was over, and I felt no more for some time,
I began to take courage; and yet I had not heart enough to go over
my wall again, for fear of being buried alive, but sat still upon
the ground, greatly cast down and disconsolate, not knowing what to
do. All this while I had not the least serious religious thought,
nothing but the common, "Lord, have mercy upon me!" and when it was
over, that went away too.
  While I sat thus, I found the air overcast, and grow cloudy, as if
it would rain. Soon after that the wind rose by little and little,
so that in less than half an hour it blew a most dreadful hurricane.
The sea was all on a sudden covered over with foam and froth; the
shore was covered with the breach of the water; the trees were torn up
by the roots; and a terrible storm it was: and this held about three
hours, and then began to abate; and in two hours more it was stark
calm, and began to rain very hard.
  All this while I sat upon the ground, very much terrified and
dejected; when on a sudden it came into my thoughts, that these
winds and rain being the consequences of the earthquake, the
earthquake itself was spent and over, and I might venture into my cave
again. With this thought my spirits began to revive; and the rain also
helping to persuade me, I went in and sat down in my tent. But the
rain was so violent that my tent was ready to be beaten down with
it, and I was forced to go into my cave, though very much afraid and
uneasy, for fear it should fall on my head.
  This violent rain forced me to a new work, viz., to cut a hole
through my new fortification, like a sink, to let the water go out,
which would else have drowned my cave. After I had been in my cave
some time, and found still no more shocks of the earthquake follow,
I began to be more composed. And now to support my spirits, which
indeed wanted it very much, I went to my little store, and took a
small sup of rum, which, however, I did then, and always, very
sparingly, knowing I could have no more when that was gone.
  It continued raining all that night and a great part of the next
day, so that I could not stir abroad; but my mind being more composed,
I began to think of what I had best do, concluding that if the
island was subject to these earthquakes, there would be no living
for me in a cave, but I must consider of building me some little hut
in an open place, which I might surround with a wall, as I had done
here, and so make myself secure from wild beasts or men; but
concluded, if I stayed where I was, I should certainly, one time or
another be buried alive.
  With these thoughts I resolved to remove my tent from the place
where it stood, which was just under the hanging precipice of the
hill, and which, if it should be shaken again, would certainly fall
upon my tent; and I spent the two next days, being the 19th and 20th
of April, in contriving where and how to remove my habitation.
  The fear of being swallowed up alive made me that I never slept in
quiet; and yet the apprehension of lying abroad without any fence
was almost equal to it. But still, when I looked about and saw how
everything was put in order, how pleasantly concealed I was, and how
safe from danger, it made me very loth to remove.
  In the meantime it occurred to me that it would require a vast
deal of time for me to do this, and that I must be contented to run
the venture where I was, till I had formed a camp for myself, and
had secured it so as to remove to it. So with this resolution I
composed myself for a time, and resolved that I would go to work
with all speed to build me a wall with piles and cables, etc., in a
circle as before, and set my tent up in it when it was finished, but
that I would venture to stay where I was till it was finished, and fit
to remove to. this was the 21st.
  April 22. - The next morning I began to consider of means to put
this resolve in execution; but I was at a great loss about my tools. I
had three large axes, and abundance of hatchets (for we carried the
hatchets for traffic with the Indians), but with much chopping and
cutting knotty hard wood, they were all full of notches and dull;
and though I had a grindstone, I could not turn it and grind my
tools too. This cost me as much thought as a statesman would have
bestowed upon a grand point of politics, or a judge upon the life
and death of a man. At length I contrived a wheel with a string, to
turn it with my foot, that I might have both my hands at liberty.
Note, I had never seen any such thing in England, or at least not to
take notice how it was done, though since I have observed it is very
common there; besides that, my grindstone was very large and heavy.
This machine cost me a full week's work to bring it to perfection.
  April 28, 29. - These two whole days I took up in grinding my tools,
my machine for turning my grindstone performing very well.
  April 30. - Having perceived my bread had been low a great while,
now I took a survey of it, and reduced myself to one biscuit-cake a
day, which made my heart very heavy.
  May 1. - In the morning, looking towards the seaside, the tide being
low, I saw something lie on the shore bigger than ordinary, and it
looked like a cask. When I came to it, I found a small barrel, and two
or three pieces of the wreck of the ship, which were driven on shore
by the late hurricane; and looking towards the wreck itself, I thought
it seemed to lie higher out of the water than it used to do. I
examined the barrel which was driven on shore, and soon found it was a
barrel of gunpowder; but it had taken water, and the powder was
caked as hard as a stone. However, I rolled it farther on shore for
the present, and went on upon the sands as near as could to the
wreck of the ship to look for more.
  When I came down to the ship I found it strangely removed. The
forecastle, which lay before buried in sand, was heaved up at least
six feet; and the stern, which was broken to pieces, and parted from
the rest by the force of the sea soon after I had left rummaging
her, was tossed, as it were, up, and cast on one side, and the sand
was thrown so high on that side next her stern, that whereas there was
a great place of water before, so that I could not come within a
quarter of a mile of the wreck without swimming, I could now walk
quite up to her when the tide was out. I was surprised with this at
first, but soon concluded it must be done by the earthquake. And as by
this violence the ship was more broken open than formerly, so many
things came daily on shore, which the sea had loosened, and which
the winds and water rolled by degrees to the land.
  This wholly diverted my thoughts from the design of removing my
habitation; and I busied myself mightily, that day especially, in
searching whether I could make any way into the ship. But I found
nothing was to be expected of that kind, for that all inside of the
ship was choked up with sand. However, as I had learned not to despair
of anything, I resolved to pull everything to pieces that I could of
the ship, concluding that everything I could get from her would be
of some use or other to me.
  May 3. - I began with my saw, and cut a piece of a beam through,
which I thought held some of the upper part or quarter-deck
together; and when I had cut it through, I cleared away the sand as
well as I could from the side which lay highest; but the tide coming
in, I was obliged to give over for that time.
  May 4. - I went a-fishing, but caught not one fish that I durst
eat of, till I was weary of my sport; when, just going to leave off
I caught a young dolphin. I had made me a long line of some rope-yarn,
but I had no hooks; yet I frequently caught fish enough, as much as
I cared to eat; all which I dried in the sun, and eat them dry.
  May 5. - Worked on the wreck, cut another beam asunder, and
brought three great fir-planks off from the decks, which I tied
together, and made swim on shore, when the tide of flood came on.
  May 6. - Worked on the wreck, got several iron bolts out of her, and
other pieces of iron-work; worked very hard, and came home very much
tired, and had thoughts of giving it over.
  May 7. - Went to the wreck again, but with an intent not to work,
but found the weight of the wreck had broke itself down, the beams
being cut; that several pieces of the ship seemed to lie loose, and
the inside of the hold lay so open that I could see into it, but
almost full of water and sand.
  May 8. - Went to the wreck, and carried an iron crow to wrench up
the deck, which lay now quite clear of the water or sand. I wrenched
open two planks, and brought them on shore also with the tide. I
left the iron crow in the wreck for next day.
  May 9. - Went to the wreck, and with the crow made way into the body
of the wreck, and felt several casks, and loosened them with the crow,
but could not break them up. I felt also the roll of English lead, and
could stir it, but it was too heavy to remove.
  May 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. - Went every day to the wreck, and got a
great deal of pieces of timber, and boards, or plank, and two or three
hundredweight of iron.
  May 15. - I carried two hatchets to try if I could not cut a piece
off of the roll of lead, by placing the edge of one hatchet, and
driving it with the other; but, as it lay about a foot and a half in
the water, I could not make any blow to drive the hatchet.
  May 16. - It had blowed hard in the night, and the wreck appeared
more broken by the force of the water; but I stayed so long in the
woods to get pigeons for food, that the tide prevented me going to the
wreck that day.
  May 17. - I saw some pieces of the wreck blown on shore, at a
great distance, near two miles off me, but resolved to see what they
were, and found it was a piece of the head, but too heavy for me to
bring away.
  May 24. - Every day to this day I worked on the wreck, and with hard
labor I loosened some things so much with the crow that the first
blowing tide several casks floated out, and two of the seamen's
chests. But the wind blowing from the shore, nothing came to land that
day but pieces of timber, and a hogshead, which had some brazil pork
in it, but the salt water and the sand had spoiled it.
  I continued this work every day to the 15th of June, except the time
necessary to get food, which I always appointed, during this part of
my employment, to be when the tide was up, that I might be ready
when it was ebbed out. And by this time I had gotten timber, and
plank, and iron-work enough to have builded a good boat, if I had
known how; and also, I got at several times, and in several pieces,
near one hundredweight of the sheet-lead.
  June 16. - Going down to the seaside, I found a large tortoise, or
turtle. This was the first I had seen, which it seems was only my
misfortune, not any defect of the place, or scarcity; for had I
happened to be on the other side of the island, I might have had
hundreds of them every day, as I found afterwards; but, perhaps, had
paid dear enough for them.
  June 17. - I spent in cooking the turtle. I found in her three-score
eggs; and her flesh was to me, at that time, the most savory and
pleasant that ever I tasted in my life, having had no flesh, but of
goats and fowls, since I landed in this horrid place.
  June 18. - Rained all day, and I stayed within. I thought at this
time the rain felt cold, and I was something chilly, which I knew
was not usual in that latitude.
  June 19. - Very ill, and shivering, as if the weather had been cold.
  June 20. - No rest all night; violent pains in my head, and
feverish.
  June 21. - Very ill, frighted almost to death with the apprehensions
of my sad condition, to be sick, and no help. Prayed to God for the
first time since the storm off of Hull, but scarce knew what I said,
or why; my thoughts being all confused.
  June 22. - A little better, but under dreadful apprehensions of
sickness.
  June 23. - Very bad again; cold and shivering, and then a violent
headache.
  June 24. - Much better.
  June 25. - An ague very violent; the fit held me seven hours; cold
fit, and hot, with faint sweats after it.
  June 26. - Better; and having no victuals to eat, took my gun, but
found myself very weak. However, I killed a she-goat, and with much
difficulty got it home, and broiled some of it, and eat. I would
fain have stewed it, and made some broth, but had no pot.
  June 27. - The ague again so violent that I lay abed all day, and
neither eat nor drank. I was ready to perish for thirst; but so
weak, I had not strength to stand up, or to get myself any water to
drink. Prayed to God again, but was light-headed; and when I was
not, I was so ignorant that I knew not what to say; only I lay and
cried, "Lord, look upon me! Lord, pity me! Lord, have mercy upon
me!" I suppose I did nothing else for two or three hours, till the fit
wearing off, I fell asleep and did not wake till far in the night.
When I waked, I found myself much refreshed, but weak, and exceedingly
thirsty. However, as I had no water in my whole habitation, I was
forced to lie till morning, and went to sleep again. In this second
sleep I had this terrible dream.
  I thought that I was sitting on the ground, on the outside of my
wall, where I sat when the storm blew after the earthquake, and that I
saw a man descend from a great black cloud, in a bright flame of fire,
and light upon the ground. He was all over as bright as a flame, so
that I could but just bear to look towards him. His countenance was
most inexpressibly dreadful, impossible for words to describe. When he
stepped upon the ground with his feet, I thought the earth trembled,
just as it had done before in the earthquake, and all the air
looked, to my apprehension, as if it had been filled with flashes of
fire.
  He was no sooner landed upon the earth, but he moved forward towards
me, with a long spear or weapon in his hand, to kill me; and when he
came to a rising ground, at some distance, he spoke to me, or I
heard a voice so terrible that it is impossible to express the
terror of it. All that I can say I understood was this: "Seeing all
these things have not brought thee to repentance, now thou shalt die;"
at which words I thought he lifted up the spear that was in his hand
to kill me.
  No one that shall ever read this account, will expect that I
should be able to describe the horrors of my soul at this terrible
vision; I mean, that even while it was a dream, I even dreamed of
those horrors; nor is it any more possible to describe the
impression that remained upon my mind when I awaked and found it was
but a dream.
  I had, alas! no divine knowledge; what I had received by the good
instruction of my father was then worn out, by an uninterrupted
series, for eight years, of seafaring wickedness, and a constant
conversation with nothing but such as were, like myself, wicked and
profane to the last degree. I do not remember that I had, in all
that time, one thought that so much as tended either to looking
upwards toward God, or inwards towards a reflection upon my ways;
but a certain stupidity of soul, without desire of good, or conscience
of evil, had entirely over-whelmed me; and I was all that the most
hardened, unthinking, wicked creature among our common sailors can
be supposed to be; not having the least sense, either of the fear of
God, in danger, or of thankfulness to God, in deliverances.
  In the relating what is already past of my story, this will be the
more easily believed, when I shall add, that through all the variety
of miseries that had to this day befallen me, I never had so much as
one thought of it being the hand of God, or that it was a just
punishment for my sin; my rebellious behavior against my father, or my
present sins, which were great; or so much as a punishment for the
general course of my wicked life. When I was on the desperate
expedition on the desert shores of Africa, I never had so much as
one thought of what would become of me; or one wish to God to direct
me whither I should go, or to keep me from the danger which apparently
surrounded me, as well from voracious creatures as cruel savages.
But I was merely thoughtless of a God or a Providence; acted like a
mere brute from the principles of Nature, and by the dictates of
common sense only, and indeed hardly that.
  When I was delivered and taken up at sea by the Portugal captain,
well used, and dealt justly and honorably with, as well as charitably,
I had not the least thankfulness in my thoughts. When again I was
shipwrecked, ruined, and in danger of drowning on this island, I was
as far from remorse, or looking on it as a judgment; I only said to
myself often, that I was an unfortunate dog, and born to be always
miserable.
  It is true, when I got on shore first here, and found all my
ship's crew drowned, and myself spared, I was surprised with a kind of
ecstasy, and some transports of soul, which, had the grace of God
assisted, might have come up to true thankfulness; but it ended
where it begun, in a mere common flight of joy, or, as I may say,
being glad I was alive, without the least reflection upon the
distinguishing goodness of the Hand which had preserved me, and had
singled me out to be preserved, when all the rest were destroyed; or
an inquiry why Providence had been thus merciful to me; even just
the same common sort of joy which seamen generally have after they are
got safe ashore from a shipwreck, which they drown all in the next
bowl of punch, and forget almost as soon as it is over, and all the
rest of my life was like it.
  Even when I was afterwards, on due consideration, made sensible of
my condition, how I was cast on this dreadful place, out of the
reach of human kind, out of all hope of relief, or prospect of
redemption, as soon as I saw but a prospect of living, and that I
should not starve and perish for hunger, all the sense of my
affliction wore off, and I began to be very easy, applied myself to
the works proper for my preservation and supply, and was far enough
from being afflicted at my condition, as a judgment from heaven, or as
the hand of God against me; these were thoughts which very seldom
entered my head.
  The growing up of the corn, as is hinted in my journal, had at first
some little influence upon me, and began to affect me with
seriousness, as long as I thought it had something miraculous in it;
but as soon as ever that part of the thought was removed, all the
impression which was raised from it wore off also, as I have noted
already.
  Even the earthquake, though nothing could be more terrible in its
nature, or more immediately directing to the invisible Power, which
alone directs such things, yet no sooner was the first fright over,
but the impression it had made went off also. I had no more sense of
God or His judgments, much less of the present affliction of my
circumstances being from His Hand, than if had been in the most
prosperous condition of life.
  But now, when I began to be sick, and a leisurely view of the
miseries of death came to place itself before me; when my spirits
began to sink under the burden of a strong distemper, and Nature was
exhausted with the violence of the fever; conscience, that had slept
so long, began to awake, and I began to reproach myself with my past
life, in which I had so evidently, by uncommon wickedness, provoked
the justice of God to lay me under uncommon strokes, and to deal
with me in so vindictive a manner.
  These reflections oppressed me for the second or third day of my
distemper; and in the violence, as well of the fever as of the
dreadful reproaches of my conscience, extorted some words from me,
like praying to God, though I cannot say they were either a prayer
attended with desires or with hopes; it was rather the voice of mere
fright and distress. My thoughts were confused, the convictions
great upon my mind, and the horror of dying in such a miserable
condition, raised vapors into my head with the mere apprehensions; and
in these hurries of my soul, I know not what my tongue might
express; but it was rather exclamation, such as, "Lord! what a
miserable creature am I! If I should be sick, I shall certainly die
for want of help; and what will become of me?" Then the tears burst
out of my eyes, and I could say no more for a good while.
  In this interval, the good advice of my father came to my mind,
and presently his prediction, which I mentioned at the beginning of
this story, viz., that if I did take this foolish step, God would
not bless me, and I would have leisure hereafter to reflect upon
having neglected his counsel, when there might be none to assist in my
recovery. "Now," said I aloud, "my dear father's words are come to
pass; God's justice has overtaken me, and I have none to help or
hear me. I rejected the voice of Providence, which had mercifully
put me in a posture or station of life wherein I might have been happy
and easy; but I would neither see it myself nor learn to know the
blessing of it from my parents. I left them to mourn over my folly,
and now I am left to mourn under the consequences of it. I refused
their help and assistance, who would have lifted me into the world,
and would have made everything easy to me; and now I have difficulties
to struggle with, too great for even Nature itself to support, and
no assistance, no help, no comfort, no advice." Then I cried out,
"Lord, be my help, for I am in great distress."
  This was the first prayer, if I may call it so, that I had made
for many years. But I return to my journal.
  June 28. - Having been somewhat refreshed with the sleep I had
had, and the fit being entirely off, I got up; and though the fright
and terror of my -dream was very great, yet I considered that the
fit of the ague would return again the next day, and now was my time
to get something to refresh and support myself when I should be ill.
And the first thing I did I filled a large square case-bottle with
water, and set it upon my table in reach of my bed; and to take off
the chill or aguish disposition of the water, I put about a quarter of
a pint of rum into it, and mixed them together. Then I got me a
piece of the goat's flesh, and broiled it on the coals, but could
eat very little. I walked about, but was very weak, and withal very
sad and heavy-hearted in the sense of my miserable condition, dreading
the return of my distemper the next day. At night I made my supper
of three of the turtle's eggs, which I roasted in the ashes, and
eat, as we call it, in the shell; and this was the first bit of meat I
had ever asked God's blessing to, even as I could remember, in my
whole life.
  After I had eaten, I tried to walk, but found myself so weak that
I could hardly carry the gun (for I never went out without that); so I
went but a little way, and sat down upon the ground, looking out
upon the sea, which was just before me, and very calm and smooth. As I
sat here, some such thoughts as these occurred to me.
  What is this earth and sea, of which I have seen so much? Whence
is it produced? And what am I, and all the other creatures, wild and
tame, human and brutal, whence are we? Sure we are all made by some
secret Power, who formed the earth and sea, the air and sky. And who
is that?
  Then it followed most naturally, It is God that has made it all.
Well, but then it came on strangely, if God has made all these things,
He guides and governs them all, and all things that concern them;
for the Power that could make all things, must certainly have power to
guide and direct them.
  If so, nothing can happen in the great circuit of His works,
either without His knowledge or appointment. And if nothing happens
without His knowledge, He knows that I am here, and am in this
dreadful condition. And if nothing happens without His appointment, He
has appointed all this to befall me.
  Nothing occurred to my thoughts to contradict any of these
conclusions; and therefore it rested upon me with the greater force,
that it must needs be that God has appointed all this to befall me;
that I was brought to this miserable circumstance by His direction, He
having the sole power, not of me only, but of everything that happened
in the world. Immediately it followed, Why has God done this to me?
What have I done to be thus used?
  My conscience presently checked me in that inquiry, as if I had
blasphemed, and methough it spoke to me like a voice: Wretch! dost
thou ask what thou hast done? Look back upon a dreadful misspent life,
and ask thyself what thou hast done? Ask, why is it that thou wert not
long ago destroyed? Why wert thou not drowned in Yarmouth Roads;
killed in the fight when the ship was taken by the Sallee
man-of-war; devoured by the wild beasts on the coast of Africa; or
drowned here, when all the crew perished but thyself Dost thou ask,
What have I done?
  I was struck dumb with these reflections, as one astonished, and had
not a word to say, no, not to answer to myself, but rose up pensive
and sad, walked back to my retreat, and went up over my wall, as if
I had been going to bed. But my thoughts were sadly disturbed, and I
had no inclination to sleep; so I sat down in my chair, and lighted my
lamp, for it began to be dark. Now, as the apprehension of the
return of my distemper terrified me very much, it occurred to my
thought that the Brazilians take no physic but their tobacco for
almost all distempers; and I had a piece of a roll of tobacco in one
of the chests, which was quite cured, and some also that was green,
and not quite cured.
  I went, directed by Heaven no doubt; for in this chest I found a
cure both for soul and body. I opened the chest, and found what I
looked for, viz., the tobacco, and as the few books I had saved lay
there too, I took out one of the Bibles which I mentioned before,
and which to this time I had not found leisure, or so much as
inclination, to look into. I say, I took it out, and brought both that
and the tobacco with me to the table.
  What use to make of the tobacco I knew not, as to my distemper, or
whether it was good for it or no; but I tried several experiments with
it, as if I was resolved it should hit one way or other. I first
took a piece of a leaf, and chewed it in my mouth, which indeed at
first almost stupefied my brain, the tobacco being green and strong,
and that I had not been much used to it. Then I took some and
steeped it an hour or two in some rum, and resolved to take dose of it
when I lay down. And lastly, I burnt some upon a pan of coals, and
held my nose close over the smoke of it as long as I could bear it, as
well for the heat, as almost for suffocation.
  In the interval of this operation, I took up the Bible, and began to
read, but my head was too much disturbed with the tobacco to bear
reading, at least that time; only having opened the book casually, the
first words that occurred to me were these, "Call on Me in the day
of trouble, and I will deliver, and thou shalt glorify Me."
  The words were very apt to my case, and made some impression upon my
thoughts at the time of reading them, though not so much as they did
afterwards; for as for being delivered, the word had no sound, as I
may say, to me, the thing was so remote, so impossible in my
apprehension of things, that I began to say, as the children of Israel
did when they were promised flesh to eat, "Can God spread a table in
the wilderness?" so I began to say, Can God Himself deliver me from
this place? And as it was not for many years that any hope appeared,
this prevailed very often upon my thoughts. But, however, the words
made a great impression upon me, and I mused upon them very often.
  It grew now late, and the tobacco had, as I said, dozed my head so
much, that I inclined to sleep; so I left my lamp burning in the cave,
lest I should want anything in the night, and went to bed. But
before I lay down, I did what I never had done in all my life: I
kneeled down and prayed to God to fulfill the promise to me, that if I
called upon Him in the day of trouble, He would deliver me. After my
broken and imperfect prayer was over, I drank the rum in which I had
steeped the tobacco; which was so strong and rank of the tobacco
that indeed I could scarcely get it down. Immediately upon this I went
to bed. I found presently it flew up in my head violently; but I
fell into a sound sleep, and waked no more till, by the sun, it must
necessarily be near three o'clock in the afternoon the next day.
Nay, to his hour I am partly of the opinion that I slept all the
next day and night, and till almost three that day after; for
otherwise I know not how I should lose a day out of my reckoning in
the days of the week, as it appeared some years after had done. For if
I had lost it by crossing and recrossing the line, I should have
lost more than one day. But certainly I lost a day in my account,
and never knew which way.
  Be that, however, one way or the other, when I awaked I found myself
exceedingly refreshed, and my spirits lively and cheerful. I got up, I
was stronger than I was the day before, and my stomach better, for I
was hungry; and, in short, I had no fit the next day, but continued
much altered for the better. This was the 29th.
  The 30th was my well day, of course, and I went abroad with my
gun, but did not care to travel too far. I killed a sea-fowl or two,
something like a brand-goose, and brought them home, but was not
very forward to eat them; so I eat some more of the turtle's eggs,
which were very good. This evening I renewed the medicine, which I had
supposed did me good the day before, viz., the tobacco steeped in rum;
only I did not take so much as before, nor did I chew any of the leaf,
or hold my head over the smoke. However, I was not so well the next
day, which was the first of July, as I hoped I should have been; for I
had a little spice of the cold fit, but it was not much.
  July 2. - I renewed the medicine all the three ways; and dosed
myself with it as at first, and doubled the quantity which I drank.
  July 2. - I missed the fit for good and all, though I did not
recover my full strength for some weeks after. While I was thus
gathering strength, my thoughts ran exceedingly upon this Scripture,
"I will deliver thee;" and the impossibility of my deliverance lay
much upon my mind, in bar of my ever expecting it. But as I was
discouraging myself with such thoughts, it occurred to my mind that
I pored so much upon my deliverance from the main affliction, that I
disregarded the deliverance I had received; and I was, as it were,
made to ask myself such questions as these, viz., Have I not been
delivered, and wonderfully too, from sickness? from the most
distressed condition that could be, and that was so frightful to me?
and what notice I had taken of it? Had I done my part? God had
delivered me, but I had not glorified Him; that is to say, I had not
owned and been thankful for that as a deliverance; and how could I
expect greater deliverance?
  This touched my heart very much; and immediately I kneeled down, and
gave God thanks aloud for my recovery from my sickness.
  July 4. - In the morning I took the Bible; and beginning at the
new Testament, I began seriously to read it, and imposed upon myself
to read awhile every morning and every night, not tying myself to
the number of chapters, but as long as my thoughts should engage me.
 It was not long afer I set seriously to this work, but I found my
heart more deeply and sincerely affected with the wickedness of my
past life. The impression of my dream revived, and the words, "All
these things have not brought thee to repentance," ran seriously in my
thought. I was earnestly begging of God to give me repentance, when it
happened providentially, the very day, that, reading the I came to
these words, "He is exalted a Prince and a Saviour, to give
repentance, and to give remission." I threw down the book; and with my
heart as well as my hands lifted up to heaven, in a kind of ecstasy of
joy, I cried out aloud, "Jesus, Thou son of David! Jesus, Thou exalted
Prince and Saviour, give me repentance!"
  This was the first time that I could say, in the true sense of the
words, that I prayed in all my life; for now I prayed with a sense
of my condition, and with a true Scripture view of hope founded on the
encouragement of the Word of God; and from this time, I may say, I
began to have hope that God would hear me.
  Now I began to construe the words mentioned above, "Call on Me,
and I will deliver you," in a different sense from what I had ever
done before; for then I had no notion of anything being called
deliverance but my being delivered from the captivity I was in; for
though I was indeed at large in the place, yet the island was
certainly a prison to me, and that in the worst sense in the world.
But now I learned to take it in another sense; now I looked back
upon my past life with such horror, and my sins appeared so
dreadful, that my soul sought nothing of God but deliverance from
the load of guilt that bore down all my comfort. As for my solitary
life, it was nothing; I did not so much as pray to be delivered from
it, or think of it; it was all of no consideration, in comparison to
this. And I add this part here, to hint to whoever shall read it, that
whenever they come to a true sense of things, they will find
deliverance from a sin a much greater blessing than deliverance from
affliction.
  But leaving this part, I return to my journal.
  My condition began now to be, though not less miserable as to my way
of living, yet much easier to my mind; and my thoughts being directed,
by a constant reading the Scripture, and praying to God, to things
of a higher nature, I had a great deal of comfort within, which,
till now, I knew nothing of. Also, as my health and strength returned,
I bestirred myself to furnish myself with everything that I wanted,
and make my way of living as regular as I could.
  From the 4th of July to the 14th I was chiefly employed in walking
about with my gun in my hand, a little and a little at a time, as a
man that was gathering up his strength after a fit of sickness; for it
is hardly to be imagined how low I was, and to what weakness I was
reduced. The application which I made use of was perfectly new, and
perhaps what had never cured an ague before; neither can I recommend
it to any one to practise, by this experiment; and though it did carry
off the fit, yet it rather contributed to weakening me; for I had
frequent convulsions in my nerves and limbs for some time.
  I learnt from it also this, in particular, that being abroad in
the rain season was the most pernicious thing to my health that
could be, especially in those rains which came attended with storms
and hurricanes of wind; for as the rain which came in the dry season
was always most accompanied with such storms, so I found that rain was
much more dangerous than the rain which fell in September and October.
  I had been now on this unhappy island above ten months; all
possibility of deliverance from this condition seemed to be entirely
taken from me; and I firmly believed that no human shape had ever
set foot upon that place. Having now secured my habitation, as I
thought, fully to my mind, I had a great desire to make a more perfect
discovery of the island, and to see what other productions I might
find, which I yet knew nothing of.
  It was the 15th of July that I began to take a more particular
survey of the island itself. I went up the creek first, where, as I
hinted, I brought my rafts on shore. I found, after I came about two
miles up, that the tide did not flow any higher, and that it was no
more than a little brook of running water, and very fresh and good;
but this being the dry season, there was hardly any water in some
parts of it, at least, not enough to run in any stream, so as it could
be perceived.
  On the bank of this brook I found many pleasant savannas or meadows,
plain, smooth, and covered with grass; and on the water, as might be
supposed, never overflowed, I found a great deal of tobacco, green,
and growing to a great and very strong stalk. There were diverse other
plants, which I had no notion of, or understanding about, and might,
perhaps, have virtues of their own which I could not find out.
  I searched for the cassava root, which the Indians, in all that
climate, make their bread of, but I could find none. I saw large
plants of aloes, but did not then understand them. I saw several
sugar-canes, but wild, and, for want of cultivation, imperfect. I
contented myself with these discoveries for this time, and came
back, musing with myself what course I might take to know the virtue
and goodness of any of the fruits or plants which I should discover;
but could bring it to no conclusion; for, in short, I had made so
little observation while I was in the Brazils, that I knew little of
the plants in the field, at least very little that might serve me to
any purpose now in my distress.
  The next day, the 16th, I went up the same way again; and after
going something farther than I had gone the day before, I found the
brook and the savannas began to cease, and the country became more
woody than before. In this part I found different fruits, and
particularly I found melons upon the ground in great abundance, and
grapes upon the trees. The vines had spread indeed over the trees, and
the clusters of grapes were just now in their prime, very ripe and
rich. This was a surprising discovery, and I was exceeding glad of
them; but I was warned by my experience to eat sparingly of them,
remembering that when I was ashore in Barbary the eating of grapes
killed several of our Englishmen, who were slaves there, by throwing
them into fluxes and fevers. But I found an excellent use of these
grapes; and that was, to cure or dry them in the sun, and keep them as
dried grapes or raisins are kept, which I thought would be, as
indeed they were, as wholesome as agreeable to eat, when no grapes;
might be to be had.
  I spent all that evening there, and went not back to my
habitation; which, by the way, was the first night, as I might say,
I had lain from home. In the night, I took my first contrivance, and
got up into a tree, where I slept well; and the next morning proceeded
upon my discovery, travelling near four miles, as I might judge by the
length of the valley, keeping still due north, with a ridge of hills
on the south and north side of me.
  At the end of this march I came to an opening, where the country
seemed to descend to the west; and a little spring of fresh water,
which issued out of the side of the hill by me, ran the other way,
that is, due east; and the country appeared so fresh, so green, so
flourishing, everything being in a constant verdure or flourish of
spring, that it looked like a planted garden.
  I descended a little on the side of that delicious vale, surveying
it with a secret kind of pleasure, though mixed with my other
afflicting thoughts, to think that this was all my own; and I was king
and lord of all this country indefeasibly, and had a right of
possession; and, if I could convey it, I might have it in
inheritance as completely as any lord of a manor in England. I saw
here abundance of cocoa trees, orange, and lemon, and citron trees;
but all wild, and very few bearing any fruit, at least not then.
However, the green limes that I gathered were not only pleasant to
eat, but very wholesome; and I mixed their juice afterwards with
water, which made it very wholesome, and very cool and refreshing.
  I found now I had business enough to gather and carry home; and I
resolved to lay up a store, as well of grapes as limes and lemons to
furnish myself for the wet season, which I knew was approaching.
  In order to this, I gathered a great heap of grapes in one place,
and a lesser heap in another place; and a great parcel of limes and
lemons in another place; and taking a few of each with me, I travelled
homeward; and resolved to come again, and bring a bag or sack, or what
I could make, to carry the rest home.
  Accordingly, having spent three days in this journey, I came home
(so I must now call my tent and my cave); but before I got thither,
the grapes were spoiled; the richness of the fruits, and the weight of
the juice, having broken them and bruised them, they were good for
little or nothing: as to the limes, they were good, but I could
bring but a few.
  The next day, being the 19th, I went back, having made me two
small bags to bring home my harvest; but I was surprised, when, coming
to my heap of grapes, which were so rich and fine when I gathered
them, I found them all spread about, trod to pieces, and dragged
about, some here, some there, and abundance eaten and devoured. By
this I concluded there were some wild creatures thereabouts, which had
done this; but what they were, I knew not.
  However, as I found that there was no laying them up on heaps, and
no carrying them away in a sack, but that one way they would be
destroyed, and the other way they would be crushed with their own
weight, I took another course; for I gathered a large quantity of
the grapes, and hung them up upon the out-branches of the trees,
that they might cure and dry in the sun; and as for the limes and
lemons, I carried as many back as I could well stand under.
  When I came home from this journey, I contemplated with great
pleasure the fruitfulness of that valley, and the pleasantness of
the situation; the security from storms on that side, the water and
the wood; and concluded that I had pitched upon a place to fix my
abode, which was by far the worst part of the country. Upon the whole,
I began to consider of removing my habitation, and to look out for a
place equally safe as where I now was situate, if possible, in that
pleasant fruitful part of the island.
  This thought ran long in my head, and I was exceeding fond of it for
some time, the pleasantness of the place tempting me; but when I
came to a nearer view of it, and to consider that I was now by the
seaside, where it was at least possible that something might happen to
my advantage, and, by the same ill fate that brought me hither,
might bring some other unhappy wretches to the same place; and
though it was scarce probable that any such thing should ever
happen, yet to enclose myself among the hills and woods in the
centre of the island, was to anticipate my bondage, and to render such
an affair not only improbable, but impossible; and that therefore I
ought not by any means to remove.
  However, I was so enamored of this place that I spent much of my
time there for the whole remaining part of the month of July; and
though, upon second thoughts, I resolved as above, not to remove,
yet I built me a little kind of bower, and surrounded it at a distance
with a strong fence, being a double hedge as high as I could reach,
well staked, and filled between with brushwood. And here I lay very
secure, sometimes two or three nights together, always going over it
with a ladder, as before; so that I fancied now I had my country-house
and my sea-coast house; and this work took me up to the beginning of
August.
  I had but newly finished my fence, and began to enjoy my labor,
but the rains came on, and made me stick close to my first habitation;
for though I had made me a tent like the other, with a piece of a
sail, and spread it very well, yet I had not the shelter of a hill
to keep me from storms, nor a cave behind me to retreat into when
the rains were extraordinary.
  About the beginning of August, as I said, I had finished my bower,
and began to enjoy myself. The 3rd of August I found the grapes I
had hung up were perfectly dried, and indeed were excellent good
raisins of the sun; so I began to take them down from the trees. And
it was very happy that I do so, for the rains which followed would
have spoiled them, and I had lost the best part of my winter food; for
I had above two hundred large bunches of them. No sooner had I taken
them all down, and carried most of them home to my cave, but it
began to rain; and from hence, which was the 14th of August, it
rained, more or less, every day till the middle of October, and
sometimes so violently, that I could not stir out of my cave for
several days.
  In this season, I was much surprised with the increase of my family.
I had been much concerned for the loss of one of my cats, who run away
from me, or, as I thought, had been dead, and I heard no more tale
or tidings of her, still, to my astonishment, she came home about
the end of August with three kittens. This was the more strange to me,
because, though I had killed a wildcat, as I called it, with my gun,
yet I thought it was a quite different kind from our European cats;
yet the young cats were the same kind of house-breed like the old one;
and both my cats being females, I thought it very strange. But from
these three cats I afterwards came to be so pestered with cats, that I
was forced to kill them like vermin, or wild beasts, and to drive them
from my house as much as possible.
  From the 14th of August to the 26th, incessant rain, so that I could
not stir, and was now very careful not to be much wet. In this
confinement, I began to be straitened for food; but venturing out
twice, I one day killed a goat, and the last day, which was the
26th, found a very large tortoise, which was a treat to me, and my
food was regulated thus: I eat a bunch of raisins for my breakfast,
a piece of the goat's flesh, or of the turtle, for my dinner, broiled;
for, to my great misfortune, I had no vessel to boil or stew anything;
and two or three of the turtle's eggs for my supper.
  During this confinement in my cover by the rain, I worked daily
two or three hours at enlarging my cave, and by degrees worked it on
towards one side, till I came to the outside of the hill, and made a
door, or way out, which came beyond my fence or wall; and so I came in
and out this way. But I was not perfectly easy at lying so open; for
as I had managed myself before, I was in a perfect enclosure;
whereas now, I thought I lay exposed, and open for anything to come in
upon me; and yet I could not perceive that there was any living
thing to fear, the biggest creature that I had yet seen upon the
island being a goat.
  September 20. - I was now come to the unhappy anniversary of my
landing. I cast up the notches on my post, and found I had been on
shore three hundred and sixty-five days. I kept this day as a solemn
fast, setting it apart to religious exercise, prostrating myself on
the ground with the most serious humiliation, confessing my sins to
God, acknowledging His righteous judgments upon me, and praying to Him
to have mercy on me through Jesus Christ; and having not tasted the
least refreshment for twelve hours, even till the going down of the
sun, I then eat a biscuit-cake and a bunch of grapes and went to
bed, finishing the day as I began it.
  I had all this time observed no Sabbath day, for as at first I had
no sense of religion upon my mind, I had, after some time, omitted
to distinguish the weeks, by making a longer notch than ordinary for
the Sabbath day, and so did not really know what any of the days were.
But now, having cast up the days, as above, I found I had been there a
year, so I divided it into weeks, and set apart every seventh day
for a Sabbath; though I found at the end of my account, I had lost a
day or two in my reckoning.
  A little after this my ink began to fail me, and so I contented
myself to use it more sparingly, and to write down only the most
remarkable events of my life, without continuing a daily memorandum of
other things.
  The rainy season and the dry season began now to appear regular to
me, and I learned to divide them so as to provide for them
accordingly; but I bought all my experience before I had it, and
this I am going to relate was one of the most discouraging experiments
that I made at all. I have mentioned that I had saved the few ears
of barley and rice, which I had so surprisingly found spring up, as
I thought, of themselves, and believe there were about thirty stalks
of rice, and about twenty of barley; and now I thought it a proper
time to sow it after the rains, the sun being in its southern
position, going from me.
  Accordingly I dug up a piece of ground as well as I could with my
wooden spade, and dividing it into two parts, I sowed my grain; but as
I was sowing it, it casually occurred to my thoughts that I would
not sow it all at first, because I did not know when was the proper
time for it, so I sowed about two-thirds of the seed, leaving about
a handful of each.
  It was a great comfort to me afterwards that I did so, for not one
grain of that I sowed this time came to anything, for the dry months
following, the earth having had no rain after the seed was sown, it
had no moisture to assist its growth, and never came up at all till
the wet season had come again, and then it grew as if it had been
but newly sown.
  Finding my first seed did not grow, which I easily imagined was by
the drought, I sought for a moister piece of ground to make another
trial in, and I dug up a piece of ground near my new bower, and
sowed the rest of my seed in February, a little before the vernal
equinox. And this having the rainy months of March and April to
water it, sprung up very pleasantly, and yielded a very good crop; but
having part of the seed left only, and not daring to sow all that I
had, I had but a small quantity at last, my whole crop not amounting
to above half a peck of each kind. But by this experiment I was made
master of my business, and knew exactly when the proper season was
to sow, and that I might expect two seed-times and two harvests
every year.
  While this corn was growing, I made a little discovery, which was of
use to me afterwards. As soon as the rains were over, and the
weather began to settle, which was about the month of November, I made
a visit up the country to my bower, where, though I had not been
some months, yet I found all things just as I left them. The circle or
double hedge that I had made was not only firm and entire, but the
stakes which I had cut out of some trees that grew hereabouts were all
shot out, and grown with long branches, as much as a willow-tree
usually shoots the first year after loping its head. I could not
tell what tree to call it that these stakes were cut from. I was
surprised, and yet very well pleased to see the young trees grow,
and I pruned them, and led them up to grow as much alike as I could.
And it is scarce credible how beautiful a figure they grew into in
three years; so that though the hedge made a circle of about
twenty-five yards in diameter, yet the trees, for such I might now
call them, soon covered it, and it was a complete shade, sufficient to
lodge under all the dry season.
  This made me resolve to cut some more stakes, and make me a hedge
like this, in a semicircle round my wall (I mean that of my first
dwelling, which I did; and placing the trees or stakes in a double
row, at about eight yards distance from my first fence, they grew
presently, and were at first a fine cover to my habitation, and
afterward served for defence also, as I shall observe in its order.
I found now that the seasons of the year might generally be divided,
not into summer and winter, as in Europe, but into the rainy seasons
and the dry seasons; which were generally thus:

  Half February, March, half April: Rainy, the sun being then on, or
near the equinox.

  Half April, May, June, July, half August: Dry, the sun being then to
the north of the line.

  Half August, September, half October: Rainy, the sun being then come
back.

  Half October, November, December, January, half February: Dry, the
sun being then to the south of the line.

  The rainy season sometimes held longer or shorter as the winds
happened to blow, but this was the general observation I made. After I
had found by experience the ill consequence of being abroad in the
rain, I took care to furnish myself with provisions beforehand, that I
might not be obliged to go out; and I sat within doors, as much as
possible during the wet months.
  In this time I found much employment, and very suitable also to
the time, for I found great occasion of many things which I had no way
to furnish myself with but by hard labor and constant application;
particularly, I tried many ways to make myself a basket; but all the
twigs I could get for the purpose proved so brittle, that they would
do nothing. It proved of excellent advantage to me now, that when I
was a boy I used to take great delight in standing at a basket maker's
in the town where my father lived, to see them make their wicker-ware;
and being, as boys usually are, very officious to help, and a great
observer of the manner how they work those things, and sometimes
lending a hand, I had by this means full knowledge of the methods of
it. That I wanted nothing but the materials; when it came into my mind
that the twigs of that tree from whence I cut my stakes that grew
might possibly be as tough as the sallows, and willows, and osiers
in England, and I resolved to try.
  Accordingly, the next day, I went to my country-house, as I called
it; and cutting some of the smaller twigs, I found them to my
purpose as much as I could desire; whereupon I came the next time
prepared with a hatchet to cut down a quantity, which I soon found,
for there was great plenty of them. These I set up to dry within my
circle or hedge, and when they were fit for use, I carried them to
my cave; and here during the next season I employed myself in
making, as well as I could, a great many baskets, both to carry earth,
or to carry or lay up anything as I had occasion. And though I did not
finish them very handsomely, yet I made them sufficiently
serviceable for my purpose. And thus, afterwards, I took care never to
be without them; and as my wicker-ware decayed, I made more;
especially I made strong deep baskets to place my corn in, instead
of sacks, when I should come to have any quantity of it.
  Having mastered this difficulty, and employed a world of time
about it, I bestirred myself to see, if possible, how to supply two
wants. I had no vessels to hold anything that was liquid, except two
runlets, which were almost full of rum, and some glass bottles, some
of the common size, and others which were case-bottles square, for the
holding of waters, spirits, etc. I had not so much as a pot to boil
anything except a great kettle, which I saved out of the ship, and
which was too big for such use as I desired it, viz., to make broth,
and stew a bit of meat by itself. The second thing I would fain have
had was a tobacco-pipe; but it was impossible to me to make one.
However, I found contrivance for that, too, at last.
  I employed myself in planting my second rows of stakes or piles, and
in this wicker-working all the summer or dry season, when another
business took me up more time that it could be imagined I could spare.
  I mentioned before that I had a great mind to see the whole
island, and that I had travelled up the brook, and so on to where I
built my bower, and where I had an opening quite to the sea, on the
other side of the island. I now resolved to travel quite across to the
seashore on that side; so taking my gun, a hatchet, and my dog, and
a larger quantity of powder and shot than usual, with two
biscuit-cakes and a great bunch of raisins in my pouch for my store, I
began my journey. When I had passed the vale where my bower stood,
as above, I came within view of the sea to the west; and it being a
very clear day, I fairly descried land, whether an island or a
continent I could not tell; but it lay very high, extending from the
west to the WSW. at a very great distance; by my guess, it could not
be less than fifteen or twenty leagues off.
  I could not tell what part of the world this might be, otherwise
than that I know it must be part of America, and, as I concluded, by
all my observations, must be near the Spanish dominions, and perhaps
was all inhabited by savages, where, if I should have landed, I had
been in a worse condition than I was now; and therefore I acquiesced
in the dispositions of Providence which I began now to own and to
believe ordered everything for the best. I say, I quieted my mind with
this, and left afflicting myself with fruitless wishes of being there.
  Besides, after some pause upon this affair, I considered that if
this land was the Spanish coast I should certainly, one time or other,
see some vessel pass or repass one way or other; but if not, then it
was the savage coast between the Spanish country and Brazils, which
are indeed the worst of savages; for they are cannibals or men-eaters,
and fail not to murder and devour all the human bodies that fall
into their hands.
  With these considerations I walked very leisurely forward. I found
that side of the island, where I now was, much pleasanter than mine,
the open or savanna fields sweet, adorned with flowers and grass,
and full of very fine woods.
  I saw abundance of parrots, and fain would have caught one, if
possible, to have kept it to be tame, and taught it to speak to me.
I did, after some painstaking, catch a young parrot, for I knocked
it down with a stick, and having recovered it, I brought it home;
but it was some years before I could make him speak. However, at
last I taught him to call me by my name very familiarly. But the
accident that followed, though it be a trifle, will be very
diverting in its place.
  I was exceedingly diverted with this journey. I found in the low
grounds bares, as I thought them to be, and foxes; but they differed
greatly from all the other kinds I had met with, nor could I satisfy
myself to eat them, though I killed several. But I had no need to be
venturous, for I had no want of food, and of that which was very
good too; especially these three sorts, viz., goats, pigeons, and
turtle, or tortoise; which, added to my grapes, Leadenhall Market
could not have furnished a table better than I, in proportion to the
company. And though my case was deplorable enough, yet I had great
cause for thankfulness, and that I was not driven to any extremities
for food, rather plenty, even to dainties.
  I never travelled in this journey above two miles outright in a day,
or thereabouts; but I took so many turns and returns, to see what
discoveries I could make, that I came weary enough to the place
where I resolved to sit down for all night; and then I either
reposed myself in a tree, or surrounded myself with a row of stakes,
set upright in the ground, either from one tree to another, or so as
no wild creature could come at me without waking me.
  As soon as I came to the seashore, I was surprised to see that I had
taken up my lot on the worst side of the island, for here indeed the
shore was covered with innumerable turtles; whereas, on the other
side, I had found but three in a year and a half. Here was also an
infinite number of fowls of many kinds, some which I had seen, and
some which I had not see of before, and many of them were very good
meat, but such as I knew not the names of, except those called
penguins.
  I could have shot as many as I pleased, but was very sparing of my
powder and shot, and therefore had more mind to kill a she-goat, if
I could, which I could better feed on; and though there were many
goats here, more than on my side the island, yet it was with much more
difficulty that I could come near them, the country being flat and
even, and they saw me much sooner then when I was on the hill.
  I confess this side of the country was much pleasanter than mine;
but yet I had not the least inclination to remove, for as I was
fixed in my habitation, it became natural to me, and I seemed all
the while I was here to be as it were upon a journey, and from home.
However, I travelled along the shore of the sea towards the east, I
suppose about twelve miles, and then setting up a great pole upon
the shore for a mark, I concluded I would go home again; and that
the next journey I took should be on the other side of the island,
east from my dwelling, and so round till I came to my post again; of
which in its place.
  I took another way to come back than that I went, thinking I could
easily keep all the island so much in my view that I could not miss
finding my first dwelling by viewing the country. But I found myself
mistaken; for being come about two or three miles, I found myself
descended into a very large valley, but so surrounded with hills,
and those hill covered with wood, that I could not see which was my
way by any direction but that of the sun, nor even then, unless I knew
very well the position of the sun at that time of the day.
  It happened to my farther misfortune that the weather proved hazy
for three or four days while I was in this valley; and not being
able to see the sun, I wandered about very uncomfortably, and at
last was obliged to find out the seaside, look for my post, and come
back the same way I went; and then by easy journeys I turned homeward,
the weather being exceeding hot, and my gun, ammunition, hatchet,
and other things very heavy.
  In this journey my dog surprised a young kid, and seized upon it,
and I running in to take hold of it, caught it, and saved it alive
from the dog. I had a great mind to bring it home if I could, for I
had often been musing whether it might not be possible to get a kid or
two, and so raise a breed of tame goats, which might supply me when my
powder and shot should be all spent.
  I made a collar to this little creature, and with a string, which
I made of some rope-yarn, which I always carried about me, I led him
along, though with some   difficulty, till I came to my bower, and
there I enclosed him and left him, for I was very impatient to be at
home, from whence I had been absent above a month.
  I cannot express what a satisfaction it was to me to come into my
old hutch, and lie down in my hammock-bed. This little wandering
journey, without settled place of abode, had been so unpleasant to me,
that my own house, as I called it to myself, was a perfect
settlement to me compared to that; and it rendered everything about me
so comfortable, that I resolved I would never go a great way from it
again, while it should be my lot to stay on the island.
  I reposed myself here a week, to rest and regale myself af after
my long journey; during which most of the time was taken up in the
weighty affair of making a cage for my Poll, who began now to be a
mere domestic, and to be mighty well acquainted with me. Then I
began to think of the poor kid which I had penned in within my
little circle, and resolved to go and fetch it home, or give it some
food. Accordingly I went, and found it where I left it, for indeed
it could not get out, but almost starved for want of food. I went
out and cut boughs of trees, and branches of such shrubs as I could
find, and threw it over, and having fed it, I tied it as I did before,
to lead it away; but it was so tame with being hungry, that I had no
need to have tied it, for it followed me like a dog. And as I
continually fed it, the creature became so loving, so gentle, and so
fond, that it became from that time one of my domestics also, and
would never leave me afterwards.
  The rainy season of the autumnal equinox was 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. I gave humble and hearty thanks that God
had been pleased to discover to me even that it was possible I might
be more happy in this solitary condition, than I should have been in a
liberty of society, and in all the pleasures of the world; that He
could fully make up to me the deficiences of my solitary state, and
the want of human society, by His presence, and the communication of
His grace to my soul, supporting, comforting, and encouraging me to
depend upon His providence here, and hope for His eternal presence
hereafter.
  It was now that I began sensibly to feel how much more happy this
life I now led was, with all its miserable circumstances, than the
wicked, cursed, abominable life I led all the past part of my days.
And now I changed both my sorrows and my joys; my very desires
altered, my affections changed their gusts, and my delights were
perfectIy new from what they were at my first coming, or indeed for
the two years past.
  Before, as I walked about, either on my hunting, or for viewing
the country, the anguish of my soul at my condition would break out
upon me on a sudden, and my very heart would die within me, to think
of the woods, the mountains, the deserts I was in, and how I was a
prisoner, locked up with the eternal bars and bolts of the ocean, in
an uninhibited wilderness, without redemption. In the midst of the
greatest composures of my mind, this would break out upon me like a
storm, and make me wring my hands and weep like a child. Sometimes
it would take me in the middle of my work, and I would immediately sit
down and sigh, and look upon the ground for an hour or two together;
and this was still worse to me, for if I could burst out into tears,
or vent myself by words, it would go off, and the grief, having
exhausted itself, would abate.
  But now I began to exercise myself with new thoughts. I daily read
the Word of God, and applied all the comforts of it to my present
state. One morning, being very sad, I opened the Bible upon these
words, "I will never, never leave thee, nor forsake thee." Immediately
it occurred that these words were to me; why else should they be
directed in such a manner, just at the moment when I was mourning over
my condition, as one forsake of God and man? "Well, then," said I, "if
God does not forsake me, of what ill consequence can it be, or what
matters it, though the world should all forsake me, seeing on the
other hand, if I had all the world, and should lose the favor and
blessing of God, there would be no comparison in the loss?"
  From this moment I began to conclude in my mind that it was possible
for me to be more happy in this forsaken solitary condition, that it
was probable I should ever have been in any other particular state
in the world, and with this thought I was going to give thanks to
God for bringing me to this place.
  I know not what it was, but something shocked my mind at that
thought, and I durst not speak the words. "How canst thou be such a
hypocrite," said I, even audibly, "to pretend to be thankful for a
condition which, however thou mayest endeavor to be contented with,
thou wouldest rather pray heartily to be delivered from?" So I stopped
there; but though I could not say I thanked God for being there, yet I
sincerely gave thanks to God for opening my eyes, by whatever
afflicting providences, to see the former condition of my life, and to
mourn for my wickedness, and repent. I never opened the Bible, or shut
it, but my very soul within me blessed God for directing my friend
in England, without any order of mine, to pack it up among my goods,
and for assisting me afterwards to save it out of the wreck of the
ship.
  Thus, and in this disposition of mind, I began my third year; and
though I have not given the reader the trouble of so particular
account of my works this year as the first, yet in general it may be
observed, that I was very seldom idle, but having regularly divided my
time, according to the several daily employments that were before
me, such as, first my duty to God, and the reading the Scriptures,
which I constantly set apart some time for, thrice every day;
secondly, the going abroad with my gun for food, which generally
took me up three hours in every morning, when it did not rain;
thirdly, the ordering, curing, preserving, and cooking what I had
killed or catched for my supply; these took up great part of the
day; also it is to be considered that the middle of the day, when
the sun was in the zenith, the violence of the heat was too great to
stir out; so that about four hours in the evening was all the time I
could be supposed to work in, with this exception, that sometimes I
changed my hours of hunting and working, and went to work in the
morning, and abroad with my gun in the afternoon.
  To this short time allowed for labor, desire may be added the
exceeding laboriousness of my work; the many hours which, for want
of tools, want of help, and want of skill, everything I did took up
out of my time. For example, I was full two and forty days making me a
board for a long shelf, which I wanted in my cave; whereas two
sawyers, with their tools and a saw-pit, would have cut six of them
out of the same tree in half a day.
  My case was this: it was to be a large tree which was to be cut
down, because my board was to be a broad one. This tree I was three
days a-cutting down, and two more cutting off the boughs, and reducing
it to a log, or piece of timber. With inexpressible hacking and
hewing, I reduced both sides of it into chips till it begun to be
light enough to move; then I turned it, and made one side of it smooth
and flat as a board from end to end; then turning that side
downward, cut the other side, till I brought the plank to be about
three inches thick, and smooth on both sides. Any one may judge the
labor of my hands in such a piece of work; but labor and patience
carried me through that, and many other things. I only observe this in
particular, to show the reason why so much of my time went away with
so little work, viz., that what might be a little to be done with help
and tools, was a vast labor, and required a prodigious time to do
alone, and by hand. But not withstanding this, with patience and
labor, 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 the
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 eat it so close, that it could get no time to shoot up into
stalk.
  This I saw no remedy for but by 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 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 throve, I saw my little crop
surrounded with fowls, of I know 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 like 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 was gone away. And the event proved it to be so;
for as I walked off, as if I was 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 eat 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, viz., 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 not come at 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
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
broadswords, or cutlasses, which I saved among the arms out of the
ship. However, as my first crop of corn 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 at that
time.
  However, this was a 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 meantime, 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. 'Tis a
little wonderful, and what I believe few people have thought 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 and more sensible of it
every hour, even after I had got the first handful of seedcorn, 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 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 sowed, 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 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
labor and invention, to furnish myself with utensils proper for the
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 labor 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 learned 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 assistant to my
work; for now, as I said, I had a great employment upon my hands, as
follows, viz., I had long studied, by some means or other, to make
myself some earthern 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 a 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, 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
labored 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' labor.
  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 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, 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 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 pigskins, 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
re-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
color; 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, pigskins, 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 had 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 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 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 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 labor, 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 I how to weave
it or spin it; and had I known how, here was 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 neckcloths 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 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 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 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 hopes that
such a quantity would fully provide me with bread, etc.
  All the while these things were doing, you may be sure my thoughts
run 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 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 maneaters, and I knew by the latitude that I
could not be far off from that shore. That supposed they were not
cannibals, yet that they might kill me, as many Europeans who had
fallen into their hands had been served, even when they had been often
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 of, and did cast up in my thoughts afterwards, yet
took up none of my apprehensions at first, but my head ran mightily
upon the thought of getting over to the shore.
  Now I wished for my boy Xury, and the longboat 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 almost where she did at first, but not quite; and was
turned, by the force of the waves and the winds, almost bottom side
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 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, that 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 of 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 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, viz., 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, that when I had
chosen a vast tree in the woods, I might with much trouble cut it
down, if, after I 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 to make a boat of it; if, after this, I
must leave it just there where I found it, and was not able to
launch it into the water?
  One would have thought I could not have had the least reflection
upon my mind of my circumstance 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 own inquiries 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 't 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: I questioned
much whether Solomon ever had such a one for the building of the
Temple at Jerusalem. It was five feet often 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 awhile, and then
parted into branches. It was not without infinite labor 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 of it cut off, which I hacked and hewed through
with axe and hatchet, and inexpressible labor. 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
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 labor, 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 my cargo.
  When I had, gone through this work, I was extremely delighted with
it. The boat was really much bigger than I ever 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; and.had I gotten it into the water, I made 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, they cost
me infinite labor, 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 so make a declivity. This I
began, and it cost me a prodigious deal of pains; but who grudges
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 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 often or
twelve years before 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. 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 indeed to do with
it, nor was ever like 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 lust of the flesh, the lust of the
eye, or 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 turtles 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. I
had grapes enough to have made wine, or to have cured into raisins, to
have loaded that fleet when they had been built.
  But all I could make use of was all that was valuable. I had
enough to eat and to supply my wants, and what was all the rest to me?
If I killed more flesh than I could eat, the dog must eat it, or the
vermin. If I sowed more corn than I could eat, it must be spoiled. The
trees that I cut down were lying to rot on the ground; I could make no
more use of them than for fuel, and that I had no occasion for but
to dress my food.
  In a word, the nature and experience of things dictated to me,
upon just reflection, that all the good things of this world are no
farther good to us than they are for our use; and that whatever we may
heap up indeed 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, through indeed of great use to me. I had, as I hinted before,
a parcel of money, as well gold as silver, about thirty-six pounds
sterling. Alas! There the nasty, sorry, useless stuff lay; I had no
manner of business for it; and I often thought with myself, that I
would have given 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
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 season;
and if I had had the drawer full of diamonds, it had been the same
case, and they had been of no manner of value to me because of no use.
  I had now brought my state of life to be much easier in itself
than it was at first, and much easier to my mind, as well as to my
body. I frequently sat down to my meat with thankfulness, and
admired the hand of God's providence, which had thus spread my table
in the wilderness. I 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 that should fall into such distress as mine was; and this
was, to compare my present condition with what I at first expected
it should be; nay, with what it would certainly have been, if the good
providence of God had not wonderfully ordered the ship to be cast up
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,
or gunpowder and shot for getting my food.
  I spent whole hours, I may say whole days, in representing to
myself, in the most lively colors, how I must have acted if I had
got nothing out of the ship. How I could not have so much as got any
food, except fish and turtles; and that as it was long before I
found any of them, I must have perished first; that I should have
lived, if I had not perished, like a mere savage; that if I had killed
a goat or a fowl, by any contrivance, I had no way to flay or open
them, or part the flesh from the skin and the bowels, or to cut it up;
but must gnaw it with my teeth, and pull it with my claws, like a
beast.
  These reflections made me very sensible of the goodness of
Providence to me, and very thankful for my present condition, with all
its hardships and misfortunes; and this part also I cannot but
recommend to the reflection of those who are apt, in their misery,
to say, Is any affliction like mine? Let them consider how much
worse the cases of some people are, and their case might have been, if
Providence had thought fit.
  I had another reflection, which assisted me also to comfort my
mind with hopes; and this was, comparing my present condition with
what I had deserved, and had therefore reason to expect from the
hand of Providence. I had lived a dreadful life, perfectly destitute
of the knowledge and fear of God. I had been well instructed by father
and mother; neither had they been wanting to me in their early
endeavors to infuse a religious awe of God into my mind, a sense of.
my duty, and of what the nature and end of my being required of me.
But, alas! falling early into the seafaring life, which, of all the
lives, is the most destitute of the fear of God, though His terrors
are always before them; I say, falling early into the seafaring
life, and into seafaring company, all that little sense of religion
which I had entertained was laughed out of me by my messmates; by 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 of 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 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 the account of my wicked and hardened life
past; and when I looked about me and considered what particular
providences had attended me since coming into the 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 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 nevermore 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 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
unhabitable 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 had, so I found no ravenous beasts, no furious
wolves or tigers, to threaten my life; no venomous creatures, or
poisonous, which I might feed on to my hurt; no savages to murder
and devour me.
  In a word, as my life was a life of sorrow one way, so it was a life
of mercy another; and I wanted nothing to make it a life of comfort;
but to be able to make my sense of God's goodness to me, and care over
me in this condition, be my daily consolation; and after I did make
a just improvement of these things, I went away, and was no more sad.
  I had now been here so long that many -things which I brought on
shore for my help were either quite gone, or very much wasted, and
near spent. My ink, as I observed, had been gone for some time, all
but a very little, which I eked out with water, a little and a little,
till it was so pale it scarce left any appearance of black upon the
paper. As long as it lasted, I made use of it to minute down the
days of the month on which any remarkable thing happened to me. And,
first, by casting up times past, I remember that there was a strange
concurrence of days in the various providences which 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 my friends, and run 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 the 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 the shore in this island;
so that my wicked life and my solitary life began both on a day.
  The next thing to my ink's being wasted, was that of my bread; I
mean the biscuit, which I brought out of the ship. This I had
husbanded to the last degree, allowing myself but one cake of bread
a day for above a year; and yet I was quite without bread for 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 began to decay, too, mightily. As to linen, I had none
a good while, except some checkered shirts which I found in the chests
of the other seamen, and which I carefully preserved, because many
times I could bear no other clothes on but a shirt; and it was a great
great help to me that I had, among all the men's clothes of the
ship, almost three dozen of shirts. There were also several thick
watch-coats of the seamen's which were left indeed, but they were
too hot to wear; and though it is true that the weather was so violent
hot that there was no need of clothes, yet I could not go quite naked,
no, though I had been inclined to it, which I was not, nor could abide
the thoughts of it, though I was all alone.
  The reason why I could not go quite naked was, I could not bear
the heat of the sun so well when quite naked as with some clothes
on; nay, the very heat frequently blistered my skin; whereas, with a
shirt on, the air itself made some motion, and whistling under that
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 those 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 not to try if I could not make
jackets out of the great watch-coats which I had by me, and with
such other materials as I had; so I set to work a-tailoring, or
rather, indeed, a-botching, for I made most piteous work of it.
However, I made shift to make two or three 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 afterward.
  I have mentioned that I saved the skins of all the creatures that
I killed, I mean four-footed ones, and I had hung them up stretched
out with sticks in the sun, by which means some of them were so dry
and hard that they were fit for little, but others it seems were
very useful. The first thing I made of these was a great cap for my
head, with the hair on the outside, to shoot off the rain; and this
I performed so well, that after this I made me a suit of clothes
wholly of these skins, that is to say, a waistcoat, and breeches
open at 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 abroad, 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 me an
umbrella. I was indeed in great want of one, and had a great mind to
make one. I had seen them made in the Brazils, where they are very
useful in the great heats which are there; and I felt the heats
every jot as great here, and greater too, being nearer the equinox.
Besides, as I was obliged to be much abroad, it was a most useful
thing to me, as well for the rains as the heats. I took a world of
pains at it, and was a great while before I could make anything likely
to hold; nay, after I thought I had hit the way, I spoiled two or
three before I made one to my mind; but at last I made one that
answered indifferently well. The main difficulty I found was to make
it to let down. I could make it to spread; but if it did not let it
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 with skins, the hair upwards, so
that it cast off the rains 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 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?
  I cannot say that after this, for five years, any extraordinary
thing happened to me; but I lived on in the same course, in the same
posture and place, just as before. The chief things I was employed in,
besides my yearly labor of planting my barley and rice, and curing
my raisins, of both which I always kept up just enough to have
sufficient stock of one year's provisions beforehand - I say,
besides this yearly labor, and my daily labor of going out with my
gun, I had one labor, to make me a canoe, which at last I finished; so
that by digging a canal to it of six feet wide, and four feet deep,
I brought it into the creek, almost half a mile. As for the first,
which was so vastly big, as I made it without considering
beforehand, as I ought to do, how I should be able to launch it; so,
never being able to bring it to the water, or bring the water to it, I
was obliged to let it lie where it was, as a memorandum to teach me to
be wiser next time. Indeed, the next time, though I could not get a
tree proper for it, and in a place where I could not get the water
to it at any less distance than, as I have said, near half a mile, yet
as I saw it was at last, I never gave it over; and though I was near
two years about it, yet I never grudged my labor, in hopes of having a
boat to go off to sea at last.
  However, though my little periagua was finished, yet the size of
it was not at all answerable to the design which I had in view when
I made the first; I mean, of venturing over to the terra firma,
where it was above forty miles broad. Accordingly, the smallness of my
boat assisted to put an end to that design, and now I thought no
more of it. But as I had a boat, my next design was to make a tour
round the island; for as I had been on the other side in one place,
crossing, as I have already described it, over the land, so the
discoveries I made in that little journey made me very eager to see
other parts of the coast; and now I had a boat, I thought of nothing
but sailing round the island.
  For this purpose, that I might do everything with discretion and
consideration, I fitted up a little mast to my boat, and made a sail
to it out of some of the pieces of the ship's sail, which lay in
store, and of which I had a great stock by me.
  Having fitted my mast and sail, and tried the boat, I found she
would sail very well. Then I made little lockers, or boxes, at
either end of my boat, to put provisions, necessaries, and ammunition,
etc., into, to be kept dry, either from rain or the spray of the
sea; and a little long hollow place I cut in the inside of the boat,
where I could lay my gun, making a flap to hang down over it to keep
it dry.
  I fixed my umbrella also in a step at the stern, like a mast, to
stand over my head, and keep the heat of the sun off of me, like an
awning; and thus I every now and then took a little voyage upon the
sea, but never went far out, nor far from the little creek. But at
last, being eager to view the circumference of my little kingdom, I
resolved upon my tour; and accordingly I victualled my ship for the
voyage, putting in two dozen of my loaves (cakes I should rather
call them) of barley bread, an earthen pot full of parched rice, a
food I eat a great deal of, a little bottle of rum, half a goat, and
powder and shot for killing more, and two large watch-coats, of
those which, as I mentioned before, I had saved out of the seamen's
chests; these I took, one to lie upon, and the other to cover me in
the night.
  It was the 6th of November, in the sixth year of my reign, or my
captivity, which you please, that I set out on this voyage, and I
found it much longer than I expected; for though the island itself was
not very large, yet when I came to the east side of it I found a great
ledge of rocks lie out above two leagues into the sea, some above
water, some under it, and beyond that a shoal of sand, lying dry
half a league more; so that I was obliged to go a great way out to sea
to double the point.
  When first I discovered them, I was going to give over my
enterprise, and come back again, not knowing how far it might oblige
me to go out to sea, and, above all, doubting how I should get back
again, so I came to an anchor; for I had made me a kind of an anchor
with a piece of broken grappling which I got out of the ship.
  Having secured my boat, I took my gun and went on shore, climbing up
upon a hill, which seemed to overlook that point, where I saw the full
extent of it, and resolved to venture.
  In my viewing the sea from that hill, where I stood, I perceived a
strong, and indeed a most furious current, which run to the east,
and even came close to the point; and I took the more notice of
because I saw there might be some danger that when I came into it I
might be carried out to sea by the strength of it, and not be able
to make the island again. And indeed, had I not gotten first up upon
this hill, I believe it would have been so; for there was the same
current on the other side of the island, only that it set off at a
farther distance; and I saw there was a strong eddy under the shore;
so I had nothing to do but to get in out of the first current, and I
should presently be in an eddy.
  I lay here, however, two days; because the wind, blowing pretty
fresh at ESE., and that being just contrary to the said current,
made a great breach of the sea upon the point; so that it was not safe
for me to keep too close to the shore for the breach, nor to go too
far off because of the stream.
  The third day, in the morning, the wind having abated over-night,
the sea was calm, and I ventured. But I am a warning piece again to
all rash and ignorant pilots; for no sooner was I come to the point,
when even I was not my boat's length from the shore, but I found
myself in a great depth of water, and a current like the sluice of a
mill. It carried my boat along with it with such violence, that all
I could do could not keep her so much as on the edge of it, but I
found it hurried me farther and farther out from the eddy, which was
on my left hand. There was no wind stirring to help me, and all I
could do with my paddlers signified nothing. And now I began to give
myself over for lost; for, as the current was on both sides the
island, I knew in a few leagues distance they must join again, and
then I was irrecoverably gone. Nor did I see any possibility of
avoiding it; so that I had no prospect before me but of perishing; not
by the sea, for that was calm enough, but of starving for hunger. I
had indeed found a tortoise on the shore, as big almost as I could
lift, and had tossed it into the boat; and I had a great jar of
fresh water, that is to say, one of my earthen pots; but what was
all this to being driven into the vast ocean, where, to be sure, there
was no shore, no mainland or island, for a thousand leagues at least.
  And now I saw how easy it was for the providence of God to make
the most miserable condition mankind could be in worse. Now I looked
back upon my desolate solitary island as the most pleasant place in
the world, and all the happiness my heart could wish for was to be but
there again. I stretched out my hands to it, with eager wishes. "O
happy desert!" said I, "I shall never see thee more. O miserable
creature," said I, "whither am I going?" Then I reproached myself with
my unthankful temper, and how I had repined at my solitary
condition; and now what would I give to be on shore there again.
Thus we never see the true state of our condition till it is
illustrated to us by its contraries; nor know how to value what we
enjoy, but by the want of it. It is scarce possible to imagine the
consternation I was now in, being driven from my beloved island (for
so it appeared to me now to be) into the wide ocean, almost two
leagues, and in the utmost despair of ever recovering it again.
However, I worked hard, till indeed my strength was almost
exhausted, and kept my boat as much to the northward, that is, towards
the side of the current which the eddy lay on, as possibly I could;
when about noon, as the sun passed the meridian, I thought I felt a
little breeze of wind in my face, springing up from the SSE. This
cheered my heart a little, and especially when, in about an hour more,
it blew a pretty small gentle gale. By this time I was gotten at a
frightful distance from the island; and had the least cloud or hazy
weather intervened, I had been undone another way too; for I had no
compass on board, and should never have known how to have steered
towards the island if I had but once lost sight of it. But the weather
continuing clear, I applied myself to get up my mast again, and spread
my sail, standing away to the north as much as possible, to get out of
the current.
  Just as I had set my mast and sail, and the boat began to stretch
away, I saw even by clearness of the water some alteration of the
current was near; for where the current was so strong, the water was
foul. But perceiving the water clear, I found the current abate, and
presently I found to the east, at about half a mile, a breach of the
sea upon some rocks. These rocks I found caused the current to part
again; and as the main stress of it ran away more southerly, leaving
the rocks to the north-east, so the other returned by the repulse of
the rocks, and made a strong eddy, which ran back again to the
north-west with a very sharp stream.
  They who know what it is to have a reprieve brought to them upon the
ladder, or to be rescued from thieves just going to murder them, or
who have been in such like extremities, may guess what my present
surprise of joy was, and how gladly I put my boat into the stream of
this eddy; and the wind also freshening, how gladly I spread my sail
to it, running cheerfully before the wind, and with a strong tide or
eddy under foot.
  This eddy carried me about a league in my way back again, directly
towards the island, but about two leagues more to the northward than
the current which carried me away at first; so that when I came near
the island, I found myself open to the northern shore of it, that is
to say, the other end of the island, opposite to that which I went out
from.
  When I had made something more than a league of way by the help of
this current or eddy, I found it was spent, and served me no
farther. However, I found that being between the two great currents,
viz., that on the south side, which had hurried me away, and that on
the north, which lay about 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 about 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 southwardly 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 labor and fatigue of the voyage.
  I was now at a great loss which way to get home with my coat. I
had run so much hazard, and knew too much 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 harbor for my boat, and where she lay as if she had been in
a little dock made on purpose 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 my umbrella, for it was exceedingly hot,
I began my march. The way it was comfortable enough after such a
voyage as I had been upon, and I reach my old bower in the evening,
where I found everything 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
waked 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
frighted, and started up in the utmost consternation. But no sooner
were my eyes open, but I saw my Poll sitting on the top of the
hedge, and immediately knew that 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 perfectIy, 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 come 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 nowhere else. But as I was
well satisfied it could be nobody but honest Poll, I got it over;
and holding out my hand, and calling him by name, Poll, 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 had 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 risks
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' labor 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 could,
upon occasion, make a very good carpenter, especially considering
how few tools I had. Besides this, I arrived at an unexpected
perfection in my earthenware, 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 anything 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
earthenware, 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 knowing 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 wickerware 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 in. For example,
if I killed a goat abroad, I could hang it up in a tree, flay it,
and 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 my receivers for 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, and 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
it observed, in the third year of my being here, kept a young kid, and
bred her up tame, and I was in hope of getting a he-goat. But I
could not by any means bring it to pass, till my kid grew an old goat;
and I could never find it in my heart to kill her, till she dies 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.
  To 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 these 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 mark 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 trap; and, not
to trouble you with particulars, going one morning to see my trap, I
found in one of them a large old he-goat, and in one of the other
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
frighted out of his wits. But I had forgot then what I learned
afterwards, 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-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 presently 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 of doing it, my first piece of work
was to find out a proper piece of ground, viz., 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 savanna (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
of 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 often 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 should have in any reasonable time, so, as my flock
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. And
after that I enclosed five several pieces of ground to feed them in,
and 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 my 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, very readily and handily,
though after a great many essays and miscarriages, made me both butter
and cheese last, and never wanted it afterwards.
  How mercifully can our great 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. Poll, as if he had been my favorite, 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 and table,
and one on the other, expecting now and then a bit form my hand, as
a mark of special favor.
  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
anything but society; and of that in 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, 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 a
dagger, hung a little saw and a hatchet, one on one side, 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, on my shoulder my gun, and over my head a. great clumsy ugly
goat-skin umbrella, but which, after all, was the most necessary thing
I had about me, next to my gun. As for my face, the color of it was
really not so mulatto-like as one might expect from a man not at all
careful of it, and living within nineteen 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 scissors 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 whom I saw 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 flow 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 near,
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 run
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 ground, 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 circled 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,
I kept them always so cut, 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 enclosure 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, so I was uneasy to see it kept
entire, less the goats should break through, that I never left off
till, with infinite labor, I had struck 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
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 I was forced to pull some of
them up again.
  In this place also I had my grapes growing, which I principally
depended on for my winter store of raisins, and which I never failed
to preserve very carefully, as the best and most agreeable dainty of
my whole diet. And indeed they were not agreeable only, but
physical, wholesome, nourishing, and refreshing to the last degree.
  As this was also about half-way between my other habitation and
the place where I had laid up my boat, I generally stayed and lay here
in my way thither; for I used frequently to visit my boat, and I
kept all things about, or belonging to her, in very good order.
Sometimes I went out in her to divert myself, but no more hazardous
voyages would I go, nor scarce ever above a stone's cast or two from
the shore, I was so apprehensive of being hurried out of my
knowledge again by the currents or winds, or any other accident. But
now I come to a new scene of my life.
  It happened one day, about noon, going towards my boat, I was
exceedingly surprised with the print of a man's naked foot on the
shore, which was very plain to be seen in the sand. I stood like one
thunder-struck, or as if I had seen an apparition. I listened, I
looked round me, I could hear nothing, nor see anything. I went up
to a rising ground, to look farther. I went up the shore, and down the
shore, but it was all one; I could see no other impression but that
one, I went to it again to see if there were any more, and to
observe if it might not be my fancy; but there was no room for that,
for there was exactly the very print of a foot - toes, heel, and every
part of a foot. How it came thither I knew not, nor could in the least
imagine. But after innumerable fluttering thoughts, like a man
perfectly confused and out of myself, I came home to my fortification,
not feeling, as we say, the ground I went on, but terrified to the
last degree, looking behind me at every two or three steps,
mistaking every bush and tree, and fancying every stump at a
distance to be a man; nor is it possible to describe how many
various shapes affrighted imagination represented things to me in, how
many wild ideas were found every moment in my fancy, and what
strange unaccountable whimsies came into my thoughts by the way.
  When I came to my castle, for so I think I called it ever after
this, I fled into it like one pursued. Whether I went over by the
ladder, as first contrived, or went in at the hole in the rock,
which I called a door, I cannot remember; no, nor could I remember the
next morning, for never frighted hare fled to cover, or fox to
earth, with more terror of mind than I to this retreat.
  I slept none that night. The farther I was from the occasion of my
fright, the greater my apprehensions were; which is something contrary
to the nature of such things, and especially to the usual practice
of all creatures in fear. But I was so embarrassed with my own
frightful ideas of the thing, that I formed nothing but dismal
imaginations to myself, even though I was now a great way off it.
Sometimes I fancied it must be the devil, and reason joined in with me
upon this supposition; for how should any other thing in human shape
come into the place? Where was the vessel that brought them? What
was there of any other footsteps? And how was it possible a man should
come there? But then to think that Satan should take human shape
upon him in such a place, where there could be no manner of occasion
for it, but to leave the print of his foot behind him, that even for
no purpose too, for he could not be sure I should see it; this was
an amusement the other way. I considered that the devil might have
found out abundance of other ways to have terrified me than this of
the single print of a foot; that as I lived quite on the other side of
the island, he would never have been so simple to leave a mark in a
place where it was often thousand to one whether I should ever see
it or not, and in the sand, too, which the first surge of the sea,
upon a high wind, would have defaced entirely. All this seemed
inconsistent with the thing itself, and with all the notions we
usually entertain of the subtilty of the devil.
  Abundance of such things as these assisted to argue me out of all
apprehensions of its being the devil; and I presently concluded
then, that it must be some more dangerous creature, viz., that it must
be some of the savages of the mainland over against me, who had
wandered out to sea in their canoes, and, either driven by the
currents or by contrary winds, had made the island, and had been on
shore, but were gone away again to sea, being as loth, perhaps, to
have stayed in this desolate island as I would have been to have had
them.
  While these reflections were rolling upon my mind, I was very
thankful in my thoughts that I was so happy as not to be thereabouts
at that time, or that they did not see my boat, by which they would
have concluded that some inhabitants had been in the place, and
perhaps have searched farther for me. Then terrible thoughts racked my
imagination about their having found my boat, and that there were
people here; and that if so, I should certainly have them come again
in greater numbers, and devour me; that if it should happen so that
they should not find me, yet they would find my enclosure, destroy all
my corn, carry away all my flock of tame goats, and I should perish at
last for mere want.
  Thus my fear banished all my religious hope. All that former
confidence in God, which was founded upon such wonderful experience as
I had had of His goodness, now vanished, as if He that had fed me by
miracle hitherto could not preserve, by His power, the provision which
He had made for me by His goodness. I reproached myself with my
easiness, that would not sow any more corn one year than would just
serve me till the next season, as if no accident could intervene to
prevent my enjoying the crop that was upon the ground. And this I
thought so just a reproof that I resolved for the future to have two
or three years' corn beforehand, so that, whatever might come, I might
not perish for want of bread.
  How strange a checker-work of Providence is the life of man! and
by what secret differing springs are the affections hurried about as
differing circumstances present! To-day we love what to-morrow we
hate; to-day we seek what to-morrow we shun; to-day we desire what
tomorrow we fear; nay, even tremble at the apprehensions of. This
was exemplified in me at this time, in the most lively manner
imaginable; for I, whose only affliction was that I seemed banished
from Human society, that I was alone, circumscribed by the boundless
ocean, cut off from mankind, and condemned to what I called silent
life; that I was as one whom Heaven thought not worthy to be
numbered among the living, or to appear among the rest of His
creatures; that to have seen one of my own species would have seemed
to me a raising me from death to life, and the greatest blessing
that Heaven itself, next to the supreme blessing of salvation, could
bestow; I say, that I should now tremble at the very apprehensions
of seeing a man, and was ready to sink into the ground at but the
shadow or silent appearance of a man's having set his foot in the
island!
  Such is the uneven state of human life; and it afforded me a great
many curious speculations afterwards, when I had a little recovered my
first surprise. I considered that this was the station of life the
infinitely wise and good providence of God had determined for me;
that, as I could not forsee what the ends of Divine wisdom might be in
all this, so I was not to dispute His sovereignty, who, as I was His
creature, had an undoubted right, by creation, to govern and dispose
of me absolutely as He thought fit, and who, as I was a creature who
had offended Him, had likewise a judicial right to condemn me to
what punishment He thought fit; and that it was my part to submit to
bear His indignation, because I had sinned against Him.
  I then reflected that God, who was not only righteous, but
omnipotent, as He had thought fit thus to punish and afflict me, so He
was able to deliver me; that if He did not think fit to do it, It
was my unquestioned duty to resign myself absolutely and entirely to
His will; and, on the other hand, it was my duty also to hope in
Him, pray to Him, and quietly to attend the dictates and directions of
His daily providence.
  These thoughts took me up many hours, days, nay, I may say, weeks
and months; and one particular effect of my cogitations of this
occasion I cannot omit, viz., one morning early, lying in my bed,
and filled with thought about my danger from the appearance of
savages, I found it discomposed me very much; upon which those words
of the Scripture came into my thoughts, "Call upon Me in the day of
trouble, and I will deliver, and thou shalt glorify Me."
  Upon this, rising cheerfully out of my bed, my heart was not only
comforted, but I was guided and encouraged to pray earnestly to God
for deliverance. When I had done praying, I took up my Bible, and
opening it to read, the first words that presented to me were, "Wait
on the Lord, and be of good cheer, and He shall strengthen thy
heart; wait, I say, on the Lord." It is impossible to express the
comfort this gave me. In answer, I thankfully laid down the book,
and was no more sad, at least, not on that occasion.
  In the middle of these cogitations, apprehensions, and
reflections, it came into my thought one day, that all this might be a
mere chimera of my own; and that this foot might be the print of my
own foot, when I came on shore from my boat. This cheered me up a
little too, and I began to persuade myself it was all a delusion, that
it was nothing else but my own foot; and why might not I come that way
from the boat, as well as I was going that way to the boat? Again, I
considered also, that I could by no means tell, for certain, where I
had trod, and where I had not; and that if, at last, this was only the
print of my own foot, I had played the part of these fools who
strive to make stories of spectre and apparitions, and then are
frighted at them more than anybody.
  Now I began to take courage, and to peep abroad again, for I had not
stirred out of my castle for three days and nights, so that I began to
starve for provision; for I had little or nothing within doors but
some barley-cakes and water. Then I knew that my goats wanted to be
milked too, which usually was my evening diversion; and the poor
creatures were in great pain and inconvenience for want of it; and,
indeed, it almost spoiled some of them, and almost dried up their
milk.
  Heartening myself, therefore, with the belief that this was
nothing but the print of one of my own feet, and so I might be truly
said to start at my own shadow, I began to go abroad again, and went
to my country-house to milk my flock. But to see with what fear I went
forward, how often I looked behind me, how I was ready, every now
and then, to lay down my basket, and run for my life, it would have
made any one have thought I was haunted with an evil conscience, or
that I had been lately most terribly frighted; and so, indeed, I had.
  However, as I went down thus two or three days, and having seen
nothing, I began to be a little bolder, and to think there was
really nothing in it but my own imagination. But I could not
persuade myself fully of this till I should go down to the shore
again, and see this print of a foot, and measure it by my own, and see
if there was any similitude or fitness, that I might be assured it was
my own foot. But when I came to the place, first, it appeared
evidently to me, that when I laid up my boat, I could not possibly
be on shore anywhere thereabout; secondly, when I came to measure
the mark with my own foot, I found my foot not so large by a great
deal. Both these things filled my head with new imaginations, and gave
me the vapors again to the highest degree; so that I shook with
cold, like one in an ague; and I went home again, filled with the
belief that some man or men had been on shore there; for, in short,
that the island was inhabited, and I might be surprised before I was
aware. And what course to take for my security, I knew not.
  Oh, what ridiculous resolution men take when possessed with fear! It
deprives them of the use of those means which reason offers for
their relief. The first thing I proposed to myself was to throw down
my enclosures, and turn all my tame cattle wild into the woods, that
the enemy might not find them, and then frequent the island in
prospect of the same or the like booty; then to the simple thing of
digging up my two cornfields, that they might not find such a grain
there, and still be prompted to frequent the island then to demolish
my bower and tent, that they might not see any vestiges of habitation,
and be prompted to look farther, in order to find out the persons
inhabiting.
  These were the subject of the first night's cogitation, after I
was come home again, while the apprehensions which had so overrun my
mind were fresh upon me, and my head was full of vapors, as above.
Thus fear of danger is often thousand times more terrifying than
danger itself when apparent to the eyes; and we find the burden of
anxiety greater, by much, than the evil which we are anxious about;
and, which was worse than all this, I had not that relief in this
trouble from the resignation I used to practice, that I hoped to have.
I looked, I thought, like Saul, who complained not only that the
Philistines were upon him, but that God had forsaken him; for I did
not now take due ways to compose my mind, by crying to God in my
distress, and resting upon His providence, as I had done before, for
my defence and deliverance; which, if I had done, I had at least
been more cheerfully supported under this new surprise, and perhaps
carried through it with more resolution.
  This confusion of my thoughts kept me waking all night, but in the
morning I fell asleep; and having, by the amusement of my mind,
been, as it were, tired, and my spirits exhausted, I slept very
soundly, and waked much better composed than I had ever been before.
And now I began to think sedately; and upon the utmost debate with
myself, I concluded that this island, which was so exceeding pleasant,
fruitful, and no farther from the mainland than as I had seen, was not
so entirely abandoned as I might imagine; that although there were
no stated inhabitants who lived on the spot, yet that there might
sometimes come boats off from the shore, who, either with design, or
perhaps never but when they were driven by cross-winds, might come
to this place; that I had lived here fifteen years now, and had not
met with the least shadow or figure of any people yet; and that if
at any time they should be driven here, it was probable they went away
again as soon as ever they could, seeing they had never thought fit to
fix there upon any occasion to this time; that the most I could
suggest any danger from, was from any such casual accidental landing
of straggling people from the main, who, as it was likely, if they
were driven hither, were here against their wills; so they made no
stay here, but went off again with all possible speed, seldom
staying one night on shore, lest they should not have the help of
the tides and daylight back again; and that, therefore, I had
nothing to do but to consider of some safe retreat, in case I should
see any savages land upon the spot.