The Life and Adventures
of Robinson Crusoe

By Daniel Defoe

CHAPTER I.

START IN LIFE

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 afterwards at York,
from whence he had married my mother,
whose relations were named Robinson,
a very good family in that country,
and from whom I was called
Robinson Kreutznaer;
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 whom 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 or mother knew
what became 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 go,
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 propensity 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 father’s house
and my native country,
where I might be well introduced,
and had a prospect of raising my fortune
by application and industry,
with a life of ease and pleasure.

He told me
it was 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 labour 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 this one thing
— viz. that this was the state of life
which all other people envied;
that kings have frequently lamented
the miserable consequence
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 standard of felicity,
when he prayed to have
neither poverty nor riches.

He bade 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 uneasinesses,
either of body or mind,
as those were who,
by vicious living, luxury,
and extravagances
on the one hand,
or by hard labour,
want of necessaries,
and mean or insufficient diet
on the other hand,
bring distemper upon themselves
by the natural consequences
of their way of living;
that the middle station of life
was calculated
for all kind of virtue
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 labours of the hands
or of the head,
not sold to a life of slavery
for daily bread,
nor harassed
with perplexed circumstances,
which rob the soul of peace
and the body of rest,
nor enraged with the passion of envy,
or the 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,
nor 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 endeavour to enter me fairly
into the station of life
which he had just been 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 should 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,
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,
and, 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
further importunities,
in a few weeks after
I resolved to run quite away from him.
However,
I did not act quite so hastily
as the first heat of my resolution
prompted;
but I took my mother
at a time when I thought her
a little more pleasant 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,
but 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 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 the time that 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 the discourse 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 would 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 I heard afterwards
that 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 most miserable wretch
that ever was 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 expostulated
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
at that time;
but, I say, being there,
and one of my companions
being about to sail to London
in his father’s ship,
and prompting me to go with them
with the common allurement
of seafaring men,
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 1st 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 out of the Humber
than the wind began to blow
and the sea 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 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 counsels 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
to which it has 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 went very high,
though nothing like what I have seen
many times since;
no, nor 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 it did,
in the trough or hollow of the sea,
we should never rise more;
in this agony of mind,
I made many vows and resolutions
that if it would please God
to spare my life in 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 lasted,
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 rough and terrible
the day before,
and could be so calm and so pleasant
in so little a time after.
And now,
lest my good resolutions should continue,
my companion,
who had enticed me away,
comes to me;
“Well, Bob,” says he,
clapping me upon the shoulder,
“how do you do after it?
I warrant you were frighted,
wer’n’t you,
last night,
when it blew but a capful of wind?”

“A capful d’you call it?”
said I;
“’twas a terrible storm.”
“A storm, you fool you,”
replies 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
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 way of all sailors;
the punch was made
and I was made half drunk with it:
and in that one night’s wickedness
I drowned all my repentance,
all my reflections
upon my past conduct,
all my resolutions for the 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,
endeavour to return again sometimes;
but I shook them off,
and roused myself from them
as it were from a distemper,
and applying myself
to drinking 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 of.

The sixth day of our being at sea
we came into Yarmouth Roads;
the wind having been contrary
and the weather calm,
we had 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 south-west —
for seven or eight days,
during which time
a great many ships from Newcastle
came into the same Roads,
as the common harbour
where the ships might wait for a wind
for the river.

We had not,
however,
rid here so long
but we 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 harbour,
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 rode 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 bitter 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
in the business of preserving 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 resume the first penitence
which I had so apparently trampled upon
and hardened myself against:
I thought the bitterness of death
had been past,
and that this would be
nothing 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 ran 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 rode near us,
we found,
had cut their masts by the board,
being deep laden;
and our men cried out
that a ship
which rode about a 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 labouring in the sea;
but two or three of them drove,
and came close by us,
running away
with only their spritsail out
before the wind.

Towards evening
the mate and boatswain
begged the master of our ship
to let them cut away the fore-mast,
which he was very unwilling to do;
but the boatswain protesting to him
that if he did not
the ship would founder,
he consented;
and when they had cut away the fore-mast,
the main-mast stood so loose,
and shook the ship so much,
they were obliged
to cut that away also,
and make a clear deck.

Any one may judge
what a condition I must be in
at 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 the 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 seen a worse.
We had a good ship,
but she was deep laden,
and wallowed in the sea,
so 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 to see
cried out we had sprung a leak;
another said
there was four feet water
in the hold.
Then all hands were called to the pump.
At that 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 roused 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 they meant,
thought the ship had broken,
or some dreadful thing 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 it was not possible she could swim
till we might run into any 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 much labour 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 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 northward,
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
till 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 the moment
that 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 labouring 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)
a great many people
running along the strand
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,
as in 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 Roads,
it was a great while
before he had any assurances
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 go home,
yet I had no power to do it.

I know 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,
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 saw me,
it appeared his tone was altered;
and, looking very melancholy,
and shaking his head,
he asked me how I did,
and telling his father who I was,
and how I had come this voyage
only for a trial,
in order to go further 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 on trial,
you see what a taste
Heaven has given you
of what you are to expect
if you persist.
Perhaps this has 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
into 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 yet 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,
exhorting me to go back to my father,
and not tempt Providence
to my ruin,
telling 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 knew 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 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 neighbours,
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 that 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 away 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 return
wore off with it,
till at last
I quite laid aside the thoughts of it,
and looked out for a voyage.

CHAPTER II.

SLAVERY AND ESCAPE

That evil influence
which carried me first
away from my father’s house
— which 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 the commands 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 called it,
a voyage to Guinea.

It was my great misfortune
that in all these adventures
I did not ship myself as a sailor;
when,
though I might indeed have worked
a little harder than ordinary,
yet at the same time
I should have learnt the duty and office
of a fore-mast 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,
nor 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 got 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.
This captain
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, 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 £40
in such toys and trifles
as the captain directed me to buy.

These £40 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,
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,
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 instruct 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 £300;
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,
from latitude of 15 degrees north
even to the line itself.

I was now 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 £100
of my new-gained wealth,
so that I had £200 left,
which I had lodged
with my friend’s widow,
who was very just to me,
yet I fell into terrible misfortunes.
The first was this:
our ship making her course
towards the Canary Islands,
or rather between those islands
and the African shore,
was surprised in the grey 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 get 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 two hundred 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 sails
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 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 I could not be worse;
for 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 Scotchman 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 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 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 laboured all day,
and all the next night;
and when the morning came
we found we had 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 labour
and some danger;
for the wind began to blow pretty fresh
in the morning;
but 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
that 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 also was an English slave,
to build a little state-room,
or cabin,
in the middle of the long-boat,
like that of a barge,
with a place to stand behind it
to steer,
and haul home the main-sheet;
the 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 jibed
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;
and 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 overnight
a larger store of provisions
than ordinary;
and had ordered me
to get ready three fusees
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
from 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 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 likely to have a little ship
at my command;
and my master being gone,
I prepared to furnish myself,
not for fishing business,
but for a voyage;
though I knew not,
neither did I so much as consider,
whither I should steer
— anywhere to get out of that place
was my desire.

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,
and three jars of 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
about half a hundred-weight,
with a parcel of twine or thread,
a hatchet, a saw, and a hammer,
all of which were of 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 Ismael,
which they call Muley, 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 a pound and 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 N.N.E.,
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 that horrid place where I was,
and leave the rest to fate.

After we had fished some time
and caught 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 ran 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 waist,
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 over the world 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”
—that 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 distrust 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 not go on shore
but we should be devoured
by savage beasts,
or more merciless savages of human kind.

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 towards 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 one hundred and fifty 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 of 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, nor where,
neither what latitude, what country,
what nation, 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 of me
not to go on shore till day.
“Well, Xury,” said I, “then I won’t;
but it may be
that we may see men by day,
who will be as bad to us
as those lions.”
“Then we give them the shoot gun,”
says Xury, laughing,
“make them run wey.”
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 frighted,
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 it is impossible to describe
the horrid 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 on 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 the 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 and where to get to it
was the point.
Xury said,
if I would let him go on shore
with one of the jars,
he would find if there was any water,
and bring some to me.
I asked him why he would go?
why I should not go,
and he stay in the boat?
The boy answered with so much affection
as made me love him ever after.
Says he,
“If wild mans come,
they eat me, you go wey.”
“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 the boat in
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 colour,
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 he had killed,
and prepared to go on our way,
having seen no footsteps
of any human creature
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 not exactly knowing,
or at least remembering,
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 harbour 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 roaring of wild beasts
by night.

Once or twice in the daytime
I thought I saw the Pico of Teneriffe,
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 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 him
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 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 musket-bore,
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 shot him in 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 broken,
fell down again;
and then got 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 in the head,
and had the pleasure to see him drop
and make but little noise,
but lie 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 in 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 up 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.

CHAPTER III.

WRECKED ON A DESERT ISLAND

After this stop,
we made on to the southward
continually for ten or twelve days,
living very sparingly on our provisions,
which began to abate very much,
and going no oftener to 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 for the islands,
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 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 hand,
except one,
who had a long slender stick,
which Xury said was a lance,
and that they could throw them
a great way with good aim;
so I kept at 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 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 would not venture on shore to them,
and they were as much afraid of 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 frighted,
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 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 in the head;
immediately he sank down into the water,
but rose instantly,
and plunged up and down,
as if he were 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 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,
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 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 up directly to the mountains
from whence they came;
nor could I,
at that distance,
know what it was.
I found quickly
the negroes wished to eat
the flesh of this creature,
so I was willing to have them take it
as a favour 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 with a knife.
They offered me some of the flesh,
which I declined,
pointing out that 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 provisions,
which, though I did not understand,
yet I accepted.
I then 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.
They called immediately
to some of their friends,
and there came two women,
and brought a great vessel made of earth,
and burnt, as I supposed, in the sun,
this they set down to me, as before,
and I sent Xury on shore with my jars,
and filled them all three.
The women were as 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 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,
but I knew
we were far enough out of their reach.
I jumped out of the cabin,
and immediately saw,
not only the ship,
but 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 that 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
by the help of their glasses
that it was some European boat,
which 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 which they saw;
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 Scotch 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;
they then bade me come on board,
and very kindly took me in,
and all my goods.

It was an inexpressible joy to me,
which 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,” said 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,” says he:
“Seignior Inglese” (Mr. Englishman),
“I will carry you thither in charity,
and those things will help
to buy your subsistence there,
and your passage home again.”

As he was charitable in this proposal,
so he was just in the performance
to a tittle;
for he ordered the seamen
that none should touch
anything that 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 to 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 his 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 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 more
for my boy Xury,
which I was loth to take;
not that I was unwilling
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 I arrived
in the Bay de Todos los Santos,
or All Saints’ Bay,
in about twenty-two 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 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 to me;
and what I was willing to sell
he bought of me,
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
two hundred and twenty pieces of eight
of all my cargo;
and with this stock
I went on shore in the Brazils.

I had not been long here
before I was recommended
to the house of a good honest man
like himself,
who had an ingenio, 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 planting
and making of sugar;
and seeing how well the planters lived,
and how they got rich suddenly,
I resolved,
if I could get a licence 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 letter
of naturalisation,
I purchased as much land
that was uncured
as my money would reach,
and formed a plan
for my plantation and settlement;
such a one
as might be suitable to the stock
which I proposed to myself
to receive from England.

I had a neighbour,
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 neighbour,
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 had got 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 five thousand 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 neighbour;
no work to be done,
but by the labour 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 lading
and preparing for his voyage,
nearly 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 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 had 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 Portuguese captain at sea,
the humanity of his behaviour,
and what condition I was now in,
with all other 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 in 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 written 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,
ironwork,
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 the joy of it;
and my stood 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;
for my goods
being all English manufacture,
such as cloths, stuffs, baize,
and things particularly valuable
and desirable
in the country,
I found means to sell them
to a very great advantage;
so that I might say
I had more than four times
the value of my first cargo,
and was now infinitely beyond
my poor neighbour
— I mean
in the advancement of my plantation;
for the first thing I did,
I bought me a negro slave,
and an 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 it was 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 neighbours;
and these fifty rolls,
being each of above a hundredweight,
were well cured,
and laid by
against the return of the fleet
from Lisbon:
and now increasing
in business and 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 wilful 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, &c.,
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 of 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 assientos,
or permission
of the kings of Spain and Portugal,
and engrossed in the public stock:
so that few negroes were bought,
and these excessively 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 me 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 to 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 had a settlement
and a 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 to 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 effects
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 to 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 probable 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 1st September 1659,
being the same day eight years
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 interests.

Our ship was about
one hundred and twenty tons burden,
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 other 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 we came about ten or twelve degrees
of northern latitude,
which, it seems,
was the manner of course in those days.
We had very good weather,
only excessively hot,
all the way upon our own coast,
till we came to the height
of Cape St. Augustino;
from whence,
keeping further off at sea,
we lost sight of land,
and steered as if we were bound
for the isle Fernando de Noronha,
holding our course N.E. 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 seven degrees
twenty-two 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 in 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
whither 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 die 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 eleven degrees north latitude,
but that he was
twenty-two degrees of longitude
difference
west from Cape St. Augustino;
so that he found
he was 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 N.W. 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 twelve degrees eighteen minutes,
a second storm came upon us,
which carried us away
with the same impetuosity
westward,
and drove us so out of the 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
run out of the cabin to look out,
in hopes of seeing whereabouts
in the world we were,
than 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.
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 into pieces,
unless the winds,
by a kind of miracle,
should turn immediately about.
In a word,
we sat looking upon one another,
and expecting death every moment,
and every man, accordingly,
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 time to debate,
for we fancied
that the ship would break in pieces
every minute,
and some told us
she was actually broken already.

In this distress
the mate of our vessel
laid hold of the boat,
and with the help of the rest of the men
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 ran dreadfully high
upon the shore,
and might be well 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 near 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 find 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 like 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 grâce.
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 no time 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 sank 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 endeavoured
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 twenty or thirty 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 waters went from me,
and then took to my heels
and ran with what strength I had
further 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 forward as before,
the shore being very flat.

The last time of these two
had well-nigh been fatal to me,
for the sea having hurried me along
as before,
landed me, or rather dashed me,
against a piece of rock,
and that with such force,
that 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 nearer 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 ecstasies
and transports of the soul are,
when it is so saved, as I may say,
out of the very grave:
and I do not wonder now at the custom,
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,
wrapped up in a 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 but 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 eye to the stranded vessel,
when,
the breach and froth of the sea
being so big,
I could hardly see it,
it lay so far of;
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
or 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 provisions;
and this threw me
into such 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,
as 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
any fresh water to drink,
which I did, to my great joy;
and having drank,
and put a little tobacco into my mouth
to prevent hunger,
I went to the tree,
and getting up into it,
endeavoured to place myself
so 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 more refreshed with it
than, I think,
I ever was on such an occasion.

CHAPTER IV.

FIRST WEEKS ON THE ISLAND

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 at first mentioned,
where I had been so bruised
by the wave 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 save 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
as I now was.
This forced tears to 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,
hung down by the fore-chains so low,
as that with great difficulty
I got hold of it,
and by the help of that rope
I 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 ate 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 I 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 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 a carpenter’s saw
I cut a spare topmast
into three lengths,
and added them to my raft,
with a great deal of labour and pains.
But the 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 now 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 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 any room for them.
While I was doing this,
I found the tide begin to flow,
though very calm;
and I had the mortification
to see my coat, shirt, and waistcoat,
which I had left on the 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 set me on rummaging for clothes,
of which I found enough,
but took no more than I wanted
for present use,
for I had others 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 shipload of gold
would have been at that time.
I got it down to my raft,
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,
the third had taken water.

Those two I got to my raft
with the arms.
And now I thought myself
pretty well freighted,
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
—1st, a smooth, calm sea;
2ndly, the tide rising,
and setting in to the shore;
3rdly, 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;
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 the 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 broken 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 the end that was afloat,
and to 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,
I 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 of 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 ships 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
that, reaching ground with my oar,
I could thrust her directly in.

But here I had like
to have dipped all my cargo
into 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 ran 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
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 one 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 labour 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 kinds;
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,
than from all parts of the wood
there arose
an innumerable number of fowls,
of many sorts,
making a confused screaming and crying,
and 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 hawk,
its colour and beak resembling it,
but it had no talons or claws
more than common.
Its flesh was carrion,
and fit for nothing.

Contented with this discovery,
I came back to my raft,
and fell to work
to bring my cargo on shore,
which took me up the rest of that day.
What to do with myself at night
I knew not,
nor 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 chest and boards
that I had brought on shore,
and made a kind of 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 had 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 my chequered shirt,
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 first,
in the carpenters 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,
another fowling-piece,
with some small quantity of powder more;
a large bagful 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 fore-topsail,
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 apprehension,
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 at it, and ate it,
and looked (as if 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 had 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 laboured very hard all day
to fetch all those things
from the ship,
and 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,
and 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 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,
three large runlets of rum, or spirits,
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 spoiled by the water.
I soon emptied the hogshead of the 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.
Cutting the great cable into pieces,
such as I could move,
I got two cables
and a hawser on shore,
with all the ironwork 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 these 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 had 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 a great part of it lost,
especially the iron,
which I expected
would have been of great use to me;
however,
when the tide was out,
I got
most of the pieces of the cable
ashore,
and some of the iron,
though with infinite labour;
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 had 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 began to rise:
however, at low water I went on board,
and though I thought
I had rummaged the cabin so effectually
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
about thirty-six pounds value in money
— some European coin,
some Brazil,
some pieces of eight,
some gold,
and 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 the ground;
one of those knives
is worth all this heap;
I have no manner of use for thee —
e’en 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 offshore;
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 had got home to my little tent,
where I lay,
with all my wealth about me,
very secure.
It blew very hard all 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 the satisfactory reflection
that I had lost no time,
nor abated any 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 shore
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 fit for my settlement,
because it was
upon a low, moorish ground,
near the sea,
and I believed it 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:
1st, health and fresh water,
I just now mentioned;
2ndly, shelter from the heat of the sun;
3rdly, security from ravenous creatures,
whether man or beast;
4thly, 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 one side of the 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 ground
by the seaside.
It was on the N.N.W. side of the hill;
so that it 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 the 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
above 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 nor beast
could get into it or over it.
This cost me
a great deal of time and labour,
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 afterwards,
there was no need of all this caution
from the enemies
that I apprehended danger from.

Into this fence or fortress,
with infinite labour,
I carried all my riches,
all my provisions, ammunition,
and stores,
of which you have the account above;
and I made a large tent,
which to preserve me from the rains
that in one part of the year
are very violent there,
I made double
— 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 labour 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 the thought
which darted into my mind
as swift as the lightning itself
— Oh, my powder!
My very heart sank within me
when I thought that,
at one blast,
all my powder might be destroyed;
on which,
not my defence only,
but the providing my food,
as I thought,
entirely depended.
I was nothing near so anxious
about my own danger,
though, had the powder took fire,
I should never have 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 to keep it
a little and a little in a parcel,
in the 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
two hundred and forty 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
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 most difficult 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 afterwards 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;
for 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 ate 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,
and also how I enlarged my cave,
and what conveniences I made,
I shall give a full account of
in its place;
but I must now 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 my face
when I made these reflections;
and sometimes
I would expostulate with myself
why Providence
should thus completely ruin
His 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 the 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 they not 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 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 forced
to have lived in the condition
in which I at 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 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 and 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 about 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 over my head;
for I reckoned myself,
by observation,
to be in the latitude of nine degrees
twenty-two 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;
but to prevent this,
I cut 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 —
“I came on shore here
on the 30th 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 at 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 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 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 pens, 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, ink was one;
as also a spade, pickaxe, 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 my 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,
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 circumstances 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 likely to have but few heirs —
as to deliver my thoughts
from daily poring over 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 very impartially,
like 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 were.

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 no 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 got out
as 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 arrange 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 work farther into the earth;
for it was a loose sandy rock,
which yielded easily
to the labour 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,
worked 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 was a back way to my tent
and to my storehouse,
but gave me room to store my goods.

And now I began to apply myself
to make such necessary things
as I found I most wanted,
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 origin
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 labour, application, and contrivance,
I found at last that I wanted nothing
but I could have made it,
especially if I had had 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 labour.
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 brought it to be thin 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 labour
which it took me up
to make a plank or board:
but my time or labour 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 on;
and, in a word,
to separate everything at large
into 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 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
that 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 labour,
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:
“30th.—After I had got to shore,
and escaped drowning,
instead of being thankful to God
for my deliverance,
having first vomited,
with the great quantity of salt water
which had got 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 staff 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.

CHAPTER V.

BUILDS A HOUSE
— THE JOURNAL

September 30, 1659.
—I, poor miserable Robinson Crusoe,
being shipwrecked
during a dreadful storm in the offing,
came on shore on 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 the day
I spent in afflicting myself
at the dismal circumstances
I was brought to
— viz.
I had neither food, house, clothes,
weapon, nor 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 set 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 the days,
though with some intervals
of fair weather;
but it seems this was the rainy season.

Oct. 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.

Oct. 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.

Oct. 26.
—I walked about the shore
almost all day,
to find out a place
to fix my habitation,
greatly concerned to secure myself
from any 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 exceedingly hard.

The 31st, in the morning,
I went out into the island with my gun,
to seek 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.

Nov. 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.

Nov. 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.

Nov. 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 excessively 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 they would do any one else.

Nov. 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 that I killed
I took of the skins and preserved them.
Coming back by the sea-shore,
I saw many sorts of sea-fowls,
which I did not understand;
but was surprised,
and almost frightened,
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.

Nov. 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.

Nov. 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 in pieces several times.

Note.
—I soon neglected
my keeping Sundays;
for, omitting my mark for them
on my post,
I forgot which was which.

Nov. 13.
—This day it rained,
which refreshed me exceedingly,
and cooled the earth;
but it was accompanied
with terrible thunder and lightning,
which frightened 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.

Nov. 14, 15, 16.
—These three days I spent
in making little square chests,
or boxes,
which might hold about a pound,
or two pounds 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 knew not what to call it.

Nov. 17.
—This day
I began to dig behind my tent
into the rock,
to make room
for my further conveniency.

Note.
—Three things I wanted exceedingly
for this work
— viz.
a pickaxe, 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 the pickaxe,
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 do nothing effectually
without it;
but what kind of one to make
I knew not.

Nov. 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 labour,
and almost spoiling my axe,
I cut a piece,
and brought it home, too,
with difficulty enough,
for it was exceeding heavy.
The excessive hardness of the wood,
and my 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 board 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 in making.

I was still deficient,
for I wanted a basket
or a wheelbarrow.
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 labourers 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.

Nov. 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 accommodate 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 on 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 gravedigger.
I had now 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.

Dec. 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 off the house.

Dec. 17.
—From this day to the 20th
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.

Dec. 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.

Dec. 24.
—Much rain all night and all day.
No stirring out.

Dec. 25.
—Rain all day.

Dec. 26.
—No rain,
and the earth much cooler than before,
and pleasanter.

Dec. 27.
—Killed a young goat,
and lamed another,
so that I caught it
and led it home in a string;
when I had it at 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 breeding up some tame creatures,
that I might have food
when my powder and shot was all spent.

Dec. 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 were plenty of goats,
though exceedingly shy,
and hard to come at;
however,
I resolved to try
if I could not bring my dog
to hunt them down.

Jan. 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.

Jan. 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 2nd 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 labour
everything was done with,
especially the bringing piles
out of the woods
and driving them into the ground;
for I made them much bigger
than I needed to have done.

When this wall was finished,
and the outside double fenced,
with a turf wall raised up close to it,
I perceived 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 rounds in the woods for game
every day
when the rain permitted me,
and made frequent discoveries
in these walks
of something or other
to my advantage;
particularly,
I found a kind of wild pigeons,
which build,
not as wood-pigeons in a tree,
but rather as house-pigeons,
in the holes of the rocks;
and taking some young ones,
I endeavoured to breed them up tame,
and did so;
but when they grew older
they flew 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, with 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
at the capacity of making one by them,
though I spent many weeks about it;
I could neither put in the heads,
or join 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 candles;
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 labours
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.
The little remainder of corn
that had been in the bag
was all devoured by 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,
and not so much as remembering
that I had thrown anything there,
when, about a month after,
or thereabouts,
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 our 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,
nor had entertained
any sense of anything
that had befallen me otherwise
than as 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
for 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
His grain to grow
without any help of seed sown,
and that 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
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 shook a bag of chickens’ 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;
though I ought to have been as thankful
for so strange and unforeseen
a providence
as if it had been miraculous;
for it was really the work of Providence
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 were, as above,
twenty or thirty stalks of rice,
which I preserved with the same care
and for the same use,
or to the same purpose
— to make me bread,
or rather food;
for I found ways to cook it
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
on the outside of my habitation.

April 16.
—I finished the ladder;
so I went up the ladder to the top,
and then pulled it up after me,
and let it down in 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 labour
overthrown at once,
and myself killed.
The case was thus:
As I was busy in the inside,
behind my tent,
just at the entrance into my cave,
I was terribly frighted
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 fallen 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 had no sooner stepped down
upon the firm ground,
than 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 much amazed
with the thing itself,
having never felt the like,
nor 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
awakened 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 arose 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.
This held about three hours,
and then began to abate;
and in two hours more
it was quite 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 flooded my cave.
After I had been in my cave
for 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 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 a 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;
for I concluded,
if I stayed where I was,
I should certainly
one time or other
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 loath 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 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, &c.,
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.
This was the 21st.

April 22.
—The next morning
I begin to consider of means
to put this resolve into 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 sea side,
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 I could
to the wreck of the ship,
to look for more.

CHAPTER VI.

ILL AND CONSCIENCE-STRICKEN

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 broke in 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 broke 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 all the 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 ate 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 to float 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 ironwork.
Worked very hard,
and came home very much tired,
and had thoughts of giving it over.

May 7.
—Went to the wreck again,
not with an intent 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 it was 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 a roll of English lead,
and could stir it,
but it was too heavy to remove.

May 10–14.
—Went every day to the wreck;
and got a great many 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 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 blown 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
my 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 labour
I loosened some things
so much with the crow,
that the first flowing 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 got timber and plank and ironwork
enough to have built 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 savoury 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 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 ate,
I would fain have stewed it,
and made some broth,
but had no pot.

June 27.
—The ague again so violent
that I lay a-bed all day,
and neither ate 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 awoke,
I found myself much refreshed,
but weak,
and exceeding thirsty.

However,
as I had no water in my 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 none 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 towards God,
or inwards towards a reflection
upon my own ways;
but a certain stupidity of soul,
without desire of good,
or conscience of evil,
had entirely overwhelmed 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 deliverance.

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 behaviour
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 honourably 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 began,
in a mere common flight of joy,
or, as I may say,
being glad I was alive,
without the least reflection
upon the distinguished 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 unto 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
that 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 I 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 vapours into my head
with the mere apprehensions;
and in these hurries of my soul
I knew 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 abused their help and assistance,
who would have lifted me in 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 to 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
under a 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 ate, as we call it, in the shell,
and this was the first bit of meat
I had ever asked God’s blessing to,
that 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 a 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 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 thought
to contradict any of these conclusions,
and therefore it rested upon me
with the greater force,
that it must needs be
that God had appointed all this
to befall me;
that I was brought
into 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 methought 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 not 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,
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 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,
in 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 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.
Then I took some and steeped it
an hour or two in some rum,
and resolved to take a 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 at 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 thee,
and thou shalt glorify Me.”
These 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 hopes 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 fulfil 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 I could scarcely get it down;
immediately upon this I went to bed.
I found presently
it flew up into 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 this hour I am partly of opinion
that I slept all the next day and night,
and till almost three the 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 I 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;
when 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 brandgoose,
and brought them home,
but was not very forward to eat them;
so I ate 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
— 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 3.
—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 had I 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 knelt 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 a while
every morning and every night;
not tying myself
to the number of chapters,
but long as my thoughts should engage me.
It was not long
after I set seriously to this work
till 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 through my thoughts.
I was earnestly begging of God
to give me repentance,
when it happened providentially,
the very day, that,
reading the Scripture,
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 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 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 hope that God would hear me.

Now I began to construe
the words mentioned above,
“Call on Me, and I will deliver thee,”
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 worse 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 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, 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
which had never cured an ague before;
neither can I recommend it
to any 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 learned from it also this,
in particular,
that being abroad in the rainy 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 almost always accompanied
with such storms,
so I found
that rain was much more dangerous
than the rain which fell
in September and October.

CHAPTER VII.

AGRICULTURAL EXPERIENCE

I had now been in this unhappy island
above ten months.
All possibility of deliverance
from this condition
seemed to be entirely taken from me;
and I firmly believe
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 on 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,
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 banks of this brook
I found many pleasant savannahs
or meadows,
plain, smooth, and covered with grass;
and on the rising parts of them,
next to the higher grounds,
where 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 divers other plants,
which I had no notion of
or understanding about,
that 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 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
to any purpose now in my distress.

The next day, the sixteenth,
I went up the same way again;
and after going something further
than I had gone the day before,
I found the brook
and the savannahs cease,
and the country become
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
for 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,
wholesome and agreeable to eat
when no grapes could 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 in a tree,
where I slept well;
and the next morning
proceeded upon my discovery;
travelling nearly 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;
that I was king and lord
of all this country
indefensibly,
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 do this,
I gathered a great heap of grapes
in one place,
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 homewards;
resolving 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 fruit
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 nineteenth,
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,
to find 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 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 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 of 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 looking out for a place equally safe
as where now I 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,
I considered
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 enamoured of this place,
that I spent much of my time there
for the whole of the remaining part
of the month of July;
and though upon second thoughts,
I resolved not to remove,
yet I built me a little kind of a 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;
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 labour,
when 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
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 did 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 the most of them
home to my cave,
than 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 concerned
for the loss of one of my cats,
who ran away from me,
or, as I thought, had been dead,
and I heard no more tidings of her
till, 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 wild cat,
as I called it,
with my gun,
yet I thought
it was quite a different kind
from our European cats;
but the young cats
were the same kind of house-breed
as 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 ate 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.

Sept. 30.
—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
for 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 not having tasted
the least refreshment
for twelve hours,
even till the going down of the sun,
I then ate 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.

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 I 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 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 what 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 thereabouts
were all shot out and grown
with long branches,
as much as a willow-tree
usually shoots the first year
after lopping 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 semi-circle 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 afterwards served for a 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:
—The half of February,
the whole of March,
and the half of April
— rainy,
the sun being then
on or near the equinox.

The half of April, the whole of May,
June, and July,
and the half of August
— dry,
the sun being then
to the north of the line.

The half of August,
the whole of September,
and the half of October
— rainy,
the sun being then come back.

The half of October,
the whole of November, December,
and January,
and the half of February
— dry,
the sun being then
to the south of the line.

The rainy seasons
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 consequences 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.
This time I found much employment,
and very suitable also to the time,
for I found great occasion
for many things which I had no way
to furnish myself with
but by hard labour
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 in which
they worked those things,
and sometimes lending a hand,
I had by these means
full knowledge of the methods of it,
and 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, 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;
thus, afterwards,
I took care never to be without them;
and as my wicker-ware decayed,
I made more,
especially 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 water, spirits, &c.

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 as I desired it
— viz.
to make broth,
and stew a bit of meat by itself.
The second thing
I fain would have had
was a tobacco-pipe,
but it was impossible to me
to make one;
however, I found a 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
than it could be imagined
I could spare.

CHAPTER VIII.

SURVEYS HIS POSITION

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 sea-shore 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 W. to the W.S.W.
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 knew
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 had 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 off afflicting myself
with fruitless wishes of being there.

Besides,
after some thought 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,
where are found 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 savannah fields sweet,
adorned with flowers and grass,
and full of very fine woods.
I saw abundance of parrots,
and fain I 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 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
hares (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
that I was not driven to any extremities
for food,
but had 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 re-turns
to see what discoveries I could make,
that I came weary enough to the place
where I resolved to sit down 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 sea-shore,
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 seen before,
and many of them 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
than when I was on the hills.

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.

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 hills 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 further misfortune,
that the weather proved hazy
for three or four days
while I was in the valley,
and not being able to see the sun,
I wandered about very uncomfortably,
and at last was obliged
to find 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 for 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
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 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 was almost starved
for want of food.
I went 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
that it was possible
I might be more happy
in this solitary condition
than I should have been
in the liberty of society,
and in all the pleasures of the world;
that He could fully make up to me
the deficiencies of my solitary state,
and the want of human society,
by His presence
and the communications 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 perfectly 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 uninhabited wilderness,
without redemption.

In the midst
of the greatest composure 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 forsaken 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 favour 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
than 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 become
such a hypocrite,”
said I, even audibly,
“to pretend to be thankful
for a condition which,
however thou mayest endeavour
to be contented with,
thou wouldst 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 an 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, cutting,
preserving, and cooking
what I had killed or caught
for my supply;
these took up great part of the day.
Also, it is to be considered,
that in 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 labour
I 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
in making 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 in 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 the sides of it
into chips
till it began
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
til I brought the plank
to be about three inches thick,
and smooth on both sides.
Any one may judge
the labour of my hands
in such a piece of work;
but labour 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 labour
and required a prodigious time
to do alone, and by hand.
But notwithstanding this,
with patience and labour
I got through 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
and 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 scarcely 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 but small,
suited to my crop,
I got it totally well fenced in
about three weeks’ time;
and shooting some of the creatures
in the daytime,
I set my dog to guard it in the night,
tying him up to a stake at the gate,
where he would stand and bark
all night long;
so in a little time
the enemies forsook the place,
and the corn grew very strong
and well,
and began to ripen apace.

But as the beasts ruined me before,
while my corn was in the blade,
so the birds were as likely
to ruin me now,
when it was in the ear;
for, going along by the place
to see how it 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 likely
to be a good crop if it could be saved.

I stayed by it to load my gun,
and then coming away,
I could easily see the thieves
sitting upon all the trees about me,
as if they only waited
till I 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
than they dropped down one by one
into the corn again.
I was so provoked,
that I could not have patience to stay
till more came on,
knowing that every grain
that they ate now
was, as it might be said,
a peck-loaf to me in the consequence;
but coming up to the hedge,
I fired again,
and killed three of them.
This was what I wished for;
so I took them up,
and served them
as we serve notorious thieves in England
— hanged them in chains,
for a terror to others.

It is impossible to imagine
that this should have such an effect
as it had,
for the fowls
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 scarecrows hung there.
This I was very glad of,
you may be sure,
and about the latter end of December,
which was our second harvest of the year,
I reaped my corn.

I was sadly put to it
for a scythe or sickle to cut it down,
and all I could do was to make one,
as well as I could,
out of one of the broadswords,
or cutlasses,
which I saved among the arms
out of the ship.
However,
as my first crop was but small,
I had no great difficulty
to cut it down;
in short, I reaped it in 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 about 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.
I believe few people
have thought much
upon the strange multitude
of little things
necessary in the providing,
producing, curing, dressing, making,
and finishing this one article of bread.

I, that was reduced
to a mere state of nature,
found this to my daily discouragement;
and was made more sensible of it
every hour,
even after I had got
the first handful of seed-corn,
which, as I have said,
came up unexpectedly,
and indeed to a surprise.

First,
I had no plough to turn up the earth
— no spade or shovel to dig it.
Well, this I conquered
by making me a wooden spade,
as I observed before;
but this did my work
but in a wooden manner;
and though it cost me a great many days
to make it,
yet, for want of iron,
it not only wore out soon,
but made my work the harder,
and made it be performed much worse.

However,
this I bore with,
and was content to work it out
with patience,
and bear with the badness
of the performance.
When the corn was sown,
I had no harrow,
but was forced to go over it myself,
and drag a great heavy bough of a tree
over it,
to scratch it,
as it may be called,
rather than rake or harrow it.
When it was growing, and grown,
I 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;
but 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 had resolved
to use none of the corn for bread
till I had a greater quantity by me,
I had the next six months
to apply myself wholly,
by labour and invention,
to furnish myself with utensils proper
for the performing all the operations
necessary for making the corn,
when I had it, fit for my use.

CHAPTER IX.

A BOAT

But first I was to prepare more land,
for I had now seed enough
to sow above an acre of ground.
Before I did this,
I had a week’s work at least
to make me a spade,
which, when it was done,
was but a sorry one indeed,
and very heavy,
and required double labour
to work with it.
However,
I got through that,
and sowed my seed
in two large flat pieces of ground,
as near my house
as I could find them
to my mind,
and fenced them in with a good hedge,
the stakes of which were all cut off
that wood which I had set before,
and knew it would grow;
so that, in a year’s time,
I knew I should have
a quick or living hedge,
that would want but little repair.

This work did not take me up
less than three months,
because a great part of that time
was the wet season,
when I could not go abroad.
Within-doors,
that is when it rained
and I could not go out,
I found employment
in the following occupations
— always observing,
that all the while I was at work
I diverted myself
with talking to my parrot,
and teaching him to speak;
and I quickly taught him
to know his own name,
and at last to speak it out pretty loud,
“Poll,”
which was the first word
I ever heard spoken in the island
by any mouth but my own.

This, therefore, was not my work,
but an assistance to my work;
for now, as I said,
I had a great employment upon my hands,
as follows:
I had long studied to make,
by some means or other,
some earthen vessels,
which, indeed, I wanted sorely,
but knew not where to come at them.
However,
considering the heat of the climate,
I did not doubt
but if I could find out any clay,
I might make some pots
that might, being dried in the sun,
be hard enough and strong enough
to bear handling,
and to hold anything that was dry,
and required to be kept so;
and as this was necessary
in the preparing corn, meal, &c.,
which was the thing I was doing,
I resolved to make some
as large as I could,
and fit only to stand like jars,
to hold what should be put into them.

It would make the reader pity me,
or rather laugh at me,
to tell how many awkward ways I took
to raise this paste;
what odd, misshapen,
ugly things I made;
how many of them fell in
and how many fell out,
the clay not being stiff enough
to bear its own weight;
how many cracked
by the over-violent heat of the sun,
being set out too hastily;
and how many fell in pieces
with only removing,
as well before
as after they were dried;
and, in a word, how,
after having laboured hard
to find the clay
— to dig it, to temper it,
to bring it home, and work it —
I could not make above
two large earthen ugly things
(I cannot call them jars)
in about two months’ labour.

However,
as the sun baked these two
very dry and hard,
I lifted them very gently up,
and set them down again
in two great wicker baskets,
which I had made on purpose for them,
that they might not break;
and as between the pot and the basket
there was a little room to spare,
I stuffed it full
of the rice and barley straw;
and these two pots
being to stand always dry
I thought would hold my dry corn,
and perhaps the meal,
when the corn was bruised.

Though I miscarried so much
in my design for large pots,
yet I made several smaller things
with better success;
such as little round pots,
flat dishes, pitchers, and pipkins,
and any things my hand turned to;
and the heat of the sun baked them
quite hard.

But all this would not answer my end,
which was to get an earthen pot
to hold what was liquid,
and bear the fire,
which none of these could do.
It happened after some time,
making a pretty large fire
for cooking my meat,
when I went to put it out
after I had done with it,
I found a broken piece
of one of my earthenware vessels
in the fire,
burnt as hard as a stone,
and red as a tile.
I was agreeably surprised to see it,
and said to myself,
that certainly
they might be made to burn whole,
if they would burn broken.

This set me to study
how to order my fire,
so as to make it burn some pots.
I had no notion of a kiln,
such as the potters burn in,
or of glazing them with lead,
though I had some lead to do it with;
but I placed three large pipkins
and two or three pots in a pile,
one upon another,
and placed my firewood all round it,
with a great heap of embers under them.
I plied the fire with fresh fuel
round the outside and upon the top,
till I saw the pots in the inside
red-hot quite through,
and observed
that they did not crack at all.
When I saw them clear red,
I let them stand in that heat
about five or six hours,
till I found one of them,
though it did not crack,
did melt or run;
for the sand
which was mixed with the clay
melted by the violence of the heat,
and would have run into glass
if I had gone on;
so I slacked my fire gradually
till the pots began
to abate of the red colour;
and watching them all night,
that I might not let the fire abate
too fast,
in the morning
I had three very good
(I will not say handsome)
pipkins,
and two other earthen pots,
as hard burnt as could be desired,
and one of them perfectly glazed
with the running of the sand.

After this experiment,
I need not say
that I wanted no sort of earthenware
for my use;
but I must needs say
as to the shapes of them,
they were very indifferent,
as any one may suppose,
when I had no way of making them
but as the children make dirt pies,
or as a woman would make pies
that never learned to raise paste.

No joy at a thing of so mean a nature
was ever equal to mine,
when I found I had made an earthen pot
that would bear the fire;
and I had hardly patience to stay
till they were cold
before I set one on the fire again
with some water in it
to boil me some meat,
which it did admirably well;
and with a piece of a kid
I made some very good broth,
though I wanted oatmeal,
and several other ingredients requisite
to make it as good
as I would have had it been.

My next concern was
to get me a stone mortar
to stamp or beat some corn in;
for as to the mill,
there was no thought of arriving
at that perfection of art
with one pair of hands.
To supply this want,
I was at a great loss;
for, of all the trades in the world,
I was as perfectly unqualified
for a stone-cutter
as for any whatever;
neither had I any tools
to go about it with.

I spent many a day
to find out a great stone
big enough to cut hollow,
and make fit for a mortar,
and could find none at all,
except what was in the solid rock,
and which I had no way to dig
or cut out;
nor indeed were the rocks in the island
of hardness sufficient,
but were all of a sandy,
crumbling stone,
which neither would bear
the weight of a heavy pestle,
nor would break the corn
without filling it with sand.
So, after a great deal of time lost
in searching for a stone,
I gave it over,
and resolved to look out
for a great block of hard wood,
which I found, indeed, much easier;
and getting one as big
as I had strength to stir,
I rounded it,
and formed it on the outside
with my axe and hatchet,
and then with the help of fire
and infinite labour,
made a hollow place in it,
as the Indians in Brazil
make their canoes.
After this,
I made a great heavy pestle or beater
of the wood called the iron-wood;
and this I prepared and laid by
against I had my next crop of corn,
which I proposed to myself to grind,
or rather pound into meal
to make bread.

My next difficulty
was to make a sieve or searce,
to dress my meal,
and to part it
from the bran and the husk;
without which I did not see it possible
I could have any bread.
This was a most difficult thing
even to think on,
for to be sure I had nothing
like the necessary thing to make it
— I mean fine thin canvas or stuff
to searce the meal through.

And here I was at a full stop
for many months;
nor did I really know what to do.
Linen I had none left
but what was mere rags;
I had goat’s hair,
but neither knew
how to weave it or spin it;
and had I known how,
here were no tools to work it with.
All the remedy that I found for this was,
that at last I did remember I had,
among the 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
proper enough for the work;
and thus I made shift for some years:
how I did afterwards,
I shall show in its place.

The baking part
was the next thing to be considered,
and how I should make bread
when I came to have corn;
for first, I had no yeast.
As to that part,
there was no supplying the want,
so I did not concern myself much
about it.
But for an oven
I was indeed in great pain.
At length
I found out an experiment for that also,
which was this:
I made some earthen-vessels
very broad but not deep,
that is to say,
about two feet diameter,
and not above nine inches deep.
These I burned in the fire,
as I had done the other,
and laid them by;
and when I wanted to bake,
I made a great fire upon my hearth,
which I had paved
with some square tiles
of my own baking and burning also;
but I should not call them square.

When the firewood was burned
pretty much into embers or live coals,
I drew them forward upon this hearth,
so as to cover it all over,
and there I let them lie
till the hearth was very hot.
Then sweeping away all the embers,
I set down my loaf or loaves,
and whelming down the earthen pot
upon them,
drew the embers
all round the outside of the pot,
to keep in and add to the heat;
and thus as well as in the best oven
in the world,
I baked my barley-loaves,
and became in little time
a good pastrycook
into the bargain;
for I made myself
several cakes and puddings of the rice;
but I made no pies,
neither had I anything to put into them
supposing I had,
except the flesh
either of fowls or goats.

It need not be wondered at
if all these things took me up
most part of the third year
of my abode here;
for it is to be observed
that in the intervals of these things
I had my new harvest and husbandry
to manage;
for I reaped my corn in its season,
and carried it home as well as I could,
and laid it up in the ear,
in my large baskets,
till I had time to rub it out,
for I had no floor to thrash it on,
or instrument to thrash it with.

And now, indeed,
my stock of corn increasing,
I really wanted
to build my barns bigger;
I wanted a place to lay it up in,
for the increase of the corn
now yielded me so much,
that I had of the barley
about twenty bushels,
and of the rice as much or more;
insomuch that now
I resolved to begin to use it freely;
for my bread
had been quite gone a great while;
also I resolved to see
what quantity would be sufficient for me
a whole year,
and to sow but once a year.

Upon the whole,
I found that
the forty bushels of barley and rice
were much more than I could consume
in a year;
so I resolved to sow
just the same quantity every year
that I sowed the last,
in hopes that such a quantity
would fully provide me with bread, &c.

All the while these things were doing,
you may be sure
my thoughts ran many times
upon the prospect of land
which I had seen
from the other side of the island;
and I was not without secret wishes
that I were on shore there,
fancying that,
seeing the mainland,
and an inhabited country,
I might find some way or other
to convey myself further,
and perhaps at last
find some means of escape.

But all this while I made no allowance
for the dangers of such an undertaking,
and how I might fall
into the hands of savages,
and perhaps such as I might have reason
to think far worse
than the lions and tigers of Africa:
that if I once came in their power,
I should run a hazard
of more than a thousand to one
of being killed,
and perhaps of being eaten;
for I had heard
that the people of the Caribbean coast
were cannibals or man-eaters,
and I knew by the latitude
that I could not be far from that shore.
Then,
supposing they were not cannibals,
yet they might kill me,
as many Europeans
who had fallen into their hands
had been served,
even when
they had been ten or twenty together
— much more I, that was but one,
and could make little or no defence;
all these things, I say,
which I ought to have considered well;
and did come into my thoughts
afterwards,
yet gave me no apprehensions at first,
and my head ran mightily
upon the thought of getting over
to the shore.

Now I wished for my boy Xury,
and the long-boat
with shoulder-of-mutton sail,
with which I sailed
above a thousand miles
on the coast of Africa;
but this was in vain:
then I thought I would go and look
at our ship’s boat,
which, as I have said,
was blown up upon the shore a great way,
in the storm,
when we were first cast away.
She lay almost where she did at first,
but not quite;
and was turned,
by the force of the waves and the winds,
almost bottom upward,
against a high ridge of beachy,
rough sand,
but no water about her.

If I had had hands
to have refitted her,
and to have launched her into the water,
the boat would have done well enough,
and I might have gone back
into the Brazils with her
easily enough;
but I might have foreseen
that I could no more turn her
and set her upright upon her bottom
than I could remove the island;
however, I went to the woods,
and cut levers and rollers,
and brought them to the boat
resolving to try what I could do;
suggesting to myself
that if I could but turn her down,
I might repair
the damage she had received,
and she would be a very good boat,
and I might go to sea in her
very easily.

I spared no pains, indeed,
in this piece of fruitless toil,
and spent, I think,
three or four weeks about it;
at last finding it impossible
to heave it up with my little strength,
I fell to digging away the sand,
to undermine it,
and so to make it fall down,
setting pieces of wood
to thrust and guide it right
in the fall.

But when I had done this,
I was unable to stir it up again,
or to get under it,
much less to move it forward
towards the water;
so I was forced to give it over;
and yet,
though I gave over
the hopes of the boat,
my desire to venture over for the main
increased, rather than decreased,
as the means for it seemed impossible.

This at length put me upon thinking
whether it was not possible
to make myself a canoe, or periagua,
such as the natives of those climates
make, even without tools,
or, as I might say,
without hands,
of the trunk of a great tree.
This I not only thought possible,
but easy,
and pleased myself extremely
with the thoughts of making it,
and with my having
much more convenience for it
than any of the negroes or Indians;
but not at all considering
the particular inconveniences
which I lay under
more than the Indians did
— viz.
want of hands to move it,
when it was made,
into the water —
a difficulty
much harder for me to surmount
than all the consequences
of want of tools
could be to them;
for what was it to me,
if when I had chosen a vast tree
in the woods,
and with much trouble cut it down,
if I had been able with my tools
to hew and dub the outside
into the proper shape of a boat,
and burn or cut out the inside
to make it hollow,
so as to make a boat of it
— if, after all this,
I must leave it just there
where I found it,
and not be able to launch it
into the water?

One would have thought
I could not have had
the least reflection upon my mind
of my circumstances
while I was making this boat,
but I should have immediately thought
how I should get it into the sea;
but my thoughts were so intent
upon my voyage over the sea in it,
that I never once considered
how I should get it off the land:
and it was really,
in its own nature,
more easy for me to guide it
over forty-five miles of sea
than about forty-five fathoms of land,
where it lay,
to set it afloat in the water.

I went to work upon this boat
the most like a fool that ever man did
who had any of his senses awake.
I pleased myself with the design,
without determining
whether I was ever able to undertake it;
not but that
the difficulty of launching my boat
came often into my head;
but I put a stop to my inquiries into it
by this foolish answer
which I gave myself
—“Let me first make it;
I warrant I will find some way or other
to get it along when it is done.”

This was a most preposterous method;
but the eagerness of my fancy prevailed,
and to work I went.
I felled a cedar-tree,
and I question much
whether Solomon ever had such a one
for the building
of the Temple of Jerusalem;
it was five feet ten inches diameter
at the lower part next the stump,
and four feet eleven inches diameter
at the end of twenty-two feet;
after which it lessened for a while,
and then parted into branches.
It was not without infinite labour
that I felled this tree;
I was twenty days
hacking and hewing at it
at the bottom;
I was fourteen more
getting the branches and limbs
and the vast spreading head
cut off,
which I hacked and hewed through
with axe and hatchet,
and inexpressible labour;
after this, it cost me a month
to shape it and dub it to a proportion,
and to something
like the bottom of a boat,
that it might swim upright
as it ought to do.

It cost me near three months more
to clear the inside,
and work it out
so as to make an exact boat of it;
this I did, indeed, without fire,
by mere mallet and chisel,
and by the dint of hard labour,
till I had brought it to be
a very handsome periagua,
and big enough
to have carried six-and-twenty men,
and consequently big enough
to have carried me and all my cargo.

When I had gone through this work
I was extremely delighted with it.
The boat was really much bigger
than ever I saw a canoe or periagua,
that was made of one tree,
in my life.
Many a weary stroke it had cost,
you may be sure;
and had I gotten it into the water,
I make no question,
but I should have begun
the maddest voyage,
and the most unlikely to be performed,
that ever was undertaken.

But all my devices
to get it into the water
failed me;
though they cost me infinite labour too.
It lay about one hundred yards
from the water,
and not more;
but the first inconvenience was,
it was up hill towards the creek.
Well,
to take away this discouragement,
I resolved to dig
into the surface of the earth,
and so make a declivity:
this I began,
and it cost me
a prodigious deal of pains
(but who grudge pains
who have their deliverance in view?) ;
but when this was worked through,
and this difficulty managed,
it was still much the same,
for I could no more stir the canoe
than I could the other boat.

Then I measured the distance of ground,
and resolved to cut a dock or canal,
to bring the water up to the canoe,
seeing I could not bring the canoe
down to the water.
Well, I began this work;
and when I began to enter upon it,
and calculate
how deep it was to be dug,
how broad,
how the stuff was to be thrown out,
I found that,
by the number of hands I had,
being none but my own,
it must have been ten or twelve years
before I could have gone through with it;
for the shore lay so high,
that at the upper end it must have been
at least twenty feet deep;
so at length,
though with great reluctancy,
I gave this attempt over also.

This grieved me heartily;
and now I saw, though too late,
the folly of beginning a work
before we count the cost,
and before we judge rightly
of our own strength
to go through with it.

In the middle of this work
I finished my fourth year in this place,
and kept my anniversary
with the same devotion,
and with as much comfort as ever before;
for, by a constant study
and serious application
to the Word of God,
and by the assistance of His grace,
I gained a different knowledge
from what I had before.

I entertained
different notions of things.
I looked now upon the world
as a thing remote,
which I had nothing to do with,
no expectations from,
and, indeed, no desires about:
in a word,
I had nothing indeed to do with it,
nor was ever likely to have,
so I thought it looked,
as we may perhaps look upon it
hereafter
— viz.
as a place I had lived in,
but was come out of it;
and well might I say,
as Father Abraham to Dives,
“Between me and thee
is a great gulf fixed.”

In the first place,
I was removed
from all the wickedness of the world
here;
I had neither the lusts of the flesh,
the lusts of the eye,
nor the pride of life.
I had nothing to covet,
for I had
all that I was now capable of enjoying;
I was lord of the whole manor;
or, if I pleased,
I might call myself king or emperor
over the whole country
which I had possession of:
there were no rivals;
I had no competitor,
none to dispute sovereignty or command
with me:
I might have raised
ship-loadings of corn,
but I had no use for it;
so I let as little grow
as I thought enough for my occasion.
I had tortoise or turtle enough,
but now and then one was
as much as I could put to any use:
I had timber enough
to have built a fleet of ships;
and I had grapes enough
to have made wine,
or to have cured into raisins,
to have loaded that fleet
when it had been built.

But all I could make use of
was all that was valuable:
I had enough to eat
and supply my wants,
and what was all the rest to me?
If I killed more flesh than I could eat,
the dog must eat it, or vermin;
if I sowed more corn than I could eat,
it must be spoiled;
the trees that I cut down
were lying to rot on the ground;
I could make no more use of them
but for fuel,
and that I had no occasion
for but to dress my food.

In a word,
the nature and experience
of things dictated to me,
upon just reflection,
that all the good things of this world
are no farther good to us
than they are for our use;
and that,
whatever we may heap up to give others,
we enjoy just as much as we can use,
and no more.
The most covetous,
griping miser in the world
would have been cured
of the vice of covetousness
if he had been in my case;
for I possessed infinitely more
than I knew what to do with.
I had no room for desire,
except it was of things which I had not,
and they were but trifles,
though, indeed, of great use to me.
I had, as I hinted before,
a parcel of money,
as well gold as silver,
about thirty-six pounds sterling.
Alas!
there the sorry, useless stuff lay;
I had no more manner of business for it;
and often thought with myself
that I would have given a handful of it
for a gross of tobacco-pipes;
or for a hand-mill to grind my corn;
nay, I would have given it all
for a sixpenny-worth
of turnip and carrot seed
out of England,
or for a handful of peas and beans,
and a bottle of ink.

As it was,
I had not the least advantage by it
or benefit from it;
but there it lay in a drawer,
and grew mouldy
with the damp of the cave
in the wet seasons;
and if I had had the drawer
full of diamonds,
it had been the same case
— they had been
of no manner of value to me,
because of no use.

I had now brought my state of life
to be much easier in itself
than it was at first,
and much easier to my mind,
as well as to my body.
I frequently sat down to meat
with thankfulness,
and admired
the hand of God’s providence,
which had thus spread my table
in the wilderness.
I learned to look more
upon the bright side of my condition,
and less upon the dark side,
and to consider what I enjoyed
rather than what I wanted;
and this gave me sometimes
such secret comforts,
that I cannot express them;
and which I take notice of here,
to put those discontented people
in mind of it,
who cannot enjoy comfortably
what God has given them,
because they see and covet something
that He has not given them.
All our discontents about what we want
appeared to me to spring
from the want of thankfulness
for what we have.

Another reflection
was of great use to me,
and doubtless would be so to any one
that should fall into such distress
as mine was;
and this was,
to compare my present condition
with what I at first
expected it would be;
nay,
with what it would certainly have been,
if the good providence of God
had not wonderfully ordered the ship
to be cast up nearer to the shore,
where I not only could come at her,
but could bring what I got out of her
to the shore,
for my relief and comfort;
without which,
I had wanted for tools to work,
weapons for defence,
and gunpowder and shot
for getting my food.

I spent whole hours,
I may say whole days,
in representing to myself,
in the most lively colours,
how I must have acted
if I had got nothing out of the ship.
How I could not have
so much as got any food,
except fish and turtles;
and that,
as it was long
before I found any of them,
I must have perished first;
that I should have lived,
if I had not perished,
like a mere savage;
that if I had killed a goat or a fowl,
by any contrivance,
I had no way to flay or open it,
or part the flesh
from the skin and the bowels,
or to cut it up;
but must gnaw it with my teeth,
and pull it with my claws,
like a beast.

These reflections made me very sensible
of the goodness of Providence to me,
and very thankful
for my present condition,
with all its hardships and misfortunes;
and this part also
I cannot but recommend to the reflection
of those who are apt,
in their misery,
to say, “Is any affliction like mine?”
Let them consider how much worse
the cases of some people are,
and their case might have been,
if Providence had thought fit.

I had another reflection,
which assisted me also
to comfort my mind with hopes;
and this was
comparing my present situation
with what I had deserved,
and had therefore reason to expect
from the hand of Providence.
I had lived a dreadful life,
perfectly destitute
of the knowledge and fear of God.
I had been well instructed
by father and mother;
neither had they been wanting to me
in their early endeavours
to infuse a religious awe of God
into my mind,
a sense of my duty,
and what the nature
and end of my being
required of me.
But, alas!
falling early into the seafaring life,
which of all lives
is the most destitute
of the fear of God,
though His terrors
are always before them;
I say,
falling early into the seafaring life,
and into seafaring company,
all that little sense of religion
which I had entertained
was laughed out of me
by my messmates;
by a hardened despising of dangers,
and the views of death,
which grew habitual to me
by my long absence
from all manner of opportunities
to converse with anything
but what was like myself,
or to hear anything that was good
or tended towards it.

So void was I
of everything that was good,
or the least sense of what I was,
or was to be,
that,
in the greatest deliverances I enjoyed
— such as my escape from Sallee;
my being taken up
by the Portuguese master of the ship;
my being planted so well in the Brazils;
my receiving the cargo from England,
and the like —
I never had once the words
“Thank God!”
so much as on my mind,
or in my mouth;
nor in the greatest distress
had I so much as a thought
to pray to Him,
or so much as to say,
“Lord, have mercy upon me!”
no, nor to mention the name of God,
unless it was to swear by,
and blaspheme it.

I had terrible reflections upon my mind
for many months,
as I have already observed,
on account of my wicked
and hardened life past;
and when I looked about me,
and considered
what particular providences
had attended me
since my coming into this place,
and how God
had dealt bountifully with me
— had not only punished me less
than my iniquity had deserved,
but had so plentifully provided for me —
this gave me great hopes
that my repentance was accepted,
and that God had yet mercy in store
for me.

With these reflections
I worked my mind up,
not only to a resignation
to the will of God
in the present disposition
of my circumstances,
but even to a sincere thankfulness
for my condition;
and that I, who was yet a living man,
ought not to complain,
seeing I had not the due punishment
of my sins;
that I enjoyed so many mercies
which I had no reason to have expected
in that place;
that I ought never more
to repine at my condition,
but to rejoice,
and to give daily thanks
for that daily bread,
which nothing
but a crowd of wonders
could have brought;
that I ought to consider
I had been fed even by a miracle,
even as great as that
of feeding Elijah by ravens,
nay, by a long series of miracles;
and that
I could hardly have named a place
in the uninhabitable part of the world
where I could have been cast more
to my advantage;
a place where, as I had no society,
which was my affliction on one hand,
so I found no ravenous beasts,
no furious wolves or tigers,
to threaten my life;
no venomous creatures,
or poisons,
which I might feed on to my hurt;
no savages to 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
on these things,
I went away, and was no more sad.

I had now been here so long
that many things
which I had brought on shore for my help
were either quite gone,
or very much wasted and near spent.

My ink, as I observed,
had been gone some time,
all but a very little,
which I eked out with water,
a little and a little,
till it was so pale,
it scarce left any appearance of black
upon the paper.
As long as it lasted I made use of it
to minute down the days of the month
on which any remarkable thing
happened to me;
and first,
by casting up times past,
I remembered that there was
a strange concurrence of days
in the various providences
which befell me,
and which,
if I had been superstitiously inclined
to observe days as fatal or fortunate,
I might have had reason
to have looked upon
with a great deal of curiosity.

First, I had observed
that the same day that I broke away
from my father and friends
and ran away to Hull,
in order to go to sea,
the same day afterwards
I was taken by the Sallee man-of-war,
and made a slave;
the same day of the year that I escaped
out of the wreck of that ship
in Yarmouth Roads,
that same day-year afterwards
I made my escape from Sallee in a boat;
the same day of the year I was born on
— viz. the 30th of September,
that same day I had my life
so miraculously saved
twenty-six years after,
when I was cast on shore
in this island;
so that my wicked life
and my solitary life
began both on a day.

The next thing to my ink being wasted
was that of my bread
— I mean the biscuit
which I brought out of the ship;
this I had husbanded to the last degree,
allowing myself
but one cake of bread a-day
for above a year;
and yet I was quite without bread
for near a year
before I got any corn of my own,
and great reason I had to be thankful
that I had any at all,
the getting it being,
as has been already observed,
next to miraculous.

My clothes, too, began to decay;
as to linen,
I had had none a good while,
except some chequered shirts
which I found
in the chests of the other seamen,
and which I carefully preserved;
because many times
I could bear no other clothes on
but a shirt;
and it was a very great help to me
that I had,
among all the men’s clothes of the ship,
almost three dozen of shirts.
There were also, indeed,
several thick watch-coats
of the seamen’s
which were left,
but they were too hot to wear;
and though it is true
that the weather was so violently hot
that there was no need of clothes,
yet I could not go quite naked
— no, though I had been inclined to it,
which I was not —
nor could I abide the thought of it,
though I was alone.

The reason why I could not go naked was,
I could not bear the heat of the sun
so well when quite naked
as with some clothes on;
nay, the very heat
frequently blistered my skin:
whereas, with a shirt on,
the air itself made some motion,
and whistling under the shirt,
was twofold cooler than without it.
No more could I ever bring myself
to go out in the heat of the sun
without a cap or a hat;
the heat of the sun, beating
with such violence
as it does in that place,
would give me the headache presently,
by darting so directly on my head,
without a cap or hat on,
so that I could not bear it;
whereas, if I put on my hat
it would presently go away.

Upon these views I began to consider
about putting the few rags I had,
which I called clothes,
into some order;
I had worn out all the waistcoats I had,
and my business was now to try
if I could not make jackets
out of the great watch-coats
which I had by me,
and with such other materials as I had;
so I set to work,
tailoring, or rather, indeed, botching,
for I made most piteous work of it.
However,
I made shift
to make two or three new waistcoats,
which I hoped
would serve me a great while:
as for breeches or drawers,
I made but a very sorry shift indeed
till afterwards.

I have mentioned that I saved
the skins of all the creatures
that I killed,
I mean four-footed ones,
and I had them hung up,
stretched out with sticks in the sun,
by which means
some of them were so dry and hard
that they were fit for little,
but others were very useful.
The first thing I made of these
was a great cap for my head,
with the hair on the outside,
to shoot off the rain;
and this I performed so well,
that after I made me a suit of clothes
wholly of these skins
— that is to say,
a waistcoat,
and breeches open at the knees,
and both loose,
for they were rather wanting
to keep me cool
than to keep me warm.
I must not omit to acknowledge
that they were wretchedly made;
for if I was a bad carpenter,
I was a worse tailor.
However,
they were such
as I made very good shift with,
and when I was out,
if it happened to rain,
the hair of my waistcoat and cap
being outermost,
I was kept very dry.

After this,
I spent a great deal of time and pains
to make an umbrella;
I was, indeed, in great want of one,
and had a great mind to make one;
I had seen them made in the Brazils,
where they are very useful
in the great heats there,
and I felt the heats
every jot as great here,
and greater too,
being nearer the equinox;
besides,
as I was obliged to be much abroad,
it was a most useful thing to me,
as well for the rains as the heats.
I took a world of pains with it,
and was a great while
before I could make anything
likely to hold:
nay,
after I had thought I had hit the way,
I spoiled two or three
before I made one to my mind:
but at last I made one
that answered indifferently well:
the main difficulty I found
was to make it let down.

I could make it spread,
but if it did not let down too,
and draw in,
it was not portable for me
any way but just over my head,
which would not do.
However, at last, as I said,
I made one to answer,
and covered it with skins,
the hair upwards,
so that it cast off the rain
like a pent-house,
and kept off the sun so effectually,
that I could walk out
in the hottest of the weather
with greater advantage
than I could before in the coolest,
and when I had no need of it
could close it,
and carry it under my arm.

Thus I lived mighty comfortably,
my mind being entirely composed
by resigning myself to the will of God,
and throwing myself wholly
upon the disposal of His providence.
This made my life better than sociable,
for when I began to regret
the want of conversation
I would ask myself,
whether thus conversing mutually
with my own thoughts,
and (as I hope I may say)
with even God Himself,
by ejaculations,
was not better
than the utmost enjoyment
of human society in the world?