APDL Eductation Resources/APDL Eductation Resources.iso/text/books/rob_crusoe/ROBCRU_1

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                                      1719

                              ROBINSON CRUSOE

                              by Daniel Defoe


I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good family,
though not of that country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen, who
settled first at Hull. He got a good estate by merchandise, and leaving
off his trade lived afterward at York, from whence he had married my
mother, whose relations were named Robinson, a good family in that
country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznear; but by the
usual corruption of words in England we are now called, nay, we call
ourselves, and write our name, Crusoe, and so my companions always
called me.

I had two elder brothers, one of which was lieutenant-colonel to an
English regiment of foot in Flanders, formerly commanded by the famous
Colonel Lockhart, and was killed at the battle near Dunkirk against the
Spaniards; what became of my second brother I never knew, any more than
my father and mother did know what was become of me.

Being the third son of the family, and not bred to any trade, my head
began to be filled very early with rambling thoughts. My father, who was
very ancient, had given me a competent share of learning, as far as
house-education and a country free school generally goes, and designed
me for the law, but I would be satisfied with nothing but going to sea;
and my inclination to this led me so strongly against the will, nay, the
commands, of my father, and against all the entreaties and persuasions
of my mother and other friends, that there seemed to be something fatal
in that propension of nature tending directly to the life of misery
which was to befall me.

My father, a wise and grave man, gave me serious and excellent counsel
against what he foresaw was my design. He called me one morning into his
chamber, where he was confined by the gout, and expostulated very warmly
with me upon this subject. He asked me what reasons more than a mere
wandering inclination I had for leaving my father's house and my native
country, where I might be well introduced, and had a prospect of raising
my fortunes by application and industry, with a life of ease and
pleasure. He told me it was for men of desperate fortunes on one hand,
or of aspiring, superior fortunes on the other, who went abroad upon
adventures, to rise by enterprise, and make themselves famous in
undertakings of a nature out of the common road; that these things were
all either too far above me, or too far below me; that mine was the
middle state, or what might be called the upper station of low life,
which he had found by long experience was the best state in the world,
the most suited to human happiness, not exposed to the miseries and
hardships, the labor and sufferings, of the mechanic part of mankind,
and not embarrassed with the pride, luxury, ambition, and envy of the
upper part of mankind. He told me I might judge of the happiness of this
state by one thing, viz., that this was the state of life which all
other people envied; that kings have frequently lamented the miserable
consequences of being born to great things, and wished they had been
placed in the middle of the two extremes, between the mean and the
great; that the wise man gave his testimony to this as the just standard
of true felicity, when he prayed to have neither poverty nor riches.

He bid me observe it, and I should always find that the calamities of
life were shared among the upper and lower part of mankind; but that the
middle station had the fewest disasters and was not exposed to so many
vicissitudes as the higher or lower part of mankind. Nay, they were not
subjected to so many distempers and uneasiness either of body or mind as
those were who, by vicious living, luxury, and extravagancies on one
hand, or by hard labor, want of necessaries, and mean or insufficient
diet on the other hand, bring distempers upon themselves by the natural
consequences of their way of living; that the middle station of life was
calculated for all kind of virtues and all kind of enjoyments; that
peace and plenty were the handmaids of a middle fortune; that
temperance, moderation, quietness, health, society, all agreeable
diversions, and all desirable pleasures, were the blessings attending
the middle station of life; that this way men went silently and smoothly
through the world, and comfortably out of it, not embarrassed with the
labors of the hands or of the head, not sold to the life of slavery for
daily bread, or harassed with perplexed circumstances, which rob the
soul of peace, and the body of rest; not enraged with the passion of
envy, or secret burning lust of ambition for great things; but in easy
circumstances sliding gently through the world, and sensibly tasting the
sweets of living, without the bitter, feeling that they are happy, and
learning by every day's experience to know it more sensibly.

After this, he pressed me earnestly, and in the most affectionate
manner, not to play the young man, not to precipitate myself into
miseries which Nature and the station of life I was born in seemed to
have provided against; that I was under no necessity of seeking my
bread; that he would do well for me, and endeavor to enter me fairly
into the station of life which he had been just recommending to me; and
that if I was not very easy and happy in the world it must be my mere
fate or fault that must hinder it, and that he should have nothing to
answer for, having thus discharged his duty in warning me against
measures which he knew would be to my hurt; in a word, that as he would
do very kind things for me if I would stay and settle at home as he
directed, so he would not have so much hand in my misfortunes, as to
give me any encouragement to go away. And to close all, he told me I had
my elder brother for an example, to whom he had used the same earnest
persuasions to keep him from going into the Low Country wars, but could
not prevail, his young desires prompting him to run into the army, where
he was killed; and though he said he would not cease to pray for me, yet
he would venture to say to me, that if I did take this foolish step, God
would not bless me, and I would have leisure hereafter to reflect upon
having neglected his counsel when there might be none to assist in my
recovery.

I observed in this last part of his discourse, which was truly
prophetic, though I suppose my father did not know it to be so himself -
I say, I observed the tears run down his face very plentifully, and
especially when he spoke of my brother who was killed; and that when he
spoke of my having leisure to repent, and none to assist me, he was so
moved that he broke off the discourse, and told me his heart was so full
he could say no more to me.

I was sincerely affected with this discourse, as indeed who could be
otherwise? and I resolved not to think of going abroad any more, but to
settle at home according to my father's desire. But alas! a few days
wore it all off; and, in short, to prevent any of my father's farther
importunities, in a few weeks after I resolved to run quite away from
him. However, I did not act so hastily neither as my first heat of
resolution prompted, but I took my mother, at a time when I thought her
a little pleasanter than ordinary, and told her that my thoughts were so
entirely bent upon seeing the world that I should never settle to
anything with resolution enough to go through with it, and my father had
better give me his consent than force me to go without it; that I was
now eighteen years old, which was too late to go apprentice to a trade,
or clerk to an attorney; that I was sure if I did, I should never serve
out my time, and I should certainly run away from my master before my
time was out, and go to sea; and if she would speak to my father to let
me go but one voyage abroad, if I came home again and did not like it, I
would go no more, and I would promise by a double diligence to recover
that time I had lost.

This put my mother into a great passion. She told me she knew it would
be to no purpose to speak to my father upon any such subject; that he
knew too well what was my interest to give his consent to anything so
much for my hurt, and that she wondered how I could think of any such
thing after such a discourse as I had had with my father, and such kind
and tender expressions as she knew my father had used to me; and that,
in short, if I would ruin myself there was no help for me; but I might
depend I should never have their consent to it; that for her part, she
should not have so much hand in my destruction, and I should never have
it to say, that my mother was willing when my father was not.

Though my mother refused to move it to my father, yet, as I have heard
afterwards, she reported all the discourse to him, and that my father,
after showing a great concern at it, said to her with a sigh, "That boy
might be happy if he would stay at home, but if he goes abroad he will
be the miserablest wretch that was ever born: I can give no consent to
it."

It was not till almost a year after this that I broke loose, though in
the meantime I continued obstinately deaf to all proposals of settling
to business, and frequently expostulating with my father and mother
about their being so positively determined against what they knew my
inclinations prompted me to. But being one day at Hull, where I went
casually, and without any purpose of making an elopement that time; but
I say, being there, and one of my companions being going by sea to
London, in his father's ship, and prompting me to go with them, with the
common allurement of sea-faring men, viz., that it should cost me
nothing for my passage, I consulted neither father nor mother any more,
nor so much as sent them word of it; but leaving them to hear of it as
they might, without asking God's blessing, or my father's, without any
consideration of circumstances or consequences, and in an ill hour, God
knows, on the first of September, 1651, I went on board a ship bound for
London. Never any young adventurer's misfortunes, I believe began
sooner, or continued longer than mine. The ship was no sooner gotten out
of the Humber, but the wind began to blow, and the waves to rise in a
most frightful manner; and as I had never been at sea before, I was most
inexpressibly sick in body, and terrified in my mind. I began now
seriously to reflect upon what I had done, and how justly I was
overtaken by the judgment of Heaven for my wicked leaving my father's
house, and abandoning my duty; all the good counsel of my parents, my
father's tears and my mother's entreaties, came now fresh into my mind,
and my conscience, which was not yet come to the pitch of hardness which
it has been since, reproached me with the contempt of advice and the
breach of my duty to God and my father.

All this while the storm increased, and the sea, which I had never been
upon before, went very high, though nothing like what I have seen many
times since; no, nor like what I saw a few days after. But it was enough
to affect me then, who was but a young sailor, and had never known
anything of the matter. I expected every wave would have swallowed us
up, and that every time the ship fell down, as I thought, in the trough
or hollow of the sea, we should never rise more; and in this agony of
mind I made many vows of resolutions, that if it would please God here
to spare my life this one voyage, if ever I got once my foot upon dry
land again, I would go directly home to my father, and never set it into
a ship again while I lived; that I would take his advice, and never run
myself into such miseries as these any more. Now I saw plainly the
goodness of his observations about the middle station of life, how easy,
how comfortably he had lived all his days, and never had been exposed to
tempests at sea, or troubles on shore; and I resolved that I would, like
a true repenting prodigal, go home to my father.

These wise and sober thoughts continued all the while the storm
continued, and indeed some time after; but the next day the wind was
abated and the sea calmer, and I began to be a little inured to it.
However, I was very grave for all that day, being also a little sea-sick
still; but towards night the weather cleared up, the wind was quite
over, and a charming fine evening followed; the sun went down perfectly
clear, and rose so the next morning; and having little or no wind, and a
smooth sea, the sun shining upon it, the sight was, as I thought, the
most delightful that ever I saw.

I had slept well in the night, and was now no more sea-sick but very
cheerful, looking with wonder upon the sea that was so wrought and
terrible the day before, and could be so calm and so pleasant in so
little time after. And now lest my good resolutions should continue, my
companion, who had indeed enticed me away, comes to me: "Well, Bob,"
says he, clapping me on the shoulder, "how do you do after it? I warrant
you were frighted, wa'n't you, last night, when it blew but a capful of
wind?" "A capful, d'you call it?" said I; It was a terrible storm." "A
storm, you fool you," replied he; "do you call that a storm? Why, it was
nothing at all; give us but a good ship and sea-room, and we think
nothing at all; give us but a good ship and sea-room, and we think
nothing of such a squall of wind as that; but you're but a fresh-water
sailor, Bob. Come, let us make a bowl of punch, and we'll forget all
that; d'ye see what charming weather 'tis now?" To make short this sad
part of my story, we went the old way of all sailors; the punch was
made, and I was made drunk with it, and in that one night's wickedness I
drowned all my repentance, all my reflections upon my past conduct, and
all my resolutions for my future. In a word, as the sea was returned to
its smoothness of surface and settled calmness by the abatement of that
storm, so the hurry of my thoughts being over, my fears and
apprehensions of being swallowed up by the sea being forgotten, and the
current of my former desires returned, I entirely forgot the vows and
promises that I made in my distress. I found indeed some intervals of
reflection, and the serious thoughts did, as it were, endeavor to return
again sometime; but I shook them off, and roused myself from them as it
were from a distemper, and applying myself to drink and company, soon
mastered the return of those fits, for so I called them, and I had in
five or six days got as complete a victory over conscience as any young
fellow that resolved not to be troubled with it could desire. But I was
to have another trial for it still; and Providence, as in such cases
generally it does, resolved to leave me entirely without excuse. For if
I would not take this for a deliverance, the next was to be such a one
as the worst and most hardened wretch among us would confess both the
danger and the mercy.

The sixth day of our being at sea we came into Yarmouth roads; the wind
having been contrary and the weather calm, we made but little way since
the storm. Here we were obliged to come to an anchor, and here we lay,
the wind continuing contrary, viz., at southwest, for seven or eight
days, during which time a great many ships from Newcastle came into the
same roads, as the common harbor where the ships might wait for a wind
for the river.

We had not, however, rid here so long, but should have tided it up the
river, but that the wind blew too fresh; and after we had lain four or
five days, blew very hard. However, the roads .being reckoned as good as
a harbor, the anchorage good, and our ground-tackle very strong, our men
were unconcerned, and not in the least apprehensive of danger, but spent
the time in rest and mirth, after the manner of the sea; but the eighth
day in the morning the wind increased, and we had all hands at work to
strike our topmasts, and make everything snug and close, that the ship
might ride as easy as possible. By noon the sea went very high indeed,
and our ship rid forecastle in, shipped several seas, and we thought
once or twice our anchor had come home; upon which our master ordered
out the sheet anchor, so that we rode with two anchors ahead, and the
cables veered out to the better end.

By this time it blew a terrible storm indeed, and now I began to see
terror and amazement in the faces even of the seamen themselves. The
master, though vigilant to the business of perserving the ship, yet as
he went in and out of his cabin by me, I could hear him softly to
himself say several times, "Lord be merciful to us, we shall be all
lost, we shall be all undone"; and the like. During these first hurries
I was stupid, lying still in my cabin, which was in the steerage, and
cannot describe my temper; I could ill reassume the first penitence,
which I had so apparently trampled upon, and hardened myself against; I
though the bitterness of death had been past, and that this would be
nothing too, like the first. But when the master himself came by me, as
I said just now, and said we should be all lost, I was dreadfully
frighted; I got up out of my cabin, and looked out but such a dismal
sight I never saw: the sea went mountains high, and broke upon us every
three or four minutes; when I could look about, I could see nothing but
distress round us. Two ships that rid near us we found had cut their
masts by the board, being deep loaden; and our men cried out that a ship
which rid about's mile ahead of us was foundered. Two more ships being
driven from their anchors, were run out of the roads to sea at all
adventures, and that with not a mast standing. The light ships fared the
best, as not so much laboring in the sea; but two or three of them
drove, and came close by us, running away with only their sprit-sail out
before the wind.

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

Any one may judge what a condition I must be in all this, who was but a
young sailor, and who had been in such a fright before at but a little.
But if I can express at this distance the thoughts I had about me at
that time, I was in tenfold more horror of mind upon account of my
former convictions, and then having returned from them to the
resolutions I had wickedly taken at first, than I was at death itself;
and these, added to the terror of the storm, put me into such a
condition that I can by no words describe it. But the worst was not come
yet; the storm continued with such fury that the seamen themselves
acknowledged they had never known a worse. We had a good ship, but she
was deep loaden, and wallowed in the sea, that the seamen every now and
then cried out she would founder. It was my advantage in one respect,
that I did not know what they meant by founder till I inquired. However,
the storm was so violent 'that I saw what is not often seen, the master,
the boatswain, and some others more sensible than the rest, at their
prayers, and expecting every moment when the ship would go to the
bottom. In the middle of the night, and under all the rest of our
distresses, one of the men that had been down on purpose to see, cried
out we had sprung a leak; another said there was four foot water in the
hold. Then all hands were called to the pump. At that very word my
heart, as I thought, died within me, and I fell backwards upon the side
of my bed where I sat, into the cabin. However, the men aroused me, and
told me that I, that was able to do nothing before, was as well able to
pump as another; at which I stirred up and went to the pump and worked
very heartily. While this was doing, the master seeing some light
colliers, who, not able to ride out the storm, were obliged to slip and
run away to sea, and would come near us, ordered to fire a gun as a
signal of distress. I, who knew nothing what that meant, was so
surprised that I thought the ship had broke, or some dreadful thing had
happened. In a word, I was so surprised that I fell down in a swoon. As
this was a time when everybody had his own life to think of, nobody
minded me, or what was become of me; but another man stepped up to the
pump, and thrusting me aside with his foot, let me lie, thinking I had
been dead; and it was a great while before I came to myself.

We worked on, but the water increasing in the hold, it was apparent that
the ship would founder, and though the storm began to abate a little,
yet as it was not possible she could swim till we might run into a port,
so the master continued firing guns for help; and a light ship, who had
rid it out just ahead of us, ventured a boat out to help us. It was with
the utmost hazard the boat came near us, but it was impossible for us to
get on board, or for the boat to lie near the ship's side, till at last
the men rowing very heartily, and venturing their lives to save ours,
our men cast them a rope over the stern with a buoy to it, and then
veered it out a great length, which they after great labor and hazard
took hold of, and we hauled them close under our stern, and got all into
their boat. It was to no purpose for them or us after we were in the
boat to think of reaching to their own ship, so all agreed to let her
drive, and only to pull her in towards shore as much as we could, and
our master promised them that if the boat was staved upon shore he would
make it good to their master; so partly rowing and partly driving, our
boat went away to the norward, sloping towards the shore almost as far
as Winterton Ness.

We were not much more than a quarter of an hour out of our ship but we
saw her sink, and then I understood for the first time what was meant by
a ship foundering in the sea. I must acknowledge I had hardly eyes to
look up when the seamen told me she was sinking; for from that moment
they rather put me into the boat than that I might be said to go in; my
heart was, as it were, dead within me, partly with fright, partly with
horror of mind and the thoughts of what was yet before me.

While we were in this condition, the men yet laboring at the oar to
bring the boat near the shore, we could see, when, our boat, mounting
the waves, we were able to see the shore" great many people running
along the shore to assist us when we should come near. But we made but
slow way towards the shore, nor were we able to reach the shore, till
being past the lighthouse at Winterton, the shore falls off to the
westward towards Cromer, and so the land broke off a little the violence
of the wind. Here we got in, and though not without much difficulty got
all safe on shore, and walked afterwards on foot to Yarmouth, where, as
unfortunate men, we were used with great humanity as well by the
magistrates of the town, who assigned us good quarters, as by particular
merchants and owners of ships, and had money given us sufficient to
carry us either to London or back to Hull, as we thought fit.

Had I now had the sense to have gone back to Hull, and have gone home, I
had been happy, and my father, an emblem of our blessed Saviour's
parable, had even killed the fatted calf for me; for hearing the ship I
went away in was cast away in Yarmouth road, it was a great while before
he had any assurance that I was not drowned.

But my ill fate pushed me on now with an obstinacy that nothing could
resist; and though I had several times loud calls from my reason and my
more composed judgment to get home, yet I had no power to do it. I knew
not what to call this, nor will I urge that it is a secret overruling
decree that hurries us on to be the instruments of our own destruction,
even though it be before us, and that we rush upon it with our eyes
open. Certainly nothing but some such decreed unavoidable misery
attending, and which it was impossible for me to escape, could have
pushed me forward against the calm reasonings and persuasions of my most
retired thoughts, and against two such visible instructions as I had met
with in my first attempt.

My comrade, who had helped to harden me before, and who was the master's
son, was now less forward than I. The first time he spoke to me after we
were at Yarmouth, which was not till two or three days, for we were
separated in the town to several quarters - I say, the first time he was
me, it appeared his tone was altered, and looking very melancholy and
shaking his head, asked me how I did, and telling his father who I was,
and how I had came this voyage only for a trial in order to go farther
abroad, his father turning to me with a very grave and concerned tone,
"Young man," says he, "you ought never to go to sea any more, you ought
to take this for a plain and visible token, that you are not to be a
seafaring man." "Why, sir," said I, "will you go to sea no more?" "That
is another case," said he; "it is my calling, and therefore my duty; but
as you made this voyage for a trial, you see what a task Heaven has
given you of what you are to expect if you persist; perhaps this is all
befallen us on your account, like Jonah in the ship of Tarshish. Pray,"
continues he, "what are you? and on what account did you go to sea?"
Upon that I told him some of my story, at the end of which he burst out
with a strange kind of passion. "What had I done," says he, "that such
an unhappy wretch should come into my ship? I would not set my foot in
the same ship with thee again for a thousand pounds." This, indeed, was,
as I said, an excursion of his spirits, which were got agitated by the
sense of his loss, and was farther than he could have authority to go.
However, he afterwards talked very gravely to me, exhorted me to go back
to my father, and not tempt Providence to my ruin; told me I might see a
visible hand of Heaven against me. "And, young man," said he, "depend
upon it, if you do not go back, wherever you go you will meet with
nothing but disasters and disappointments, till your father's words are
fulfilled upon you."

We parted soon after; for I made him little answer, and I saw him no
more; which way he went, I know not. As for me, having some money in my
pocket, I travelled to London by land; and there, as well as on the
road, had many struggles with myself what course of life I should take,
and whether I should go home or go to sea.

As to going home, shame opposed the best motions that offered to my
thoughts; and it immediately occurred to me how I should be laughed at
among the neighbors, and should be ashamed to see, not my father and
mother only but even everybody else; from whence I have since often
observed how incongruous and irrational the common temper of mankind is,
especially of youth, to the reason which ought to guide them in such
cases, viz., that they are not ashamed to sin, and yet are ashamed to
repent; not ashamed of the action for which they ought justly to be
esteemed fools, but are ashamed of the returning, which only can make
them be esteemed wise men.

In this state of life, however, I remained some time, uncertain what
measures to take, and what course of life to lead. An irresistible
reluctance continued to going home; and as I stayed a while, the
remembrance of the distress I had been in wore off, and as that abated,
the little motion I had in my desires to a return wore off with it, till
at last I quite laid aside the thoughts of it, and looked out for a
voyage.

That evil influence which carried me first away from my father's house,
that hurried me into the wild and indigested notion of raising my
fortune, and that impressed those conceits so forcibly upon me as to
make me deaf to all good advice, and to the entreaties and even command
of my father - I say, the same influence, whatever it was, presented the
most unfortunate of all enterprises to my view; and I went on board a
vessel bound to the coast of Africa, or as our sailors vulgarly call it,
a voyage to Guinea.

It was my great misfortune that in all these adventures I did not ship
myself as a sailor, whereby, though I might indeed have worked a little
harder than ordinary, yet at the same time I had learned the duty and
office of a foremast man, and in time might have qualified myself for a
mate or lieutenant, if not for a master. But as it was always my fate to
choose for the worse, so I did here; for having money in my pocket, and
good clothes upon my back, I would always go on board in the habit of a
gentleman; and so I neither had any business in the ship, or learned to
do any.

It was my lot first of all to fall into pretty good company in London,
which does not always happen to such loose and misguided young fellows
as I then was; the devil generally not omitting to lay some snare for
them very early; but it was not so with me. I first fell acquainted with
the master of a ship who had been on the coast of Guinea, and who,
having had very good success there, was resolved to go again; and who,
taking a fancy to my conversation, which was not at all disagreeable at
that time, hearing me say I had a mind to see the world, told me if I
would go the voyage with him I should be at no expense; I should be his
messmate and his companion; and if I could carry anything with me, I
should have all the advantage of it that the trade would admit, and
perhaps I might meet with some encouragement.

I embraced the offer; and, entering into a strict friendship with this
captain, who was an honest and plain-dealing man, I went the voyage with
him, and carried a small adventure with me, which by the disinterested
honesty of my friend the captain, I increased very considerably, for I
carried about L40 in such toys and trifles as the captain directed me to
buy. This L40 I had mustered together by the assistance of some of my
relations whom I corresponded with, and who, I believe, got my father,
or at least my mother, to contribute so much as that to my first
adventure.

This was the only voyage which I may say was successful in all my
adventures, and which I owe to the integrity and honesty of my friend
the captain; under whom also I got a competent knowledge of the
mathematics and the rules of navigation, learned how to keep an account
of the ship's course, to take an observation, and, in short, to
understand some things that were needful to be understood by a sailor.
For, as he took delight to introduce me, I took delight to learn; and,
in a word, this voyage made me both a sailor and a merchant; for I
brought home five pounds nine ounces of gold dust for my adventure,
which yielded me in London at my return almost L300, and this filled me
with those aspiring thoughts which have since so completed my ruin.

Yet even in this voyage I had my misfortunes too; particularly, that I
was continually sick, being thrown into a violent calenture by the
excessive heat of the climate; our principal trading being upon the
coast, for the latitude of 15 degrees north even to the line itself.

I was not set up for a Guinea trader; and my friend, to my great
misfortune, dying soon after his arrival, I resolved to go the same
voyage again, and I embarked in the same vessel with one who was his
mate in the former voyage, and had now got the command of the ship. This
was the unhappiest voyage that ever man made; for though I did not carry
quite L100 of my new-gained wealth, so that I had L200 left, and which I
lodged with my friend's widow, who was very just to me, yet I fell into
terrible misfortunes in this voyage; and from the first was this, viz.,
our ship making her course towards the Canary Islands, or rather between
those islands and the African shore, was surprised in the gray of the
morning by a Turkish rover of Sallee, who gave chase to us with all the
sail she could make. We crowded also as much canvas as our yards would
spread, or our masts carry, to have got clear; but finding the pirate
gained upon us, and would certainly come up with us in a few hours, we
prepared to fight, our ship having twelve guns, and the rogue eighteen.
About three in the afternoon he came up with us, and bringing to, by
mistake, just athwart our quarter, instead of athwart our stern, as he
intended, we brought eight of our guns to bear on that side, and poured
in a broadside upon him, which made him sheer off again, after returning
our fire and pouring in also his small-shot from near 200 men which he
had on board. However, we had not a man touched, all our men keeping
close. He prepared to attack us again, and we to defend ourselves; but
laying us on board the next time upon our other quarter, he entered
sixty men upon our decks, who immediately fell to cutting and hacking
the decks and rigging. We plied them with small-shot, half-pikes,
powder-chests, and such like, and cleared our deck of them twice.
However, to cut short this melancholy part of our story, our ship being
disabled, and three of our men killed and eight wounded, we were obliged
to yield, and were carried all prisoners into Sallee, a port belonging
to the Moors.

The usage I had there was not so dreadful as at first I had apprehended,
nor was I carried up the country to the emperor's court, as the rest of
our men were, but was kept by the captain of the rover as his proper
prize, and made his slave, being young and nimble, and fit for his
business. At this surprising change of my circumstances from a merchant
to a miserable slave, I was perfectly overwhelmed; and now I looked back
upon my father's prophetic discourse to me, that I should be miserable,
and have none to relieve me, which I thought was now so effectually
brought to pass, that it could not be worse; that now the hand of Heaven
had overtaken me, and I was undone without redemption. But alas! this
was but a taste of the misery I was to go through, as will appear in the
sequel of this story.

As my new patron, or master, had taken me home to his house, so I was in
hopes that he would take me with him when he went to sea again,
believing that it would some time or other be his fate to be taken by a
Spanish or Portugal man-of-war; and that then I should be set at
liberty. But this hope of mine was soon taken away; for when he went to
sea, he left me on shore to look after his little garden, and do the
common drudgery of slaves about his house; and when he came home again
from his cruise, he ordered me to lie in the cabin to look after the
ship.

Here I meditated nothing but my escape, and what method I might take to
effect it, but found no way that had the least probability in it.
Nothing presented to make the supposition of it rational; for I had
nobody to communicate it to that would embark with me, no fellow-slave,
no Englishman, Irishman, or Scotsman there but myself; so that for two
years, though I often pleased myself with the imagination, yet I never
had the least encouraging prospect of putting it in practice.

After about two years an odd circumstance presented itself, which put
the old thought of making some attempt for my liberty again in my head.
My patron lying at home longer than usual without fitting out his ship,
which, as I heard, was for want of money, he used constantly, once or
twice a week, sometimes oftener, if the weather was fair, to take the
ship's pinnace, and go out into the road a-fishing; and as he always
took me and a young Maresco with him to row the boat, we made him very
merry, and I proved very dexterous in catching fish; insomuch, that
sometimes he would send me with a Moor, one of his kinsmen, and the
youth the Maresco, as they called him, to catch a dish of fish for him.

It happened one time that, going a-fishing in a stark calm morning, a
fog rose so thick, that though we were not half a league from the shore
we lost sight of it; and rowing we knew not whither or which way, we
labored all day, and all the next night, and when the morning came found
we were pulled off to sea instead of pulling in for the shore; and that
we were at least two leagues from the shore. However, we got well in
again, though with a great deal of labor, and some danger, for the wind
began to blow pretty fresh in the morning; but particularly we were all
very hungry.

But our patron, warned by this disaster, resolved to take more care of
himself for the future; and having lying by him the longboat of our
English ship which he had taken, he resolved he would not go a-fishing
any more without a compass and some provision; so he ordered the
carpenter of his ship, who was also an English slave, to build a little
state-room, or cabin, in the middle of the longboat, like that of a
barge, with a place to stand behind it to steer and haul home the
main-sheet, and room before for a hand or two to stand and work the
sails. She sailed with what we call a shoulder-of-mutton sail; and the
boom jabbed over the top of the cabin, which lay very snug and low, and
had in it room for him to lie, with a slave or two, and a table to eat
on, with some small lockers to put in some bottles of such liquor as he
thought fit to drink; particularly his bread, rice, and coffee.

We went frequently out with this boat a-fishing, and as I was most
dexterous to catch fish for him, he never went without me. It happened
that he had appointed to go out in this boat, either for pleasure or for
fish, with two or three Moors of some distinction in that place, and for
whom he had provided extraordinarily; and had therefore sent on board
the boat over night a larger store of provisions than ordinary; and had
ordered me to get ready three fuzees with powder and shot, which were on
board his ship, for that they designed some sport of fowling as well as
fishing.

I got all things ready as he had directed, and waited the next morning
with the boat, washed clean, her ancient and pendants out, and
everything to accommodate his guests; when by and by my patron came on
board alone, and told me his guests had put off going, upon some
business that fell out, and ordered me with the man and boy, as usual,
to go out with the boat and catch them some fish, for that his friends
were to sup at his house; and commanded that as soon as I had got some
fish, I should bring it home to his house; all which I prepared to do.

This moment my former notions of deliverance darted into my thoughts,
for now I found I was like to have a little ship at my command; and my
master being gone, I prepared to furnish myself, not for a fishing
business, but for a voyage; though I knew not, neither did I so much as
consider, whither I should steer; for anywhere, to get out of that
place, was my way.

My first contrivance was to make a pretence to speak to this Moor, to
get something for our subsistence on board; for I told him we must not
presume to eat of our patron's bread. He said that was true; so he
brought a large basket of rusk or biscuit of their kind, and three jars
with fresh water, into the boat. I knew where my patron's case of
bottles stood, which it was evident by the make were taken out of some
English prize; and I conveyed them into the boat while the Moor was on
shore, as if they had been there before for our master. I conveyed also
a great lump of beeswax into the boat, which weighed above half a
hundredweight, with a parcel of twine or thread, a hatchet, a saw, and a
hammer, all of which were great use to us afterwards, especially the wax
to make candles. Another trick I tried upon him, which he innocently
came into also. His name was Ishmael, who they call Muly, or Moely; so I
called to him, "Moely," said I, "our patron's guns are on board the
boat; can you not get a little powder and shot? It may be we may kill
some alcamies (a fowl like our curlews) for ourselves, for I know he
keeps the gunner's stores in the ship." "Yes," says he, "I'll bring
some"; and accordingly he brought a great leather pouch which held about
a pound an a half of powder, or rather more; and another with shot, that
had five or six pounds, with some bullets, and put all into the boat. At
the same time I had found some powder of my master's in the great cabin,
with which I filled one of the large bottles in the case, which was
almost empty, pouring what was in it into another; and thus furnished
with everything needful, we sailed out of the port to fish. The castle,
which is at the entrance of the port, knew who we were, and took no
notice of us; and we were not above a mile out of the port before we
hauled in our sail, and set us down to fish. The wind blew from the
NNE., which was contrary to my desire; for had it blown southerly I had
been sure to have made the coast of Spain, and at least reached to the
bay of Cadiz; but my resolutions were, blow which way it would, I would
be gone from the horrid place where I was, and leave the rest to Fate.

After we had fished some time and catched nothing, for when I had fish
on my hook I would not pull them up, that he might not see them, I said
to the Moor, "This will not do; our master will not be thus served; we
must stand farther off." He, thinking no harm, agreed, and being in the
head of the boat set the sails; and as I had the helm I run the boat out
near a league farther, and then brought her to as if I would fish; when
giving the boy the helm, I stepped forward to where the Moor was, and
making as if I stooped for something behind him, I took him by surprise
with my arm under his twist, and tossed him clear overboard into the
sea. He rose immediately, for he swam like a cork, and called to me,
begged to be taken in, told me he would go all the world over with me.
He swam so strong after the boat, that he would have reached me very
quickly, there being but little wind; upon which I stepped into the
cabin, and fetching one of the fowling-pieces, I presented it at him,
and told him I had done him no hurt, and if he would be quiet I would do
him none. "But, said I, "you swim well enough to reach to the shore, and
the sea is calm; make the best of your way to shore, and I will do you
no harm; but if you come near the boat I'll shoot you through the head,
for I am resolved to have my liberty." So he turned himself about, and
swam for the shore, and I make no doubt but he reached it with ease, for
he was an excellent swimmer.

I could have been content to have taken this Moor with me, and have
drowned the boy, but there was no venturing to trust him. When he was
gone I turned to the boy, whom they called Xury, and said to him, "Xury,
if you will be faithful to me I'll make you a great man; but if you will
not stroke your face to be true to me," this is, swear by Mahomet and
his father's beard, "I must throw you into the sea too." The boy smiled
in my face, and spoke so innocently, that I could not mistrust him, and
swore to be faithful to me, and go all over the world with me.

While I was in view of the Moor that was swimming, I stood out directly
to sea with the boat, rather stretching to windward, that they might
think me gone towards the straits' mouth (as indeed any one that had
been in their wits must have been supposed to do); for who would have
supposed we were sailed on to the southward to the truly barbarian
coast, where whole nations of negroes were sure to surround us with
their canoes, and destroy us; where we could ne'er once go on shore but
we should be devoured by savage beasts, or more merciless savages of
humankind?

But as soon as it grew dusk in the evening, I changed my course, and
steered directly south and by east, bending my course a little toward
the east, that I might keep in with the shore; and having a fair, fresh
gale of wind, and a smooth, quiet sea, I made such sail that I believe
by the next day at three o'clock in the afternoon, when I first made the
land, I could not be less than 150 miles south of Sallee; quite beyond
the Emperor of Morocco's dominions, or indeed of any other king
thereabouts, for we saw no people.

Yet such was the fright I had taken at the Moors, and the dreadful
apprehensions I had of falling into their hands, that I would not stop,
or go on shore, or come to an anchor, the wind continuing fair, till I
had sailed in that manner five days; and then the wind shifting to the
southward, I concluded also that if any of our vessels were in chase of
me, they also would now give over; so I ventured to make to the coast,
and came to an anchor in the mouth of a little river, I knew not what,
or where; neither what latitude, what country, what nations, or what
river. I neither saw, nor desired to see, any people; the principal
thing I wanted was fresh water. We came into this creek in the evening,
resolving to swim on shore as soon as it was dark, and discover the
country; but as soon as it was quite dark we heard such dreadful noises
of the barking, roaring, and howling of wild creatures, of we knew not
what kinds, that the poor boy was ready to die with fear, and begged me
not to go on shore till day. "Well, Xury," said I, "then I won't; but it
may be we may see men by day, who will be as bad to us as these lions."
"Then we give them the shoot gun," says Xury, laughing; "make them run
'way." Such English Xury spoke by conversing among us slaves. However, I
was glad to see the boy so cheerful, and I gave him a dram (out of our
patron's case of bottles) to cheer him up. After all, Xury's advice was
good, and I took it; we dropped our little anchor and lay still all
night. I say still, for we slept none; for in two or three hours we saw
vast great creatures (we knew not what to call them) of many sorts come
down to the sea-shore and run into the water, wallowing and washing
themselves for the pleasure of cooling themselves; and they made such
hideous howlings and yellings, that I never indeed heard the like.

Xury was dreadfully frightened, and indeed so was I too; but we were
both more frighted when we heard one of these mighty creatures come
swimming towards our boat; we could not see him, but we might hear him
by his blowing to be a monstrous huge and furious beast. Xury said it
was a lion, and it might be so for aught I know; but poor Xury cried to
me to weigh the anchor and row away. "No," says I, "Xury; we can slip
our cable with the buoy to it, and go off to sea; they cannot follow us
far." I had no sooner said so, but I perceived the creature (whatever it
was) within two oars' length, which something surprised me; however, I
immediately stepped to the cabin door, and taking up my gun, fired at
him, upon which he immediately turned about and swam towards the shore
again.

But is is impossible to describe the horrible noises, and hideous cries
and howlings, that were raised, as well upon the edge of the shore as
higher within the country, upon the noise or report of the gun, a thing
I have some reason to believe those creatures had never heard before.
This convinced me that there was no going on shore for us in the night
upon that coast; and how to venture on shore in the day was another
question too; for to have fallen into the hands of any of the savages,
had been as bad as to have fallen into the hands of lions and tigers; at
least we were equally apprehensive of the danger of it.

Be that as it would, we were obliged to go on shore somewhere or other
for water, for we had not a pint left in the boat; when or where to get
to it, was the point. Xury said if I would let him go on shore with one
the jars, he would find if there was any water, and bring some to me. I
asked him why he should go? Why I should not go and he stay in the boat?
The boy answered with so much affection, that made me love him ever
after. Says he, "If wild mans come, they eat me, you go way." "Well,
Xury," said I, "we will both go; and if the wild mans come, we will kill
them, they shall eat neither of us." So I gave Xury a piece of rusk
bread to eat, and a dram out of our patron's case of bottles which I
mentioned before; and we hauled in the boat as near the shore as we
thought was proper, and so waded on shore, carrying nothing but our arms
and two jars for water.

I did not care to go out of sight of the boat, fearing the coming of
canoes with savages down the river; but the boy seeing a low place about
a mile up the country, rambled to it; and by and by I saw him come
running towards me. I thought he was pursued by some savage, or frighted
with some wild beast, and I ran forward towards him to help him; but
when I came nearer to him, I saw something hanging over his shoulders,
which was a creature that he had shot, like a hare, but different in
color, and longer legs. However, we were very glad of it, and it was
very good meat; but the great joy that poor Xury came with was to tell
me he had found good water, and seen no wild mans.

But we found afterwards that we need not take such pains for water, for
a little higher up the creek where we were we found the water fresh when
the tide was out, which flowed but a little way up; so we filled our
jars, and feasted on the hare we had killed, and prepared to go on our
way, having seen no footsteps of any human creatures in that part of the
country.

As I had been one voyage to this coast before, I knew very well that the
Islands of the Canaries, and the Cape de Verde Islands also, lay not far
off from the coast. But as I had no instruments to take an observation
to know what latitude we were in, and did not exactly know, or at least
remember, what latitude they were in, I knew not where to look for them,
or when to stand off to sea towards them; otherwise I might now easily
have found some of these islands. But my hope was, that if I stood along
this coast till I came to that part where the English traded, I should
find some of their vessels upon their usual design of trade, that would
relieve and take us in.

By the best of my calculation, that place where I now was must be that
country which, lying between the Emperor of Morocco's dominions and the
negroes, lies waste and uninhabited, except by wild beasts; the negroes
having abandoned it and gone farther south for fear of the Moors, and
the Moors not thinking it worth inhabiting, by reason of its barrenness;
and indeed both forsaking it because of the prodigious number of tigers,
lions, leopards, and other furious creatures which harbor there; so that
the Moors use it for their hunting only, where they go like an army, two
or three thousand men at a time; and indeed for near a hundred miles
together upon this coast we saw nothing but a waste uninhabited country
by day, and heard nothing but howlings and roarings of wild beasts by
night.

Once or twice in the daytime I thought I saw the Pico of being the high
top of the Mountain Teneriffe in the Canaries, and had a great mind to
venture out in hopes of reaching thither; but having tried twice, I was
forced in again by contrary winds, the sea also going too high for my
little vessel; so I resolved to pursue my first design, and keep along
the shore.

Several times I was obliged to land for fresh water after we had left
this place; and once in particular, being early in the morning, we came
to an anchor under a little point of land which was pretty high; and the
tide beginning to flow, we lay still to go farther in. Xury, whose eyes
were more about them than it seems mine were, calls softly to me, and
tells me that we had best go farther off the shore; "For," says he,
"look, yonder lies a dreadful monster on the side of that hillock fast
asleep." I looked where he pointed, and saw a dreadful monster indeed,
for it was a terrible great lion that lay on the side of the shore,
under the shade of a piece of the hill that hung as it were a little
over him. "Xury," says I, "you shall go on shore and kill him." Xury
looked frighted, and said, "Me kill! he eat me at one mouth;" one
mouthful he meant. However, I said no more to the boy, but bade him lie
still, and I took our biggest gun, which was almost musketbore, and
loaded it with a good charge of powder, and with two slugs, and laid it
down; then I loaded another gun with two bullets; and the third (for we
had three pieces) I loaded with five smaller bullets. I took the best
aim I could with the first piece to have him shot into the head, but he
lay so with his leg raised a little above his nose, that the slugs hit
his leg about the knee, and broke the bone. He started up growling at
first, but finding his leg broke, fell down again, and then got up upon
three legs and gave the most hideous roar that ever I heard. I was a
little surprised that I had not hit him on the head. However, I took up
the second piece immediately, and, though he began to move off, fired
again, and shot him into the head, and had the pleasure to him drop, and
make but little noise, but lay struggling for life. Then Xury took
heart, and would have me let him go on shore. "Well, go," said I; so the
boy jumped into the water, and taking a little gun in one hand, swam to
shore with the other hand, and coming close to the creature, put the
muzzle of the piece to his ear, and shot him into the head again, which
despatched him quite.

This was game indeed to us, but this was no food; and I was very sorry
to lose three charges of powder and shot upon a creature that was good
for nothing to us. However, Xury said he would have some of him; so he
comes on board, and asked me to give him the hatchet. "For what, Xury?"
said I. "Me cut off his head," said he. However, Xury could not cut off
his head, but he cut off a foot, and brought it with him, and it was a
monstrous great one.

I bethought myself, however, that perhaps the skin of him might one way
or other be of some value to us; and I resolved to take off his skin if
I could. So Xury and I went to work with him; but Xury was much the
better workman at it, for I knew very ill how to do it. Indeed, it took
us both the whole day, but at last we got off the hide of him, and
spreading it on the top of our cabin, the sun effectually dried it in
two days' time, and it afterwards served me to lie upon.

After this stop we made on to the southward continually for ten or
twelve days, living very sparing on our provisions, which began to abate
very much, and going no oftener into the shore than we were obliged to
for fresh water. My design in this was to make the river Gambia or
Senegal - that is to say, anywhere about the Cape de Verde - where I was
in hopes to meet with some European ship; and if I did not, I knew not
what course I had to take, but to seek out for the lands, or perish
there among the negroes. I knew that all the ships from Europe, which
sailed either to the coast of Guinea or to Brazil, or to the East
Indies, made this cape, or those islands; and in a word, I put the whole
of my fortune upon this single point, either that I must meet with some
ship, or must perish.

When I had pursued this resolution about ten days longer, as I have
said, I began to see that the land was inhabited; and in two or three
places, as we sailed by, we saw people stand upon the shore to look at
us; we could also perceive they were quite black, and stark naked. I was
once inclined to have gone on shore to them; but Xury was my better
counsellor, and said to me. "No go, no go." However, I hauled in nearer
the shore that I might talk to them, and I found they ran along the
shore by me a good way. I observed they had no weapons in their hands,
except one, who had a long slender stick, which Xury said was a lance,
and that they would throw them a great way with good aim. So I kept a
distance, but talked with them by signs as well as I could, and
particularly made signs for something to eat; they beckoned to me to
stop my boat, and that they would fetch me some meat. Upon this I
lowered the top of my sail, and lay by, and two of them ran up into the
country, and in less than half an hour came back, and brought with them
two pieces of dried flesh and some corn, such as is the produce of their
country; but we neither knew what the one or the other was. However, we
were willing to accept it, but how to come at it was our next dispute,
for I was not for venturing on shore to them, and they were as much
afraid to us; but they took a safe way for us all, for they brought it
to the shore and laid it down, and went and stood a great way off till
we fetched it on board, and then came close to us again.

We made signs of thanks to them, for we had nothing to make them amends.
But an opportunity offered that very instant to oblige them wonderfully;
for while we were lying by the shore came two mighty creatures, one
pursuing the other (as we took it) with great fury from the mountains
towards the sea; whether it was the male pursuing the female, or whether
they were in sport or in rage, we could not tell, any more than we could
tell whether it was usual or strange, but I believe it was the latter;
because in the first place, those ravenous creatures seldom appear but
in the night; and in the second place, we found the people terribly
frightened, especially the women. The man that had the lance or dart did
not fly from them, but the rest did; however, as the two creatures ran
directly into the water, they did not seem to offer to fall upon any of
the negroes, but plunged themselves into the sea, and swam about, as if
they had come for their diversion. At last, one of them began to come
nearer our boat than at first I expected; but I lay ready for him, for I
had loaded my gun with all possible expedition, and bade Xury load both
the others. As soon as he came fairly within my reach, I fired, and shot
him directly into the head; immediately he sunk down into the water, but
rose instantly, and plunged up and down, as if he was struggling for
life, and so indeed he was. He immediately made to the shore; but
between the wound, which was his mortal hurt, and the strangling of the
water, he died just before he reached the shore.

It is impossible to express the astonishment of these poor creatures, at
the noise and the fire of my gun; some of them were even ready to die
for fear, and fell down as dead with the very terror. But when they saw
the creature dead, and sunk in the water, and that I made signs to them
to come to the shore, they took heart and came to the shore, and began
to search for the creature. I found him by his blood staining the water:
and by the help of a rope, which I slung round him, and gave the negroes
to haul, they dragged him on the shore, and found that it was a most
curious leopard, spotted, and fine to an admirable degree; and the
negroes held up their hands with admiration, to think what it was I had
killed him with.

The other creature, frighted with the flash of fire and the noise of the
gun, swam on shore, and ran directly to the mountains from whence they
came; nor could I, at that distance, know what it was. I found quickly
the negroes were for eating the flesh of this creature, so I was willing
to have them take it as a favor from me; which, when I made signs to
them that they might take him, they were very thankful for. Immediately
they fell to work with him; and though they had no knife yet, with a
sharpened piece of wood, they took off his skin as readily, and much
more readily, than we could have done it with a knife. They offered me
some of the flesh, which I declined, making as if I would give it them,
but made signs for the skin, which they gave me very freely, and brought
me a great deal more of their provision, which, though I did not
understand, yet I accepted. Then I made signs to them for some water,
and held out one of my jars to them, turning it bottom upward, to show
that it was empty, and that I wanted to have it filled. The called
immediately to some of their friends, and there came two women, and
brought a great vessel made of earth, and burnt, as I suppose, in the
sun; this they set down for me, as before, and I sent Xury on shore with
my jars, and filled them all three. There women were as stark naked as
the men.

I was now furnished with roots and corn, such as it was, and water; and
leaving my friendly negroes, I made forward for about eleven days more,
without offering to go near the shore, till I saw the land run out a
great length into the sea, at about the distance of four or five leagues
before me; and the sea being very calm, I kept a large offing, to make
this point. At length, doubling the point, at about two leagues from the
land, I saw plainly land on the other side, to seaward; then I
concluded, as it was most certain indeed, that this was the Cape de
Verde, and those the islands, called from thence Cape de Verde Islands.
However, they were at a great distance, and I could not well tell what I
had best to do; for if I should be taken with a fresh of wind, I might
neither reach one or other.

In this dilemma, as I was very pensive, I stepped into the cabin, and
sat me down, Xury having the helm; when, on a sudden, the boy cried out,
"Master, master, a ship with a sail!" and the foolish boy was frighted
out of his wits, thinking it must needs be some of his master's ships
sent to pursue us, when I knew we were gotten far enough out of their
reach. I jumped out of the cabin, and immediately saw, not only the
ship, but what she was, viz., that it was a Portuguese ship, and, as I
thought, was bound to the coast of Guinea, for negroes. But when I
observed the course she steered, I was soon convinced they were bound
some other way, and did not design to come any nearer to the shore; upon
which I stretched out to sea as much as I could, resolving to speak with
them, if possible.

With all the sail I could make, I found I should not be able to come in
their way, but they would be gone by before I could make any signal to
them; but after I had crowded to the utmost, and began to despair, they,
it seems, saw me by the help of their perspective glasses, and that it
was some European boat, which, as they supposed, must belong to some
ship that was lost, so they shortened sail to let me come up. I was
encouraged with this; and as I had my patron's ancient on board, I made
a waft of it to them for a signal of distress, and fired a gun both of
which they say; for they told me they saw the smoke, though they did not
hear the gun. Upon these signals they very kindly brought to, and lay by
for me; and in about three hours' time I came up with them.

They asked me what I was, in Portuguese, and in Spanish, and in French,
but I understood none of them; but at last a Scots sailor, who was on
board, called to me, and I answered him, and told him I was an
Englishman, that I had made my escape out of slavery from the Moors, at
Sallee. Then they bade me come on board, and very kindly took me in, and
all my goods.

It was an inexpressible joy to me, that any one will believe, that I was
thus delivered, as I esteemed it, from such a miserable, and almost
hopeless, condition as I was in; and I immediately offered all I had to
the captain of the ship, as a return for my deliverance. But he
generously told me he would take nothing from me, but that all I had
should be delivered safe to me when I came to the Brazils. "For," says
he, "I have saved your life on no other terms than I would be glad to be
saved myself; and it may, one time or other, be my lot to be taken up in
the same condition. Besides," says he, "when I carry you to the Brazils,
so great a way from your own country, if I should take from you what you
have, you will be starved there, and then I only take away that life I
have given. No, no, Seignior Inglese," says he, "Mr. Englishman, I will
carry you thither in charity, and those things will help you to buy your
subsistence there, and your passage home again."

As he was charitable in his proposal, so he was just in the performance
to a tittle; for he ordered the seamen that none should offer to touch
anything I had; then he took everything into his own possession, and
gave me back an exact inventory of them, that I might have them, even so
much as my three earthen jars.

As to my boat, it was a very good one, and that he saw, and told me he
would buy it of me for the ship's use, and asked me what I would have
for it? I told him he had been so generous to me in everything, that I
could not offer to make any price of the boat, but left it entirely to
him; upon which he told me he would give me a note of his hand to pay me
eighty pieces of eight for it at Brazil, and when it came there, if any
one offered to give more, he would make it up. He offered me also sixty
pieces of eight for my boy Xury, which I was loth to take; not that I
was not willing to let the captain have him, but I was very loth to sell
the poor boy's liberty, who had assisted me so faithfully in procuring
my own. However, when I let him know my reason, he owned it to be just,
and offered me this medium, that he would give the boy an obligation to
set him free in ten years if he turned Christian. Upon this, and Xury
saying he was willing to go to him, I let the captain have him.

We had a very good voyage to the Brazils, and arrived in the Bay de
Todos los Santos, or All Saints' Bay, in about twenty-one days after.
And now I was once more delivered from the most miserable of all
conditions of life; and what to do next with myself I was now to
consider.

The generous treatment the captain gave me, I can never enough remember.
He would take nothing of me for my passage, gave me twenty ducats for
the leopard's skin, and forty for the lion's skin, which I had in my
boat, and caused everything I had in the ship to be punctually delivered
me; and what I was willing to sell he bought, such as the case of
bottles, two of my guns, and a piece of the lump of beeswax, -for I had
made candles of the rest; in a word, I made about 220 pieces of eight of
all my cargo, and with this stock I went on shore in the Brazils.

I had not been long here, but being recommended to the house of a good
honest man like himself, who had an ingeino as they call it, that is, a
plantation and a sugar-house, I lived with him some time, and acquainted
myself by that means with the manner of their planting and making of
sugar; and seeing how well the planters lived, and how they grew rich
suddenly, I resolved, if I could get license to settle there, I would
turn planter among them, resolving in the meantime to find out some way
to get my money which I had left in London remitted to me. To this
purpose, getting a kind of a letter of naturalization, I purchased as
much land that was uncured as my money would reach, and formed a plan
for my planation and settlement, and such a one as might be suitable to
the stock which I proposed to myself to receive from England.

I had a neighbor, a Portuguese of Lisbon, but born of English parents,
whose name was Wells, and in much such circumstances as I was. I call
him my neighbor, because his plantation lay next to mine, and we went on
very sociably together. My stock was but low, as well as his; and we
rather planted for food than anything else, for about two years.
However, we began to increase, and our land began to come into order; so
that the third year we planted some tobacco, and made each of us a large
piece of ground ready for planting canes in the year to come. But we
both wanted help; and now I found, more than before, I had done wrong in
parting with my boy Xury.

But alas! for me to do wrong that never did right was no great wonder. I
had no remedy but to go on. I was gotten into an employment quite remote
to my genius, and directly contrary to the life I delighted in, and for
which I forsook my father's house, and broke through all his good
advice; nay, I was coming into the very middle station, or upper degree
of low life, which my father advised me to before; and which if I
resolved to go on with, I might as well have stayed at home, and never
have fatigued myself in the world as I had done. And I used often to say
to myself I could have done this as well in England among my friends, as
have gone 5,000 miles off to do it among strangers and savages, in a
wilderness, and at such a distance as never to hear from any part of the
world that had the least knowledge of me.

In this manner I used to look upon my condition with the utmost regret.
I had nobody to converse with, but now and then this neighbor; no work
to be done, but by the labor of my hands; and I used to say, I lived
just like a man cast away upon some desolate island, that had nobody
there but himself. But how just has it been! and how should all men
reflect, that when they compare their present conditions with others
that are worse, Heaven may oblige them to make the exchange, and be
convinced of their former felicity by their experience; -I say, how just
has it been, that the truly solitary life I reflected on in an island of
mere desolation should be my lot, who had so often unjustly compared it
with the life which I then led, in which, had I continued, I had in all
probability been exceeding prosperous and rich.

I was in some degree settled in my measures for carrying on the
plantation before my kind friend, the captain of the ship that took me
up at sea, went back; for the ship remained there in providing his
loading, and preparing for his voyage, near three months; when telling
him what little stock I had left behind me in London, he gave me this
friendly and sincere advice: "Seignior Inglese," says he, for so he
always called me, "if you will give me letters, and a procuration here
in form to me, with orders to the person who has your money in London to
send your effects to Lisbon, to such persons as I shall direct, and in
such goods as are proper for this country, I will bring you the produce
of them, God willing, at my return. But since human affairs are all
subject to changes and disasters, I would have you give orders but for
one hundred pounds sterling, which, you say, is half your stock, and let
the hazard be run for the first; so that if it come safe, you may order
the rest the same way; and if it miscarry, you may have the other half
to have recourse to for your supply."

This was so wholesome advice, and looked so friendly, that I could not
but be convinced it was the best course I could take; so I accordingly
prepared letters to the gentlewoman with whom I left my money, and a
procuration to the Portuguese captain, as he desired.

I wrote the English captain's widow a full account of all my adventures;
my slavery, escape, and how I had met with the Portugal captain at sea,
the humanity of his behavior, and in what consition I was now in, with
all necessary directions for my supply. And when this honest captain
came to Lisbon, he found means, by some of the English merchants there,
to send over not the order only, but a full account of my story to a
merchant at London, who represented it effectually to her; whereupon,
she not only delivered the money, but out of her own pocket sent the
Portugal captain a very handsome present for his humanity and charity to
me.

The merchant in London vesting this hundred pounds in English goods,
such as the captain had writ for, sent them directly to him at Lisbon,
and he brought them all safe to me to the Brazils; among which, without
my direction (for I was too young in my business to think of them), he
had taken care to have all sorts of tools, iron-work, and utensils
necessary for my plantation, and which were of great use to me.

When this cargo arrived, I thought my fortune made, for I was surprised
with joy of it; and my good steward, the captain, had laid out the five
pounds, which my friend had sent him for a present for himself, to
purchase and bring me over a servant under bond for six years' service,
and would not accept of any consideration, except a little tobacco,
which I would have him accept, being of my own produce.

Neither was this all; but my goods being all English manufactures such
as cloth, stuffs, baise, and things particularly valuable and desirable
in the country, I found means to sell them to a very great advantage; so
that I may say I had more than four times the value of my first cargo,
and was now infinitely beyond my poor neighbor, I mean in the
advancement of my plantation; for the first thing I did, I bought me a
negro slave, and a European servant also; I mean another besides that
which the captain brought me from Lisbon.

But as abused prosperity is oftentimes made the very means of our
greatest adversity, so was it with me. I went on the next year with
great success in my plantation. I raised fifty great rolls of tobacco on
my own ground, more than I had disposed of for necessaries among my
neighbors; and these fifty rolls, being each of a hundredweight, were
well cured, and laid by against the return of the fleet from Lisbon. And
now, increasing in business and in wealth, my head began to be full of
projects and undertakings beyond my reach, such as are, indeed, often
the ruin of the best heads in business.

Had I continued in the station I was now in, I had room for all the
happy things to have yet befallen me for which my father so earnestly
recommended a quiet, retired life, and of which he had so sensibly
described the middle station of life to be full of. But other things
attended me, and I was still to be the willful agent of all my own
miseries; and particularly to increase my fault and double the
reflections upon myself, which in my future sorrows I should have
leisure to make. All these miscarriages were procured by my apparent
obstinate adhering to my foolish inclination of wandering abroad, and
pursuing that inclination in contradiction to the clearest views of
doing myself good in a fair and plain pursuit of those prospects, and
those measures of life, which Nature and Providence concurred to present
me with, and to make my duty.

As I had once done thus in my breaking away from my parents, so I could
not be content now, but I must go and leave the happy view I had of
being a rich and thriving man in my new plantation, only to pursue a
rash and immoderate desire of rising faster than the nature of the thing
admitted; and thus I cast myself down again into the deepest gulf of
human misery that ever man fell into, or perhaps could be consistent
with life and a state of health in the world.

To come, then, by the just degrees to the particulars of this part of my
story. You may suppose, that having now lived almost four years in the
Brazils, and beginning to thrive and prosper very well upon my
plantation, I had not only learned the language, but had contracted
acquaintance and friendship among my fellow-planters, as well as among
the merchants at St. Salvador, which was our port, and that in my
discourses among them I had frequently given them an account of my two
voyages to the coast of Guinea, the manner of trading with the negroes
there, and how easy it was to purchase upon the coast for trifles -
such as beads, toys, knives, scissors, hatchets, bits of glass, and the
like - not only gold-dust, Guinea grains, elephants' teeth, etc. but
negroes, for the service of the Brazils in great numbers.

They listened always very attentively to my discourses on these heads,
but especially to that part which related to the buying negroes; which
was a trade, at that time, not only not far entered into, but, as far as
it was, had been carried on by the assiento, or permission, of the Kings
of Spain and Portugal, and engrossed in the public, so that few negroes
were brought, and those excessive dear.

It happened, being in company with some merchants and planters of my
acquaintance, and talking of those things very earnestly, three of them
came to ne the next morning, and told me they had been musing very much
upon what I had discoursed with them of, the last night, and they came
to make a secret proposal to me. And after enjoining me secrecy, they
told me that they had a mind to fit out a ship to go to Guinea; that
they had all plantations as well as I, and were straitened for nothing
so much as servants; that as it was a trade that could not be carried on
because they could not publicly sell the negroes when they came home, so
they desired to make but one voyage, to bring the negroes on shore
privately, and divide them among their own plantations; and, in a word,
the question was, whether I would go their supercargo in the ship, to
manage the trading part upon the coast of Guinea; and they offered me
that I should have my equal share of the negroes without providing any
part of the stock.

This was a fair proposal, it must be confessed, had it been made to any
one that had not a settlement and plantation of his own to look after,
which was in a fair way of coming to be very considerable, and with a
good stock upon it. But for me, that was thus entered and established,
and had nothing to do but go on as I had begun, for three or four years
more, and to have sent for the other hundred pounds from England; and
who, in that time, and with that little addition, could scarce have
failed of being worth three or four thousand pounds sterling, and that
increasing too - for me to think of such a voyage, was the most
preposterous thing that ever man, in such circumstances, could be guilty
of.

But I, that was born to be my own destroyer, could no more resist the
offer than I could restrain my first rambling designs, when my father's
good counsel was lost upon me. In a word, I told them I would go with
all my heart, if they would undertake to look after my plantation in my
absence, and would dispose of it to such as I should direct if I
miscarried. This they all engaged to do, and entered into writings or
covenants to do so; and I made a formal will disposing of my plantation
and effect, in case of my death; making the captain of the ship that had
saved my life, as before, my universal heir, but obliging him to dispose
of my effects as I had directed in my will; one-half of the produce
being to himself, and the other to be shipped to England.

In short, I took all possible caution to preserve my effects and keep up
my plantation. Had I used half as much prudence to have looked into my
own interest, and have made a judgment of what I ought to have done and
not to have done, I had certainly never gone away from so prosperous an
undertaking, leaving all the probably views of a thriving circumstance,
and gone upon a voyage to sea, attended with all its common hazards, to
say nothing of the reasons I had to expect particular misfortunes to
myself.

But I was hurried on, and obeyed blindly the dictates of my fancy rather
than my reason. And accordingly, the ship being fitted out, and the
cargo furnished, and all things done as by agreement by my partners in
the voyage, I went on board in an evil hour, the (first) of (September,
1659), being the same day eight year that I went from my father and
mother at Hull, in order to act the rebel to their authority, and the
fool to my own interest.

Our ship was about 120 tons burthen, carried six guns and fourteen men,
besides the master, his boy, and myself. We had on board no large cargo
of goods, except of such toys as were fit for our trade with the negroes
- such as beads, bits of glass, shells, and odd trifles, especially
little looking-glasses, knives, scissors, hatchets, and the like.

The same day I went on board we set sail, standing away to the northward
upon our own coast, with design to stretch over for the African coast,
when they came about 10 or 12 degrees of northern latitude, which, it
seems, was the manner of their course in those days. We had very good
weather, only excessive hot, all the way upon our own coast, till we
came the height of Cape St. Augustino, from whence, keeping farther off
at sea, we lost sight of land, and steered as if we was bound for the
Isle Fernando de Noronha, holding our course NE. by N., and leaving
those isles on the east. In this course we passed the line in about
twelve days' time, and were, by our last observation, in 7 degrees 22
minutes northern latitude, when a violent tornado, or hurricane, took us
quite out of our knowledge. It began from the south-east, came about to
the north-west, and then settled into the north-east, from whence it
blew in such a terrible manner, that for twelve days together we could
do nothing but drive, and, scudding away before it, let it carry us
wherever fate and the fury of the winds directed; and during these
twelve days I need not say that I expected every day to be swallowed up,
nor, indeed, did any in the ship expect to save their lives.

In this distress we had, besides the terror of the storm, one of our men
died of the calenture, and one man and the boy washed overboard. About
the twelfth day, the weather abating a little, the master made an
observation as well as he could, and found that he was in about 11
degrees north latitude, but that he was 22 degrees of longitude
difference west from Cape St. Augustino; so that he found he was gotten
upon the coast of Guiana, or the north part of Brazil, beyond the river
Amazon, toward that of the River Orinoco, commonly called the Great
River, and began to consult with me what course he should take, for the
ship was leaky and very much disabled, and he was going directly back to
the coast of Brazil.

I was positively against that; and looking over the charts of the
sea-coast of America with him, we concluded there was no inhabited
country for us to have recourse to till we came within the circle of the
Caribbee Islands, and, therefore, resolved to stand away for Barbadoes,
which by keeping off at sea, to avoid the indraft of the Bay or Gulf of
Mexico, we might easily perform, as we hoped, in about fifteen days'
sail; whereas we could not possibly make our voyage to the coast of
Africa without some assistance, both to our ship and to ourselves.

With this design we changed our course, and steered away NW. by W. in
order to reach some of our English islands, where I hoped for relief;
but our voyage was otherwise determined; for being in the latitude of 12
degrees 18 minutes, a second storm came upon us which carried us away
with the same impetuosity westward, and drove us so out of the very way
of all human commerce, that had all our lives been saved, as to the sea,
we were rather in danger of being devoured by savages than ever
returning to our own country.

In this distress, the wind still blowing very hard, one of our men early
in the morning cried out, "Land!" and we had no sooner ran out of the
cabin to look out, in the hopes of seeing whereabouts in the world we
were, but the ship struck upon a sand, and in a moment, her motion being
so stopped, the sea broke over her in such a manner, that we expected we
should all have perished immediately; and we were immediately driven
into our close quarters, to shelter us from the very foam and spray of
the sea.

It is not easy for any one, who has not been in the like condition, to
describe or conceive the consternation of men in such circumstances. We
knew nothing where we were, or upon what land it was we were driven,
whether an island or the main, whether inhabited or not inhabited; and
as the rage of the wind was still great, though rather less than at
first, we could not so much as hope to have the ship hold many minutes
without breaking in pieces, unless the winds, by a kind of miracle,
should turn immediately about. In a word, we sat looking one upon
another, and expecting death every moment, and every man acting
accordingly, as preparing for another world; for there was little or
nothing more for us to do in this. That which was our present comfort,
and all the comfort we had, was that, contrary to our expectation, the
ship did not break yet, and that the master said the wind began to
abate.

Now, though we thought that the wind did a little abate, yet the ship
having thus struck upon the sand, and sticking too fast for us to expect
her getting off, we were in a dreadful condition indeed, and had nothing
to do but to think of saving our lives as well as we could. We had a
boat at our stern just before the storm, but she was first staved by
dashing against the ship's rudder, and in the next place, she broke
away, and either sunk, or was driven off to sea, so there was no hope
from her; we had another boat on board, but how to get her off into the
sea, was a doubtful thing. However, there was no room to debate, for we
fancied the ship would break to pieces every minute, and some told us
she was actually broken already.

In this distress, the mate of our vessel lays hold of the boat, and with
the help of the rest of the men they got her slung over the ship's side;
and getting all into her, let go, and committed ourselves, being eleven
in number, to God's mercy, and the wild sea; for though the storm was
abated considerably, yet the sea went dreadful high upon the shore, and
might well be called den wild zee, as the Dutch call the sea in a storm.

And now our case was very dismal indeed, for we all saw plainly that the
sea went so high, that the boat could not live, and that we should be
inevitably drowned. As to making sail, we had none; nor, if we had,
could we have done anything with it; so we worked at the oar towards the
land, though with heavy hearts, like men going to execution, for we all
knew that when the boat came nearer the shore, she would be dashed in a
thousand pieces by the breach of the sea. However, we committed our
souls to God in the most earnest manner; and the wind driving us towards
the shore, we hastened our destruction with our own hands, pulling as
well as we could towards land.

What the shore was, whether rock or sand, whether steep or shoal, we
knew not; the only hope that could rationally give us the least shadow
of expectation was, if we might happen into some bay or gulf, or the
mouth of some river, where by great chance we might have run our boat
in, or got under the lee of the land, and perhaps made smooth water. But
there was nothing of this appeared; but as we made nearer and nearer the
shore, the land looked more frightful than the sea.

After we had rowed, or rather driven, about a league and a half, as we
reckoned it, a raging wave, mountain-like, came rolling astern of us,
and plainly bade us expect the coup de grace. In a word, it took us with
such a fury, that it overset the boat at once; and separating us, as
well from the boat as from one another, gave us not time hardly to say,
"O God!" for we were all swallowed up in a moment.

Nothing can describe the confusion of thought which I felt when I sunk
into the water; for though I swam very well, yet I could not deliver
myself from the waves so as to draw breath, till that wave having driven
me, or rather carried me, a vast way on towards the shore, and having
spent itself, went back, and left me upon the land almost dry, but half
dead with the water I took in. I had so much presence of mind, as well
as breath left, that seeing myself nearer the mainland than I expected,
I got upon my feet, and endeavored to make on towards the land as fast
as I could, before another wave should return and take me up again. But
I soon found it was impossible to avoid it; for I saw the sea come after
me as high as a great hill, and as furious as an enemy, which I had no
means or strength to contend with. My business was to hold my breath,
and raise myself upon the water, if I could; and so, by swimming, to
preserve my breathing, and pilot myself towards the shore, if possible:
my greatest concern now being, that the sea, as it would carry me a
great way towards the shore when it came on, might not carry me back
again with it when it gave back towards the sea.

The wave that came upon me again, buried me at once 20 or 30 feet deep
in its own body, and I could feel myself carried with a mighty force and
swiftness towards the shore a very great way; but I held my breath, and
assisted myself to swim still forward with all my might. I was ready to
burst with holding my breath, when, as I felt myself rising up, so, to
my immediate relief, I found my head and hands shoot out above the
surface of the water; and though it was not two seconds of time that I
could keep myself so, yet it relieved me greatly, gave me breath and new
courage. I was covered again with water a good while, but not so long
but I held it out; and finding the water had spent itself, and began to
return, I struck forward against the return of the waves, and felt
ground again with my feet. I stood still a few moments to recover
breath, and till the water went from me, and then took to my heels and
ran with what strength I had farther towards the shore. But neither
would this deliver me from the fury of the sea, which came pouring in
after me again, and twice more I was lifted up by the waves and carried
forwards as before, the shore being very flat.

The last time of these two had well near been fatal to me; for the sea,
having hurried me along as before, landed me, or rather dashed me,
against a piece of a rock, and that with such force, as it left me
senseless, and indeed helpless, as to my own deliverance; for the blow
taking my side and breast, beat the breath, as it were, quite out of my
body; and had it returned again immediately, I must have been strangled
in the water. But I recovered a little before the return of the waves,
and seeing I should be covered again with the water, I resolved to hold
fast by a piece of the rock, and so to hold my breath, if possible, till
the wave went back. Now, as the waves were not so high as at first,
being near land, I held my hold till the wave abated, and then fetched
another run, which brought me so near the shore, that the next wave,
though it went over me, yet did not so swallow me up as to carry me
away, and the next run I took I got to the mainland, where, to my great
comfort, I clambered up the cliffs of the shore, and sat me down upon
the grass, free from danger, and quite out of the reach of the water.

I was now landed, and safe on shore, and began to look up and thank God
that my life was saved in a case wherein there was some minutes before
scarce any room to hope. I believe it is impossible to express to the
life what the ecstacies and transports of the soul are when it is so
saved, as I may say, out of the very grave; and do not wonder now at the
custom, viz., that when a malefactor, who has the halter about his neck,
is tied up, and just going to be turned off, and has a reprieve brought
to him - I say, I do not wonder that they bring a surgeon with it, to
let him blood that very moment they tell him of it, that the surprise
may not drive the animal spirits from the heart, and overwhelm him:


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


I walked about on the shore, lifting up my hands, and my whole being, as
I may say, wrapt up in the contemplation of my deliverance, making a
thousand gestures and motions which I cannot describe, reflecting upon
all my comrades that were drowned, and that there should not be one soul
saved by myself; for, as for them, I never saw them afterwards, or any
sign of them except three of their hats, one cap, and two shoes that
were not fellows.

I cast my eyes to the stranded vessel, when the breach and froth of the
sea being so big, I could hardly see it, it lay so far off, and
considered, Lord! how was it possible I could get on shore?

After I had solaced my mind with the comfortable part of my condition, I
began to look round me to see what kind of place I was in, and what was
next to be done, and I soon found my comforts abate, and that, in a
word, I had a dreadful deliverance; for I was wet, had no clothes to
shift me, nor anything either to eat or drink to comfort me, neither did
I see any prospect before me but that of perishing with hunger, of being
devoured by wild beasts; and that which was particularly afflicting to
me was that I had no weapon either to hunt and kill any creature for my
sustenance, or to defend myself against any other creature that might
desire to kill me for theirs. In a word, I had nothing about me but a
knife, a tobacco-pipe, and a little tobacco in a box. This was all my
provision; and this threw me into terrible agonies of mind, that for a
while I ran about like a madman. Night coming upon me, I began, with a
heavy heart, to consider what would be my lot if there were any ravenous
beasts in that country, seeing at night they always come abroad for
their prey.

All the remedy that offered to my thoughts at that time was to get up
into a thick bushy tree like a fir, but thorny, which grew near me, and
where I resolved to sit all night, and consider the next day what death
I should die, for as yet I saw no prospect of life. I walked about a
furlong from the shore to see if I could find my fresh water to drink,
which I did, to my great joy; having drank, and put a little tobacco in
my mouth to prevent hunger, I went to the tree, and getting up into it,
endeavored to place myself so as that if I should sleep I might not
fall; and having cut me a short stick, like a truncheon, for my defence,
I took up my lodging, and having been excessively fatigued, I fell fast
asleep, and slept as comfortably as, I believe, few could have done in
my condition, and found myself the most refreshed with it that I think I
ever was on such an occasion.

When I waked it was broad day, the weather clear, and the storm abated,
so that the sea did not rage and swell as before. But that which
surprised me most was, that the ship was lifted off in the night from
the sand where she lay, by the swelling of the tide, and was driven up
almost as far as the rock which I first mentioned, where I had been so
bruised by the dashing me against it. This being within about a mile
from the shore where I was, and the ship seeming to stand upright still,
I wished myself on board, that, at least, I might have some necessary
things for my use.

When I came down from my apartment in the tree I looked about me again,
and the first thing I found was the boat, which lay as the wind and the
sea had tossed her up upon the land, about two miles on my right hand. I
walked as far as I could upon the shore to have got to her, but found a
neck or inlet of water between me and the boat, which was about half a
mile broad; so I came back for the present, being more intent upon
getting at the ship, where I hoped to find something for my present
subsistence.

A little after noon I found the sea very calm, and the tide ebbed so far
out, that I could come within a quarter of a mile of the ship; and here
I found a fresh renewing of my grief, for I saw evidently, that if we
had kept on board we had been all safe, that is to say, we had all got
safe on shore, and I had not been so miserable as to be left entirely
destitute of all comfort and company, and I now was. This forced tears
from my eyes again; but as there was little relief in that, I resolved,
if possible, to get to the ship; so I pulled off my clothes, for the
weather was hot to extremity, and took the water. But when I came to the
ship, my difficulty was still greater to know how to get on board; for
as she lay aground, and high out of the water, there was nothing within
my reach to lay hold of. I swam round her twice, and the second time I
spied a small piece of rope, which I wondered I did not see at first,
hang down by the fore-chains so low as that with great difficulty I got
hold of it, and by the help of that rope got up into the forecastle of
the ship. Here I found that the ship was bulged, and had a great deal of
water in her hold, but that she lay so on the side of a bank of hard
sand, or rather earth, that her stern lay lifted up upon the bank, and
her head low almost to the water. By this means all her quarter was
free, and all that was in that part was dry; for you may be sure my
first work was to search and to see what was spoiled and what was free.
And first I found that all the ship's provisions were dry and untouched
by the water; and being very well disposed to eat, I went to the
bread-room and filled my pockets with biscuit, and eat it as I went
about other things, for I had no time to lose. I also found some rum in
the great cabin, of which I took a large dram, and which I had indeed
need enough of to spirit me for what was before me. Now I wanted nothing
but a boat, to furnish myself with many things which I foresaw would be
very necessary to me.

It was in vain to sit still and wish for what was not to be had, and
this extremity roused my application. We had several spare yards, and
two or three large spars of wood, and a spare topmast or two in the
ship. I resolved to fall to work with these, and flung as many of them
overboard as I could manage for their weight, tying every one with a
rope, that they might not drive away. When this was done I went down the
ship's side, and, pulling them to me, I tied four of them fast together
at both ends as well as I could, in the form of a raft; and laying two
or three short pieces of plank upon them, crossways, I found I could
walk upon it very well, but that it was not able to bear any great
weight, the pieces being too light. So I went to work, and with the
carpenter's saw I cut up a spare topmast into three lengths, and added
them to my raft, with a great deal of labor and pains; but hope of
furnishing myself with necessaries encouraged me to go beyond what I
should have been able to have done upon another occasion.

My raft was not strong enough to bear any reasonable weight. My next
care was what to load it with, and how to preserve what I laid upon it
from the surf of the sea; but I was not long considering this. I first
laid all the planks or boards upon it that I could get, and having
considered well what I most wanted, I first got three of the seamen's
chests, which I had broken open and emptied, and lowered them down upon
my raft. The first of these I filled with provisions, viz., bread, rice,
three Dutch cheeses, five pieces of dried goat's flesh, which we lived
much upon, and a little remainder of European corn, which had been laid
by for some fowls which we brought to sea with us, but the fowls were
killed. There had been some barley and wheat together, but, to my great
disappointment, I found afterwards that the rats had eaten or spoiled it
all. As for liquors, I found several cases of bottles belonging to our
skipper, in which were some cordial waters, and, in all, about five or
six gallons of rack. These I stowed by themselves, there being no need
to put them into the chest, nor no room for them. While I was doing
this, I found the tide began to flow, though very calm, and I had the
mortification to see my coat, shirt, and waistcoat, which I had left on
shore upon the sand, swim away; as for my breeches, which were only
linen, and open-kneed, I swam on board in them, and my stockings.
However, this put me upon rummaging for clothes, of which I found
enough, but took no more than I wanted for present use; for I had other
things which my eye was more upon, as first tools to work with on shore;
and it was after long searching that I found out the carpenter's chest,
which was indeed a very useful prize to me, and much more valuable than
a ship-loading of gold would have been at that time. I got it down to my
raft, even whole as it was, without losing time to look into it, for I
knew in general what it contained.

My next care was for some ammunition and arms; there were two very good
fowling-pieces in the great cabin, and two pistols; these I secured
first, with some powder-horns, and a small bag of shot, and two old
rusty swords. I knew there were three barrels of powder in the ship, but
knew not where our gunner had stowed them; but with much search I found
them, two of them dry and good, third had taken water; those two I got
to my raft with the arms. And now I thought myself pretty well frighted,
and began to think how I should get to shore with them, having neither
sail, oar, nor rudder; and the least capful of wind would have overset
all my navigation.

I had three encouragements. 1. A smooth, calm sea. 2. The tide rising
and setting in to the shore. 3. What little wind there was blew me
towards the land. And thus, having found two or three broken oars
belonging to the boat, and besides the tools which were in the chest, I
found two saws, an axe, and a hammer, and with this cargo I put to sea.
For a mile or thereabouts my raft went very well, only that I found it
drive a little distant from the place where I had landed before, by
which I perceived that there was some indraft of water, and consequently
I hoped to find some creek or river there, which I might make use of as
a port to get to land with my cargo.

As I imagined, so it was; there appeared before me a little opening of
the land, and I found a strong current of the tide set into it, so I
guided my raft as well as I could to keep in the middle of the stream.
But here I had like to have suffered a second shipwreck, which, if I
had, I think verily would have broke my heart, for knowing nothing of
the coast, my raft ran aground at one end of it upon a shoal, and not
being aground at the other end, it wanted but a little that all my cargo
had slipped off towards that end that was afloat, and so fallen into the
water. I did my utmost by setting my back against the chests to keep
them in their places, but could not thrust off the raft with all my
strength, neither durst I stir from the posture I was in, but holding up
the chests with all my might, stood in that manner near half an hour, in
which time the rising of the water brought me a little more upon a
level; and a little after, the water still rising, my raft floated
again, and I thrust her off with the oar I had into the channel, and
then driving up higher, I at length found myself in the mouth of a
little river, with land on both sides, and a strong current or tide
running up. I looked on both sides for a proper place to get to shore,
for I was not willing to be driven too high up the river, hoping in time
to see some ship at sea, and therefore resolved to place myself as near
the coast as I could.

At length I spied a little cove on the right shore of the creek, to
which, with great pain and difficulty, I guided my raft, and at last got
so near, as that, reaching ground with my oar, I could thrust her
directly in; but here I had like to have dipped all my cargo in the sea
again; for that shore lying pretty steep, that is to say, sloping, there
was no place to land but where one end of my float, if it run on shore,
would lie so high and the other sink lower, as before, that it would
endanger my cargo again. All that I could do was to wait till the tide
was at the highest, keeping the raft with my oar like an anchor to hold
the side of it fast to the shore, near a flat piece of ground, which I
expected the water would flow over; and so it did. As soon as I found
water enough, for my raft drew about a foot of water, I thrust her on
upon that flat piece of ground, and there fastened or moored her by
sticking my two broken oars into the ground; one on one side near the
end, and one on the other side near the other end; and thus I lay till
the water ebbed away, and left my raft and all my cargo safe on shore.

My next work was to view the country, and seek a proper place for my
habitation, and where to stow my goods to secure them from whatever
might happen. Where I was, I yet knew not; whether on the continent, or
on an island; whether inhabited, or not inhabited; whether in danger of
wild beasts, or not. There was a hill, not above a mile from me, which
rose up very steep and high, and which seemed to overtop some other
hills, which lay as in a ridge from it, northward. I took out one of the
fowling-pieces and one of the pistols, and a horn of powder; and thus
armed, I travelled for discovery up to the top of that hill, where,
after I had with great labor and  difficulty got to the top, I saw my
fate to my great affliction, viz., that I was in an island environed
every way with the sea, no land to be seen, except some rocks which lay
a great way off, and two small islands less than this, which lay about
three leagues to the west.

I found also that the island I was in was barren, and, as I saw good
reason to believe, uninhabited, except by wild beasts, of whom, however,
I saw none; yet I saw abundance of fowls, but knew not their kind;
neither, when I killed them, could I tell what was fit for food, and
what not. At my coming back, I shot at a great bird which I saw sitting
upon a tree on the side of a great wood. I believe it was the first gun
that had been fired there since the creation of the world. I had no
sooner fired, but from all the parts of the wood there arose an
innumerable number of fowls of many sorts, making a confused screaming,
and crying, every one according to his usual note; but not one of them
of any kind that I knew. As for the creature I killed, I took it to be a
kind of a hawk, its color and beak resembling it, but had no talons or
claws more than common; its flesh was carrion, and fit for nothing.

Contented with this discovery, I came back to raft, and fell to work to
bring my cargo on shore, which took me up the rest of that day; and what
to do with myself at night, I knew not, or, indeed, where to rest; for I
was afraid to lie down on the ground, not knowing but some wild beast
might devour me, though, as I afterwards found, there was really no need
for those fears. However, as well as I could, I barricaded myself round
with the chests and boards that I had brought on shore, and made a kind
of a hut for that night's lodging; as for food, I yet saw not which way
to supply myself, except that I had seen two or three creatures like
hares run out of the wood where I shot the fowl.

I now began to consider that I might yet get a great many things out of
the ship, which would be useful to me, and particularly some of the
rigging and sails, and such other things as might come to land; and I
resolved to make another voyage on board the vessel, if possible. And as
I knew that the first storm that blew must necessarily break her all in
pieces, I resolved to set all other things apart till I got everything
out of the ship that I could get. Then I called a council, that is to
say, in my thoughts, whether I should take back the raft, but this
appeared impracticable; so I resolved to go as before, when the tide was
down: and I did so, only that I stripped before I went from my hut,
having nothing on but a checkered shirt and a pair of linen drawers, and
a pair of pumps on my feet.

I got on board the ship as before, and prepared a second raft, and
having had experience of the first, I neither made this so unwieldy, nor
loaded it so hard; but yet I brought away several things very useful to
me; as, at first, in the carpenter's stores I found two or three bags
full of nails and spikes, a great screw-jack, a dozen or two of
hatchets, and above all, that most useful thing called a grindstone. All
these I secured, together with several things belonging to the gunner,
particularly two or three iron crows, and two barrels of musket bullets,
seven muskets, and another fowling-piece, with some small quantity of
powder more; a large bag full of small-shot, and a great roll of
sheet-lead; but this last was so heavy, I could not hoist it up to get
it over the ship's side. Besides these things, I took all the men's
clothes that I could find, and a spare foretop sail, a hammock, and some
bedding; and with this I loaded my second raft, and brought them all
safe on shore, to my very great comfort.

I was under some apprehensions during my absence from the land, that at
least my provisions might be devoured on shore; but when I came back, I
found no sign of any visitor, only there sat a creature like a wild cat
upon one of the chests, which, when I came towards it, ran away a little
distance, and then stood still. She sat very composed and unconcerned,
and looked full in my face, as if she had a mind to be acquainted with
me. I presented my gun at her; but as she did not understand it, she was
perfectly unconcerned at it, nor did she offer to stir away; upon which
I tossed her a bit of biscuit, though, by the way, I was not very free
of it, for my store was not great. However, I spared her a bit, I say,
and she went to it, smelled of it, and ate it, and looked (as pleased)
for more; but I thanked her, and could spare no more, so she marched
off.

Having got my second cargo on shore, though I was fain to open the
barrels of powder and bring them by parcels, for they were too heavy,
being large casks, I went to work to make me a little tent with the sail
and some poles which I cut for that purpose; and into this tent I
brought everything that I knew would spoil either with rain or sun; and
I piled all the empty chests and casks up in a circle round the tent, to
fortify it from any sudden attempt, either from man or beast.

When I has done this I blocked up the door of the tent with some boards
within, and an empty chest set up on end without; and spreading one of
the beds upon the ground, laying my two pistols just at my head, and my
gun at length by me, I went to bed for the first time, and slept very
quietly all night, for I was very weary and heavy; for the night before
I had slept little, and had labored very hard all day, as well to fetch
all those things from the ship, as to get them on shore.

I had the biggest magazine of all kinds now that ever was laid up, I
believe, for one man; but I was not satisfied still, for while the ship
sat upright in that posture, I thought I ought to get everything out of
her that I could. So every day at low water I went on board, and brought
away something or other; but, particularly, the third time I went I
brought away as much of the rigging as I could, as also all the small
ropes and rope-twine I could get, with a piece of spare canvas, which
was to mend the sails upon occasion, the barrel of wet gunpowder; in a
word, I brought away all the sails first and last; only that I was fain
to cut them in pieces, and bring as much at a time as I could; for they
were no more useful to be sails, but as mere canvas only.

But that which comforted me more still was, that at last of all, after I
had made five or six such voyages as these, and thought I had nothing
more to expect from the ship that was worth my meddling with; I say,
after all this, I found a great hogshead of bread, and three large
runlets of rum or spirits, and a box of sugar, and a barrel of fine
flour; this was surprising to me, because I had given over expecting any
more provisions, except what was spoilt by the water. I soon emptied the
hogshead of that bread, and wrapped it up parcel by parcel in pieces of
the sails, which I cut out; and, in a word, I got all this safe on shore
also.

The next day I made another voyage. And now, having plundered the ship
of what was portable and fit to hand out, I began with the cables; and
cutting the great cable into pieces, such as I could move, I got two
cables and a hawser on shore, with all the iron-work I could get; and
having cut down the spritsail-yard, and the mizzen-yard, and everything
I could to make a large raft, I loaded it with all those heavy goods,
and came away. But my good luck began now to leave me; for this raft was
so unwieldy, and so overladen, that after I was entered the little cove
where I had landed the rest of my goods, not being able to guide it so
handily as I did the other, it overset, and, threw me and all my cargo
into the water. As for myself, it was no great harm, for I was near the
shore; but as to my cargo, it was great part of it lost, especially the
iron, which I expected would have been great use to me. However, when
the tide was out I got most of the pieces of cable ashore, and some of
the iron, though with infinite labor; for I was fain to dip for it into
the water, a work which fatigued me very much. After this I went every
day on board, and brought away what I could get.

I have been now thirteen days on shore, and had been eleven times on
board the ship; in which time I had brought away all that one pair of
hands could well be supposed capable to bring, though I believe verily,
had the calm weather held, I should have brought away the whole ship
piece by piece. But preparing the twelfth time to go on board, I found
the wind begin to rise. However, at low water I went on board, and
though I thought I had rummaged the cabin so effectually as that nothing
more could be found, yet I discovered a locker with drawers in it, in
one of which I found two or three razors, and one pair of large
scissors, with some ten or a dozen of good knives and forks; in another,
I found some thirty-six pounds value in money, some European coin, some
Brazil, some pieces of eight, some gold, some silver.

I smiled to myself at the sight of this money. "O drug!" said I aloud,
"what art thou good for? Thou art not worth to me, no, not the taking
off of the ground; one of those knives is worth all this heap. I have no
manner of use for thee; even remain where thou art, and go to the bottom
as a creature whose life is not worth saving." However, upon second
thoughts, I took it away; and wrapping all this in a piece of canvas, I
began to think of making another raft; but while I was preparing this, I
found the sky overcast, and the wind began to rise, and in a quarter of
an hour it blew a fresh gale from the shore. It presently occurred to me
that it was in vain to pretend to make a raft with the wind off shore,
and that it was my business to be gone before the tide of flood began,
otherwise I might not be able to reach the shore at all. Accordingly I
let myself down into the water, and swam across the channel, which lay
between the ship and the sands, and even that with difficulty enough,
partly with the weight of the things I had about me, and partly the
roughness of the water; for the wind rose very hastily, and before it
was quite high water it blew a storm.

But I was gotten home to my little tent, where I lay with all my wealth
about me very secure. It blew very hard all that night, and in the
morning, when I looked out, behold, no more ship was to be seen. I was a
little surprised, but recovered myself with this satisfactory
reflection, viz., that I had lost no time, nor abated no diligence, to
get everything out of her that could be useful to me, and that indeed
there was little left in her that I was able to bring away if I had had
more time.

I now gave over any more thoughts of the ship, or of anything out of
her, except what might drive on there from her wreck, as indeed divers
pieces of her afterwards did; but those things were of small use to me.

My thoughts were now wholly employed about securing myself against
either savages, if any should appear, or wild beasts, if any were in the
island; and I had many thoughts of the method how to do this, and what
kind of dwelling to make, whether I should make me a cave in the earth,
or a tent upon the earth; and, in short, I resolved upon both, the
manner and description of which it may not be improper to give an
account of.

I soon found the place I was in was not for my settlement, particularly
because it was upon a low moorish ground near the sea, and I believed
would not be wholesome; and more particularly because there was no fresh
water near it. So I resolved to find a more healthy and more convenient
spot of ground.

I consulted several things in my situation, which I found would be
proper for me. First, health and fresh water, I just now mentioned.
Secondly, shelter from the heat of the sun. Thirdly security from
ravenous creatures, whether men or beasts. Fourthly, a view to the sea,
that if God sent any ship in sight I might not lose any advantage for my
deliverance, of which I was not willing to banish all my expectation
yet.

In search of a place proper for this, I found a little plain on the side
of a rising hill, whose front towards this little plain was steep as a
house-side, so that nothing could come down upon me from the top; on the
side of this rock there was a hollow place, worn a little way in, like
the entrance or door of a cave; but there was not really any cave, or
way into the rock at all.

On the flat of the green, just before this hollow place, I resolved to
pitch my tent. This plain was not above a hundred yards broad, and about
twice as long, and lay like a green before my door, and at the end of it
descended irregularly every way down into the low grounds by the
seaside. It was on the NNW. side of the hill, so that I was sheltered
from the heat every day, till it came to a W. and by S. sun, or
thereabouts, which in those countries is near setting.

Before I set up my tent, I drew a half circle before the hollow place,
which took in about ten yards in its semi-diameter from the rock, and
twenty yards in its diameter from its beginning and ending. In this half
circle I pitched two rows of strong stakes, driving them into the ground
till they stood very firm like piles, the biggest end being out of the
ground about five feet and a half, and sharpened on the top. The two
rows did not stand above six inches from one another.

Then I took the pieces of cable which I had cut in the ship, and laid
them in rows one upon another, within the circle, between these two rows
of stakes, up to the top, placing other stakes in the inside leaning
against them, about two feet and a half high, like a spur to a post; and
this fence was so strong that neither man or beast could get into it, or
over it. This cost me a great deal of time and labor, especially to cut
the piles in the woods, bring them to the place, and drive them into the
earth.

The entrance into this place I made to be not by a door, but by a short
ladder to go over the top; which ladder, when I was in, I lifted over
after me, and so I was completely fenced in, and fortified, as I
thought, from all the world, and consequently slept secure in the night,
which otherwise I could not have done; though as it appeared afterward,
there was no need of all this caution from the enemies that I
apprehended danger from.

Into this fence or fortress, with infinite labor, I carried all my
riches, all my provisions, ammunition, and stores, of which you have the
account above; and I made me a large tent, which, to preserve me from
the rains that in one part of the year are very violent there, I made
double, viz., one smaller tent within, and one larger tent above it, and
covered the uppermost with a large tarpaulin, which I had saved among
the sails. And now I lay no more for a while in the bed which I had
brought on shore, but in a hammock, which was indeed a very good one,
and belonged to the mate of the ship.

Into this tent I brought all my provisions, and everything that would
spoil by the wet; and having thus enclosed all my goods I made up the
entrance, which, till now, I had left open, and so passed and repassed,
as I said, by a short ladder.

When I had done this, I began to work my way into the rock; and bringing
all the earth and stones that I dug down out through my tent, I laid
them up within my fence in the nature of a terrace, so that it raised
the ground within about a foot and a half; and thus I made me a cave
just behind my tent, which served me like a cellar to my house.

It cost me much labor, and many days, before all these things were
brought to perfection, and therefore I must go back to some other things
which took up some of my thoughts. At the same time it happened, after I
had laid my scheme for the setting up my tent, and making the cave, that
a storm of rain falling from a thick dark cloud, a sudden flash of
lightning happened, and after that a great clap of thunder, as is
naturally the effect of it. I was not so much surprised with the
lightning, as I was with a thought which darted into my mind as swift as
the lightning itself. O my powder! My very heart sunk within me when I
thought that at one blast all my powder might be destroyed, on which,
not my defence only, but the providing me food, as I thought, entirely
depended. I was nothing near so anxious about my own danger; though had
the powder took fire, I had never known who had hurt me.

Such impression did this make upon me, that after the storm was over I
laid aside all my works, my building, and fortifying, and applied myself
to make bags and boxes to separate the powder, and keep it a little and
a little in a parcel, in hope that whatever might come it might not all
take fire at once, and to keep it so apart that it should not be
possible to make one part fire another. I finished this work in about a
fortnight; and I think my powder, which in all was about 240 pounds
weight, was divided in not less than a hundred parcels. As to the barrel
that had been wet, I did not apprehend any danger from that, so I placed
it in my new cave, which in my fancy I called my kitchen, and the rest I
hid up and down and in holes among the rocks, so that no wet might come
to it, marking very carefully where I laid it.

In the interval of time while this was doing, I went out once, at least,
every day with my gun, as well to divert myself, as to see if I could
kill anything fit for food, and as near as I could to acquaint myself
with what the island produced. The first time I went out, I presently
discovered that there were goats in the island, which was a great
satisfaction to me; but then it was attended with this misfortune to me,
viz., that they were so shy, so subtle, and so swift of foot, that it
was the difficultest thing in the world to come at them. But I was not
discouraged at this, not doubting but I might now and then shoot one, as
it soon happened; for after I had found their haunts a little, I laid
wait in this manner for them. I observed if they saw me in the valleys,
though they were upon the rocks, they would run away as in a terrible
fright; but if they were feeding in the valleys, and I was upon the
rocks, they took no notice of me, from whence I concluded that, by the
position of their optics, their sight was so directed downward, that
they did not readily see objects that were above them. So afterward I
took this method: I always climbed the rocks first to get above them,
and then had frequently a fair mark. The first shot I made among these
creatures I killed a she-goat, which had a little kid by her, which she
gave suck to, which grieved me heartily; but when the old one fell, the
kid stood stock still by her till I came and took her up; and not only
so, but when I carried the old one with me upon my shoulders, the kid
followed me quite to my enclosure; upon which I laid down the dam, and
took the kid in my arms, and carried it over my pale, in hopes to have
bred it up tame; but it would not eat, so I was forced to kill it, and
eat it myself. These two supplied me with flesh a great while, for I eat
sparingly, and saved my provisions, my bread especially, as much as
possibly I could.

Having now fixed my habitation, I found it absolutely necessary to
provide a place to make a fire in, and fuel to burn; and what I did for
that, as also how I enlarged my cave, and what conveniences I made, I
shall give a full account of in its place. But I must first give some
little account of myself, and of my thoughts about living, which it may
well be supposed were not a few. I had a dismal prospect of my
condition; for as I was not cast away upon that island without being
driven, as is said, by a violent storm, quite out of the course of our
intended voyage, and a great way, viz., some hundreds of leagues out of
the ordinary course of the trade of mankind, I had great reason to
consider it as a determination of Heaven, that in this desolate place,
and in this desolate manner, I should end my life. The tears would run
plentifully down face when I made these reflections, and sometimes I
would expostulate with myself, why Providence should thus completely
ruin its creatures, and render them so absolutely miserable, so without
help abandoned, so entirely depressed, that it could hardly be rational
to be thankful for such a life.

But something always returned swift upon me to check these thoughts, and
to reprove me; and particularly one day, walking with my gun in my hand
by the seaside, I was very pensive upon the subject of my present
condition, when reason, as it were, expostulated with me t'other way,
thus: "Well, you are in a desolate condition it is true, but pray
remember, where are the rest of you? Did not you come eleven of you in
the boat? Where are the ten? Why were not they saved, and you lost? Why
were you singled out? Is it better to be here, or there?" And then I
pointed to the sea. All evils are to be considered with the good that is
in them, and with what worse attends them.

Then it occurred to me again, how well I was furnished for my
subsistence, and what would have been my case if it had not happened,
which was a hundred thousand to one, that the ship had floated from the
place where she first struck and was driven so near to the shore that I
had time to get all these things out of her; what would have been my
case, if I had been to have lived in the condition in which I first came
on shore, without necessaries of life, or necessaries to supply and
procure them? "Particularly," said I aloud (though to myself), "what
should I have done without a gun, without ammunition, without any tools
to make anything or to work with, without clothes, bedding, a tent, or
any manner of covering?" and that now I had all these to a sufficient
quantity, and was in a fair way to provide myself in such a manner, as
to live without my gun when my ammunition was spent; so that I had a
tolerable view of subsisting without any want as long as I lived. For I
considered from the beginning how I would provide for the accidents that
might happen, and for the time that was to come, even not only after my
ammunition should be spent, but even after my health or strength should
decay.

I confess I had not entertained any notion of my ammunition being
destroyed at one blast - I mean, my powder being blown up by lightning;
and this made the thoughts of it so surprising to me when it lightened
and thundered, as I observed just now.

And now being to enter into a melancholy relation of a scene of silent
life, such, perhaps, as was never heard of in the world before, I shall
take it from its beginning and continue it in its order. It was by my
account, the 30th of September when, in the manner as above said, I
first set foot upon this horrid island, when the sun being to us in its
autumnal equinox, was almost just over my head, for I reckoned myself,
by observation, to be in the latitude of 9 degrees 22 minutes north of
the line.

After I had been there about ten or twelve days it came into my thoughts
that I should lose my reckoning of time for want of books and pen and
ink, and should even forget the Sabbath days from the working days; but
to prevent this, I cut it with my knife upon a large post, in capital
letters; and making it into a great cross, I set it up on the shore
where I first landed, viz., "I came on shore here the 30th of September
1659." Upon the sides of this square post I cut every day a notch with
my knife, and every seventh notch was as long again as the rest, and
every first day of the month as long again as that long one; and thus I
kept my calendar, or weekly, monthly, and yearly reckoning of time.

In the next place we are to observe that among the many things which I
brought out of the ship in the several voyages, which, as above
mentioned, I made to it, I got several things of less value, but not all
less useful to me, which I omitted setting down before; as in
particular, pens, ink, and paper, several parcels in the captain's,
mate's, gunner's, and carpenter's keeping, three or four compasses, some
mathematical instruments, dials, perspectives, charts, and books of
navigation, all of which I huddled together, whether I might want them
or no. Also I found three very good Bibles, which came to me in my cargo
from England and which I had packed up among my things; some Portuguese
books, also, and among them two or three Popish prayer-books, and
several other books, all of which I carefully secured. And I must not
forget, that we had in the ship a dog and two cats, of whose eminent
history I may have occasion to say something in its place; for I carried
both the cats with me; and as for the dog he jumped out of the ship of
himself, and swam on shore to me the day after I went on shore with my
first cargo, and was a trusty servant to me many years. I wanted nothing
that he could fetch me, nor any company that he could make up to me; I
only wanted to have him talk to me, but that would not do. As I observed
before, I found pen, ink, and paper, and I husbanded them to the utmost;
and I shall show that while my ink lasted, I kept things very exact; but
after that was gone, I could not, for I could not make any ink by any
means that I could devise.

And this put me in mind that I wanted many things, notwithstanding all
that I had amassed together; and of these, this of ink was one, as also
spade, pick-axe, and shovel, to dig or remove the earth, needles, pins,
and thread; as for linen, I soon learned to want that without much
difficulty.

This want of tools made every work I did go on heavily; and it was near
a whole year before I had entirely finished my little pale or surrounded
habitation. The piles or stakes, which were as heavy as I could well
lift, were a long time in cutting and preparing in the woods, and more
by far in bringing home; so that I spent sometimes two days in cutting
and bringing home one of those posts, and a third day in driving it into
the ground; for which purpose I got a heavy piece of wood at first, but
at last bethought myself of one of the iron crows, which, however,
though I found it, yet it made driving those posts or piles very
laborious and tedious work.

But what need I have been concerned at the tediousness of anything I had
to do, seeing I had time enough to do it in? Nor had I any other
employment, if that had been over, at least that I could foresee, except
the ranging the island to seek for food, which I did more or less every
day.

I now began to consider seriously my condition, and the circumstance I
was reduced to; and I drew up the state of my affairs in writing; not so
much to leave them to any that were to come after me, for I was like to
have but few heirs, as to deliver my thoughts from daily poring upon
them; and afflicting my mind. And as my reason began now to master my
despondency, I began to comfort myself as well as I could, and to set
the good against the evil, that I might have something to distinguish my
case from worse; and I stated it very impartially, like a debtor and
creditor, the comforts I enjoyed against the miseries I suffered, thus:


                            Evil

I am cast upon a horrible desolate island, void of all hope of recovery.

                            Good

But I am alive, and not drowned, as all my ship's company was.

                            Evil

I am singled out and separated, as it were, from all the world to be
miserable.

                            Good

But I am singled out, too, from all the ship's crew to be spared from
death; and He that miraculously saved me from death, can deliver me from
this condition.

                            Evil

I am divided from mankind, a solitaire, one banished from human society.

                            Good

But I am not starved and perishing on a barren place, affording no
sustenance.

                            Evil

I have not clothes to cover me.

                            Good

But I am in a hot climate, where if I had clothes I could hardly wear
them.

                            Evil

I am without any defence or means to resist any violence of man or
beast.

                            Good

But I am cast on an island, where I see no wild beasts to hurt me, as I
saw on the coast of Africa; and what if I had been shipwrecked there?

                            Evil

I have no soul to speak to, or relieve me.

                            Good

But God wonderfully sent the ship in near enough to the shore, that I
have gotten out so many necessary things as will either supply my wants,
or enable me to supply myself even as long as I live.


Upon the whole, here was an undoubted testimony, that there was scarce
any condition in the world so miserable but there was something negative
or something positive to be thankful for in it; and let this stand as a
direction from the experience of the most miserable of all conditions in
this world, that we may always find in it something to comfort ourselves
from, and to set in the description of good and evil on the credit side
of the account.

Having now brought my mind a little to relish my condition, and given
over looking out to sea, to see if I could spy a ship; I say, giving
over these things, I began to apply myself to accomodate my way of
living, and to make things as easy to me as I could.

I have already described my habitation, which was a tent under the side
of a rock, surrounded with a strong pale of posts and cables; but I
might now rather call it a wall, for I raised a kind of wall up against
it of turfs, about two feet thick on the outside, and after some time -
I think it was a year and a half - I raised rafters from it leaning to
the rock, and thatched or covered it with boughs of trees and such
things as I could get to keep out the rain, which I found at some times
of the year very violent.

I have already observed how I brought all my goods into this pale, and
into the cave which I had made behind me. But I must observe, too, that
at first this was a confused heap of goods, which as they lay in no
order, so they took up all my place; I had no room to turn myself. So I
set myself to enlarge my cave and works farther into the earth; for it
was a loose sandy rock which yielded easily to the labor I bestowed on
it. And so, when I found I was pretty safe as to beasts of prey, I
worked sideways to the right hand into the rock; and then, turning to
the right again, working quite out, and made me a door to come out on
the outside of my pale or fortification. This gave me not only egress
and regress, as it were a back-way to my tent and to my storehouse, but
gave me room to stow my goods.

And now I began to apply myself to make such necessary things as I found
I most wanted, as particularly a chair and a table; for without these I
was not able to enjoy the few comforts I had in the world. I could not
write or eat, or do several things with so much pleasure without a
table.

So I went to work: and here I must needs observe, that as reason is the
substance and original of the mathematics, so by stating and squaring
everything by reason, and by making the most rational judgment of
things, every man may be in time master of every mechanic art. I had
never handled a tool in my life; and yet in time, by labor, application,
and contrivance, I found at last that I wanted nothing but I could have
made it, especially if I had had more tools. However, I made abundance
of things even without tools, and some with no more tools than an adze
and a hatchet, which, perhaps, were never made that way before, and that
with infinite labor. For example, if I wanted a board, I had no other
way but to cut down a tree, set it on an edge before me, and hew it flat
on either side with my axe, till I had brought it to be thick as a
plank, and then dub it smooth with my adze. It is true, by this method I
could make but one board out of a whole tree; but this I had no remedy
for but patience, any more than I had for the prodigious deal of time
and labor which it took me up to make a plank or board. But my time or
labor was little worth, and so it was as well employed one way as
another.

However, I made me a table and a chair, as I observed above, in the
first place, and this I did out of the short pieces of boards that I
brought on my raft from the ship. But when I had wrought out some
boards, as above, I made large shelves of the breadth of a foot and a
half one over another, all along one side of my cave, to lay all my
tools, nails, and ironwork; and, in a word, to separate everything at
large in their places, that I might come easily at them. I knocked
pieces into the wall of the rock to hang my guns and all things that
would hang up; so that had my cave been to be seen, it looked like a
general magazine of all necessary things; and I had everything so ready
at my hand, that it was a great pleasure to me to see all my goods in
such order, and especially to find my stock of all necessaries so great.

And now it was when I began to keep a journal of every day's employment;
for, indeed, at first, I was in too much hurry, and not only hurry as to
labor, but in too much discomposure of mind; and my journal would have
been full of many dull things. For example, I must have said thus:
September the 30th. -After I got to shore, and had escaped drowning,
instead of being thankful to God for my deliverance, having first
vomited with the great quantity of salt water which was gotten into my
stomach, and recovering myself a little, I ran about the shore, wringing
my hands, and beating my head and face, exclaiming at my misery, and
crying out, I was undone, undone, till, tired and faint, I was forced to
lie down on the ground to repose; but durst not sleep, for fear of being
devoured.

Some days after this, and after I had been on board the ship and got all
that I could out of her, yet I could not forbear getting up to the top
of a little mountain, and looking out to sea, in hopes of seeing a ship;
then fancy at a vast distance I spied a sail, please myself with the
hopes of it, and then, after looking steadily till I was almost blind,
lose it quite, and sit down and weep like a child, and thus increase my
misery by my folly.

But having gotten over these things in some measure, and having settled
my household stuff and habitation, made me a table and a chair, and all
as handsome about me as I could, I began to keep my journal, of which I
shall here give you the copy (though in it will be told all these
particulars over again) as long as it lasted; for, having no more ink, I
was forced to leave it off.


                    THE JOURNAL


September 30, 1659. - I, poor miserable Robinson Crusoe, being
shipwrecked, during a dreadful storm, in the offing, came on shore in
this dismal unfortunate island, which I called the Island of Despair,
all the rest of the ship's company being drowned, and myself almost
dead.

All the rest of that day I spent in afflicting myself at the dismal
circumstances I was brought to, viz., I had neither food, house,
clothes, weapon, or place to fly to; and in despair of any relief, saw
nothing but death before me; either that I should be devoured by wild
beasts, murdered by savages, or starved to death for want of food. At
the approach of night, I slept in a tree for fear of wild creatures, but
slept soundly, though it rained all night.

October 1. - In the morning I saw, to my great surprise, the ship had
floated with the high tide, and was driven on shore again much nearer
the island; which, as it was some comfort on one hand, for seeing her
sit upright, and not broken to pieces, I hoped, if the wind abated, I
might get on board, and get some food and necessaries out of her for my
relief; so, on the other hand, it renewed my grief at the loss of my
comrades, who, I imagined, if we had all stayed on board, might have
saved the ship, or at least that they would not have been all drowned as
they were; and that had the men been saved, we might perhaps have built
us a boat out of the ruins of the ship, to have carried us to some other
part of the world. I spent great part of this day in perplexing myself
on these things; but at length seeing the ship almost dry, I went upon
the sand as near as I could, and then swam on board; this day also it
continued raining, though with no wind at all.

From the 1st of October to the 24th. - All these days entirely spent in
many several voyages to get all I could out of the ship, which I brought
on shore, every tide of flood, upon rafts. Much rain also in these days,
though with some intervals of fair weather; but, it seems, this was the
rainy season.

October 20. - I overset my raft, and all the goods I had got upon it;
but being in shoal water, and the things being chiefly heavy, I
recovered many of them when the tide was out.

October 25. - It rained all night and all day, with some gusts of wind,
during which time the ship broke in pieces, the wind blowing a little
harder than before, and was no more to be seen, except the wreck of her,
and that only at low water. I spent this day in covering and securing
the goods which I had saved, that the rain might not spoil them.

October 26. - I walked about the shore almost all day to find out a
place to fix my habitation, greatly concerned to secure myself from an
attack in the night, either from wild beasts or men. Towards night I
fixed upon a proper place under a rock, and marked out a semicircle for
my encampment, which I resolved to strengthen with a work, wall, or
fortification made of double piles, lined within with cables, and
without with turf.

From the 26th to the 30th I worked very hard in carrying all my goods to
my new habitation, though some part of the time it rained exceeding
hard.

The 31st, in the morning, I went out into the island with my gun to see
for some food, and discover the country; when I killed a she-goat, and
her kid followed me home, which I afterwards killed also, because it
would not feed.

November 1. - I set up my tent under a rock, and lay there for the first
night, making it as large as I could, with stakes driven in to swing my
hammock upon.

November 2. - I set up all my chests and boards, and the pieces of
timber which made my rafts, and with them formed a fence round me, a
little within the place I had marked out for my  fortification.

November 3. - I went out with my gun, and killed two fowls like ducks,
which were very good food. In the afternoon went to work to make me a
table.

November 4. - This morning I began to order my times of work, of going
out with my gun, time of sleep, and time of diversion, viz., every
morning I walked out with my gun for two or three hours, if it did not
rain; then employed myself to work till about eleven o'clock; then eat
what I had to live on; and from twelve to two I lay down to sleep, the
weather being excessive hot; and then in the evening to work again. The
working part of this day and of the next were wholly employed in making
my table; for I was yet but a very sorry workman, though time and
necessity made me a complete natural mechanic soon after, as I believe
it would do any one else.

November 5. - This day went abroad with my gun and my dog, and killed a
wild-cat; her skin pretty soft, but her flesh good for nothing. Every
creature I killed, I took off the skins and preserved them. Coming back
by the seashore, I saw many sorts of seafowls, which I did not
understand; but was surprised, and almost frighted, with two or three
seals, which, while I was gazing at, not well knowing what they were,
got into the sea, and escaped me for that time.

November 6. - After my morning walk I went to work with my table again,
and finished it, though not to my liking; nor was it long before I
learned to mend it.

November 7. - Now it began to be settled fair weather. The 7th, 8th,
9th, 10th, and part of the 12th (for the 11th was Sunday) I took wholly
up to make me a chair, and with much ado, brought it to a tolerable
shape, but never to please me; and even in the making I pulled it to
pieces several times. Note, I soon neglected my keeping Sundays; for,
omitting my mark for them on my post, I forgot which was which.

November 13. - This day it rained, which refreshed me exceedingly, and
cooled the earth; but it was accompanied with terrible thunder and
lightning, which frighted me dreadfully, for fear of my powder. As soon
as it was over, I resolved to separate my stock of powder into as many
little parcels as possible, that it might not be in danger.

November 14, 15, 16. - These three days I spent in making little square
chests or boxes, which might hold about a pound, or two pound at most,
of powder; and so putting the powder in, I stowed it in places as secure
and remote from one another as possible. On one of these three days I
killed a large bird that was good to eat, but I know not what to call
it.

November 17. - This day I began to dig behind my tent into the rock, to
make room for my farther conveniency. Note, three things I wanted
exceeding for this work, viz., a pick-axe, a shovel, and a wheelbarrow
or basket; so I desisted from my work, and began to consider how to
supply that want, and make me some tools. As for a pick-axe, I made use
of the iron crows, which were proper enough, though heavy; but the next
thing was a shovel or spade. This was so absolutely necessary, that
indeed I could no nothing effectually without it; but what kind of one
to make, I knew not.

November 18. - The next day, in searching the woods, I found a tree of
that wood, or like it, which in the Brazils they call the iron tree, for
its exceeding hardness; of this, with great labor, and almost spoiling
my axe, I cut a piece, and brought it home, too, was difficulty enough,
for it was exceeding heavy.

The excessive hardness of the wood, and having no other way, made me a
long while upon this machine, for I worked it effectually, by little and
little, into the form of a shovel or spade, the handle exactly shaped
like ours in England, only that the broad part having no iron shod upon
it at bottom, it would not last me so long. However, it served well
enough for the uses which I had occasion to put it to; but never was a
shovel, I believe, made after that fashion, or so long a-making.

I was still deficient, for I wanted a basket or a wheel-barrow. A basket
I could not make by any means, having no such things as twigs that would
bend to make wicker ware, at least none yet found out. And as to a
wheelbarrow, I fancied I could make all but the wheel, but that I had no
notion of, neither did I know how to go about it; besides, I had no
possible way to make the iron gudgeons for the spindle or axis of the
wheel to run in, so I gave it over; and so for carrying away the earth
which I dug out of the cave, I made me a thing like a hod which the
laborers carry mortar in, when they serve the bricklayers.

This was not so difficult to me as the making the shovel; and yet this,
and the shovel, and the attempt which I made in vain to make a
wheelbarrow, took me up no less than four days; I mean always, excepting
my morning walk with my gun, which I seldom failed, and very seldom
failed also bringing home something fit to eat.

November 23. - My other work having now stood still because of my making
these tools, when they were finished I went on, and working every day,
as my strength and time allowed, I spent eighteen days entirely in
widening and deepening my cave, that it might hold my goods
commodiously.

Note: During all this time I worked to make this room or cave spacious
enough to accomodate me as a warehouse or magazine, a kitchen, a
dining-room, and a cellar; as for my lodging, I kept to the tent, except
that sometimes in the wet season of the year it rained so hard that I
could not keep myself dry, which caused me afterwards to cover all my
place within my pale with long poles, in the form of rafters, leaning
against the rock, and load them with flags and large leaves of trees,
like a thatch.

December 10. - I began now to think my cave or vault finished when on a
sudden (it seems I had made it too large) a great quantity of earth fell
down from the top and one side, so much, that, in short, it frighted me,
and not without reason too; for if I had been under it, I had never
wanted a grave-digger. Upon this disaster I had a great deal of work to
do over again; for I had the loose earth to carry out; and, which was of
more importance, I had the ceiling to prop up, so that I might be sure
no more would come down.

December 11. - This day I went to work with it accordingly, and got two
shores or posts pitched upright to the top, with two pieces of boards
across over each post. This I finished the next day; and setting more
posts up with boards, in about a week more I had the roof secured; and
the posts standing in rows, served me for partitions to part of my
house.

December 17. - From this day to the twentieth I placed shelves, and
knocked up nails on the posts to hang everything up that could be hung
up; and now I began to be in some order within doors.

December 20. - Now I carried everything into the cave, and began to
furnish my house, and set up some pieces of boards, like a dresser, to
order my victuals upon; but boards began to be very scarce with me; also
I made me another table.

December 24. - Much rain all night and all day; no stirring out.

December 25. - Rain all day.

December 26. - No rain, and the earth much cooler than before, and
pleasanter.

December 27. - Killed a young goat, and lamed another, so that I catched
it, and led it home in a string. When I had it home, I bound and
splintered up its leg, which was broke. N.B. - I took such care of it,
that it lived; and the leg grew well and as strong as ever; but by my
nursing it so long it grew tame, and fed upon the little green at my
door, and would not go away. This was the first time that I entertained
a thought of breed up some tame creatures, that I might have food when
my powder and shot was all spent.

December 28, 29, 30. - Great heats and no breeze, so that there was no
stirring abroad, except in the evening, for food. This time I spent in
putting all my things in order within doors.

January 1. - Very hot still, but I went abroad early and late with my
gun, and lay still in the middle of the day. This evening, going farther
into the valleys which lay towards the centre of the island, I found
there was plenty of goats, though exceeding shy, and hard to come at.
However, I resolved to try if I could not bring my dog to hunt them
down.

January 2. - Accordingly, the next day, I went out with my dog, and set
him upon the goats; but I was mistaken, for they all faced about upon
the dog; and he knew his danger too well, for he would not come near
them.

January 3. - I began my fence or wall; which being still jealous of my
being attacked by somebody, I resolved to make very thick and strong.

N.B. - This wall being described before, I purposely omit what was said
in the journal. It is sufficient to observe that I was no less time than
from the 3rd of January to the 14th of April working, finishing, and
perfecting this wall, though it was no more than about twenty-four yards
in length, being a half circle from one place in the rock to another
place about eight yards from it, the door of the cave being in the
centre behind it.


All this time I worked very hard, the rains hindering me many days, nay,
sometimes weeks together; but I thought I should never be perfectly
secure till this wall was finished. And it is scarce credible what
inexpressible labor everything was done with, especially the bringing
piles of the woods, and driving them into the ground; for I made them
much bigger than I need to have done.

When this wall was finished, and the outside double-fenced with a
turf-wall raised up close to it, I persuaded myself that if any people
were to come on shore there, they would not perceive anything like a
habitation; and it was very well I did so, as may be observed hereafter
upon a very remarkable occasion.

During this time, I made my round in the woods for game every day, when
the rain admitted me, and made frequent discoveries in these walks of
something or other to my advantage; particularly I found a kind of wild
pigeons, who built, not as wood pigeons in a tree, but rather as house
pigeons, in the holes of the rocks. And taking some young ones, I
endeavored to breed them up tame, and did so; but when they grew older
they flew all away, which, perhaps, was at first for want of feeding
them, for I had nothing to give them. However, I frequently found their
nests, and got their young ones, which were very good meat.

And now in the managing my household affairs I found myself wanting in
many things, which I thought at first it was impossible for me to make,
as indeed, as to some of them, it was. For instance, I could never make
a cask to be hooped; I had a small runlet or two, as I observed before,
but I could never arrive to the capacity of making one of them, though I
spent many weeks about it. I could neither put in the heads, nor joint
the staves so true to one another as to make them hold water; so I gave
that also over.

In the next place, I was at a great loss for candle; so that as soon as
ever it was dark, which was generally by seven o'clock, I was obliged to
go to bed. I remembered the lump of beeswax with which I made candles in
my African adventure, but I had none of that now. The only remedy I had
was, that when I had killed a goat I saved the tallow, and with a little
dish made of clay, which I baked in the sun, to which I added a wick of
some oakum, I made me a lamp; and this gave me light, though not a clear
steady light like a candle.

In the middle of all my labors it happened that rummaging my things, I
found a little bag, which, as I hinted before, had been filled with corn
for the feeding of poultry, not for this voyage, but before, as I
suppose, when the ship came from Lisbon. What little remainder of corn
had been in the bag was all devoured with the rats, and I saw nothing in
the bag but husks and dust; and being willing to have the bag for some
other use, I think it was to put powder in, when I divided it for fear
of the lightning, or some such use, I shook the husks of corn out of it
on one side of my fortification, under the rock. It was a little before
the great rains, just now mentioned, that I threw this stuff away,
taking no notice of anything there; when, about a month after, or
thereabout, I saw some few stalks of something green shooting out of the
ground, which I fancied might be some plant I had not seen; but I was
surprised, and perfectly astonished, when, after a little longer time, I
saw about ten or twelve ears come out, which were perfect green barley
of the same kind as or European, nay, as our English barley.

It is impossible to express the astonishment and confusion of my
thoughts on this occasion. I had hitherto acted upon no religious
foundation at all; indeed, I had very few notions of religion in my
head, or had entertained any sense of anything that had befallen me
otherwise than as a chance, or as we lightly say, what pleases God;
without so much as inquiring into the end of Providence in these things,
or His order in governing events in the world. But after I saw barley
grow there in a climate which I knew was not proper for corn, and
especially that I knew not how it came there, it startled me strangely,
and I began to suggest that God had miraculously caused this grain to
grow without any help of seed sown, and it was so directed purely for my
sustenance on that wild miserable place.

This touched my heart a little, and brought tears out of my eyes; and I
began to bless myself, that such a prodigy of Nature should happen upon
my account, and this was the more strange to me, because I saw near it
still, all along by the side of the rock, some other straggling stalks,
which proved to be stalks of rice, and which I knew, because I had seen
it grow in Africa, when I was ashore there.

I not only thought these the pure productions of Providence for my
support, but, not doubting but that there was more in the place, I went
all over that part of the island where I had been before, peering in
every corner, and under every rock, to see for more of it; but I could
not find any. At last it occurred to my thoughts that I had shook a bag
of chicken's meat out in that place, and then the wonder began to cease;
and I must confess, my religious thankfulness to God's providence began
to abate too, upon the discovering that all this was nothing but what
was common; I ought to have been as thankful for so strange and
unforseen providence, as if it had been miraculous; for it was really
the work of Providence as to me, that should order or appoint, that ten
or twelve grains of corn should remain unspoiled (when the rats had
destroyed all the rest), as if it had been dropped from heaven; as also
that I should throw it out in that particular place, where, it being in
the shade of a high rock, it sprang up immediately; whereas, if I had
thrown it anywhere else at that time, it had been burnt up and
destroyed.

I carefully saved the ears of this corn, you may be sure, in their
season, which was about the end of June; and laying up every corn, I
resolved to sow them all again, hoping in time to have some quantity
sufficient to supply me with bread. But it was not till the fourth year
that I could allow myself the least grain of this corn to eat, and even
then but sparingly, as I shall say afterwards in its order; for I lost
all that I sowed the first season, by not observing the proper time; for
I sowed it just before the dry season, so that it never came up at all,
at least not as it would have done; of which in its place.

Besides this barley, there was, as above, twenty or thirty stalks of
rice, which I preserved with the same care, and whose use was of the
same kind, or to the same purpose, viz., to make me bread, or rather
food; for I found ways to cook it up without baking, though I did that
also after some time. But to return to my journal.

I worked excessive hard these three or four months to get my wall done;
and the 14th of April I closed it up, contriving to go into it, not by a
door, but over the wall by a ladder, that there might be no sign in the
outside of my habitation.

April 16. - I finished the ladder, so I went up with the ladder to the
top, and then pulled it up after me, and let it down on the inside. This
was a complete enclosure to me; for within I had room enough, and
nothing could come at me from without, unless it could first mount my
wall.

The very next day after this wall was finished, I had almost had all my
labor overthrown at once, and myself killed. The case was thus: As I was
busy in the inside of it, behind my tent, just in the entrance into my
cave, I was terribly frightened with a most dreadful surprising thing
indeed; for all on a sudden I found the earth come crumbling down from
the roof of my cave, and from the edge of the hill over my head, and two
of the posts I had set up in the cave cracked in a frightful manner. I
was heartily scared, but thought nothing of what was really the cause,
only thinking that the top of my cave was falling in, as some of it had
done before; and for fear I should be buried in it, I ran forward to my
ladder; and not thinking myself safe there neither, I got over my wall
for fear of the pieces of the hill which I expected might roll down upon
me. I was no sooner stepped down upon the firm ground, but I plainly saw
it was a terrible earthquake; for the ground I stood on shook three
times at about eight minutes' distance, with three such shocks as would
have overturned the strongest building that could be supposed to have
stood on the earth; and a great piece of the top of a rock which stood
about half a mile from me next the sea, fell down with such a terrible
noise, as I never heard in all my life. I perceived also the very sea
was put into violent motion by it; and I believe the shocks were
stronger under the water than on the island.

I was so amazed with the thing itself, having never felt the like, or
discoursed with any one that had, that I was like one dead or stupefied;
and the motion of the earth made my stomach sick, like one that was
tossed at sea. But the noise of the falling of the rock awaked me, as it
were, and rousing me from the stupefied condition I was in, filled me
with horror, and I thought of nothing then but the hill falling upon my
tent and all my household goods, and burying all at once; and this sunk
my very soul within me a second time.

After the third shock was over, and I felt no more for some time, I
began to take courage; and yet I had not heart enough to go over my wall
again, for fear of being buried alive, but sat still upon the ground,
greatly cast down and disconsolate, not knowing what to do. All this
while I had not the least serious religious thought, nothing but the
common, "Lord, have mercy upon me!" and when it was over, that went away
too.

While I sat thus, I found the air overcast, and grow cloudy, as if it
would rain. Soon after that the wind rose by little and little, so that
in less than half an hour it blew a most dreadful hurricane. The sea was
all on a sudden covered over with foam and froth; the shore was covered
with the breach of the water; the trees were torn up by the roots; and a
terrible storm it was: and this held about three hours, and then began
to abate; and in two hours more it was stark calm, and began to rain
very hard.

All this while I sat upon the ground, very much terrified and dejected;
when on a sudden it came into my thoughts, that these winds and rain
being the consequences of the earthquake, the earthquake itself was
spent and over, and I might venture into my cave again. With this
thought my spirits began to revive; and the rain also helping to
persuade me, I went in and sat down in my tent. But the rain was so
violent that my tent was ready to be beaten down with it, and I was
forced to go into my cave, though very much afraid and uneasy, for fear
it should fall on my head.

This violent rain forced me to a new work, viz., to cut a hole through
my new fortification, like a sink, to let the water go out, which would
else have drowned my cave. After I had been in my cave some time, and
found still no more shocks of the earthquake follow, I began to be more
composed. And now to support my spirits, which indeed wanted it very
much, I went to my little store, and took a small sup of rum, which,
however, I did then, and always, very sparingly, knowing I could have no
more when that was gone.

It continued raining all that night and a great part of the next day, so
that I could not stir abroad; but my mind being more composed, I began
to think of what I had best do, concluding that if the island was
subject to these earthquakes, there would be no living for me in a cave,
but I must consider of building me some little hut in an open place,
which I might surround with a wall, as I had done here, and so make
myself secure from wild beasts or men; but concluded, if I stayed where
I was, I should certainly, one time or another be buried alive.

With these thoughts I resolved to remove my tent from the place where it
stood, which was just under the hanging precipice of the hill, and
which, if it should be shaken again, would certainly fall upon my tent;
and I spent the two next days, being the 19th and 20th of April, in
contriving where and how to remove my habitation.

The fear of being swallowed up alive made me that I never slept in
quiet; and yet the apprehension of lying abroad without any fence was
almost equal to it. But still, when I looked about and saw how
everything was put in order, how pleasantly concealed I was, and how
safe from danger, it made me very loth to remove.

In the meantime it occurred to me that it would require a vast deal of
time for me to do this, and that I must be contented to run the venture
where I was, till I had formed a camp for myself, and had secured it so
as to remove to it. So with this resolution I composed myself for a
time, and resolved that I would go to work with all speed to build me a
wall with piles and cables, etc., in a circle as before, and set my tent
up in it when it was finished, but that I would venture to stay where I
was till it was finished, and fit to remove to. this was the 21st.

April 22. - The next morning I began to consider of means to put this
resolve in execution; but I was at a great loss about my tools. I had
three large axes, and abundance of hatchets (for we carried the hatchets
for traffic with the Indians), but with much chopping and cutting knotty
hard wood, they were all full of notches and dull; and though I had a
grindstone, I could not turn it and grind my tools too. This cost me as
much thought as a statesman would have bestowed upon a grand point of
politics, or a judge upon the life and death of a man. At length I
contrived a wheel with a string, to turn it with my foot, that I might
have both my hands at liberty. Note, I had never seen any such thing in
England, or at least not to take notice how it was done, though since I
have observed it is very common there; besides that, my grindstone was
very large and heavy. This machine cost me a full week's work to bring
it to perfection.

April 28, 29. - These two whole days I took up in grinding my tools, my
machine for turning my grindstone performing very well.

April 30. - Having perceived my bread had been low a great while, now I
took a survey of it, and reduced myself to one biscuit-cake a day, which
made my heart very heavy.

May 1. - In the morning, looking towards the seaside, the tide being
low, I saw something lie on the shore bigger than ordinary, and it
looked like a cask. When I came to it, I found a small barrel, and two
or three pieces of the wreck of the ship, which were driven on shore by
the late hurricane; and looking towards the wreck itself, I thought it
seemed to lie higher out of the water than it used to do. I examined the
barrel which was driven on shore, and soon found it was a barrel of
gunpowder; but it had taken water, and the powder was caked as hard as a
stone. However, I rolled it farther on shore for the present, and went
on upon the sands as near as could to the wreck of the ship to look for
more.

When I came down to the ship I found it strangely removed. The
forecastle, which lay before buried in sand, was heaved up at least six
feet; and the stern, which was broken to pieces, and parted from the
rest by the force of the sea soon after I had left rummaging her, was
tossed, as it were, up, and cast on one side, and the sand was thrown so
high on that side next her stern, that whereas there was a great place
of water before, so that I could not come within a quarter of a mile of
the wreck without swimming, I could now walk quite up to her when the
tide was out. I was surprised with this at first, but soon concluded it
must be done by the earthquake. And as by this violence the ship was
more broken open than formerly, so many things came daily on shore,
which the sea had loosened, and which the winds and water rolled by
degrees to the land.

This wholly diverted my thoughts from the design of removing my
habitation; and I busied myself mightily, that day especially, in
searching whether I could make any way into the ship. But I found
nothing was to be expected of that kind, for that all inside of the ship
was choked up with sand. However, as I had learned not to despair of
anything, I resolved to pull everything to pieces that I could of the
ship, concluding that everything I could get from her would be of some
use or other to me.

May 3. - I began with my saw, and cut a piece of a beam through, which I
thought held some of the upper part or quarter-deck together; and when I
had cut it through, I cleared away the sand as well as I could from the
side which lay highest; but the tide coming in, I was obliged to give
over for that time.

May 4. - I went a-fishing, but caught not one fish that I durst eat of,
till I was weary of my sport; when, just going to leave off I caught a
young dolphin. I had made me a long line of some rope-yarn, but I had no
hooks; yet I frequently caught fish enough, as much as I cared to eat;
all which I dried in the sun, and eat them dry.

May 5. - Worked on the wreck, cut another beam asunder, and brought
three great fir-planks off from the decks, which I tied together, and
made swim on shore, when the tide of flood came on.

May 6. - Worked on the wreck, got several iron bolts out of her, and
other pieces of iron-work; worked very hard, and came home very much
tired, and had thoughts of giving it over.

May 7. - Went to the wreck again, but with an intent not to work, but
found the weight of the wreck had broke itself down, the beams being
cut; that several pieces of the ship seemed to lie loose, and the inside
of the hold lay so open that I could see into it, but almost full of
water and sand.

May 8. - Went to the wreck, and carried an iron crow to wrench up the
deck, which lay now quite clear of the water or sand. I wrenched open
two planks, and brought them on shore also with the tide. I left the
iron crow in the wreck for next day.

May 9. - Went to the wreck, and with the crow made way into the body of
the wreck, and felt several casks, and loosened them with the crow, but
could not break them up. I felt also the roll of English lead, and could
stir it, but it was too heavy to remove.

May 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. - Went every day to the wreck, and got a great
deal of pieces of timber, and boards, or plank, and two or three
hundredweight of iron.

May 15. - I carried two hatchets to try if I could not cut a piece off
of the roll of lead, by placing the edge of one hatchet, and driving it
with the other; but, as it lay about a foot and a half in the water, I
could not make any blow to drive the hatchet.

May 16. - It had blowed hard in the night, and the wreck appeared more
broken by the force of the water; but I stayed so long in the woods to
get pigeons for food, that the tide prevented me going to the wreck that
day.

May 17. - I saw some pieces of the wreck blown on shore, at a great
distance, near two miles off me, but resolved to see what they were, and
found it was a piece of the head, but too heavy for me to bring away.

May 24. - Every day to this day I worked on the wreck, and with hard
labor I loosened some things so much with the crow that the first
blowing tide several casks floated out, and two of the seamen's chests.
But the wind blowing from the shore, nothing came to land that day but
pieces of timber, and a hogshead, which had some brazil pork in it, but
the salt water and the sand had spoiled it.

I continued this work every day to the 15th of June, except the time
necessary to get food, which I always appointed, during this part of my
employment, to be when the tide was up, that I might be ready when it
was ebbed out. And by this time I had gotten timber, and plank, and
iron-work enough to have builded a good boat, if I had known how; and
also, I got at several times, and in several pieces, near one
hundredweight of the sheet-lead.

June 16. - Going down to the seaside, I found a large tortoise, or
turtle. This was the first I had seen, which it seems was only my
misfortune, not any defect of the place, or scarcity; for had I happened
to be on the other side of the island, I might have had hundreds of them
every day, as I found afterwards; but, perhaps, had paid dear enough for
them.

June 17. - I spent in cooking the turtle. I found in her three-score
eggs; and her flesh was to me, at that time, the most savory and
pleasant that ever I tasted in my life, having had no flesh, but of
goats and fowls, since I landed in this horrid place.

June 18. - Rained all day, and I stayed within. I thought at this time
the rain felt cold, and I was something chilly, which I knew was not
usual in that latitude.

June 19. - Very ill, and shivering, as if the weather had been cold.

June 20. - No rest all night; violent pains in my head, and feverish.

June 21. - Very ill, frighted almost to death with the apprehensions of
my sad condition, to be sick, and no help. Prayed to God for the first
time since the storm off of Hull, but scarce knew what I said, or why;
my thoughts being all confused.

June 22. - A little better, but under dreadful apprehensions of
sickness.

June 23. - Very bad again; cold and shivering, and then a violent
headache.

June 24. - Much better.

June 25. - An ague very violent; the fit held me seven hours; cold fit,
and hot, with faint sweats after it.

June 26. - Better; and having no victuals to eat, took my gun, but found
myself very weak. However, I killed a she-goat, and with much difficulty
got it home, and broiled some of it, and eat. I would fain have stewed
it, and made some broth, but had no pot.

June 27. - The ague again so violent that I lay abed all day, and
neither eat nor drank. I was ready to perish for thirst; but so weak, I
had not strength to stand up, or to get myself any water to drink.
Prayed to God again, but was light-headed; and when I was not, I was so
ignorant that I knew not what to say; only I lay and cried, "Lord, look
upon me! Lord, pity me! Lord, have mercy upon me!" I suppose I did
nothing else for two or three hours, till the fit wearing off, I fell
asleep and did not wake till far in the night. When I waked, I found
myself much refreshed, but weak, and exceedingly thirsty. However, as I
had no water in my whole habitation, I was forced to lie till morning,
and went to sleep again. In this second sleep I had this terrible dream.

I thought that I was sitting on the ground, on the outside of my wall,
where I sat when the storm blew after the earthquake, and that I saw a
man descend from a great black cloud, in a bright flame of fire, and
light upon the ground. He was all over as bright as a flame, so that I
could but just bear to look towards him. His countenance was most
inexpressibly dreadful, impossible for words to describe. When he
stepped upon the ground with his feet, I thought the earth trembled,
just as it had done before in the earthquake, and all the air looked, to
my apprehension, as if it had been filled with flashes of fire.

He was no sooner landed upon the earth, but he moved forward towards me,
with a long spear or weapon in his hand, to kill me; and when he came to
a rising ground, at some distance, he spoke to me, or I heard a voice so
terrible that it is impossible to express the terror of it. All that I
can say I understood was this: "Seeing all these things have not brought
thee to repentance, now thou shalt die;" at which words I thought he
lifted up the spear that was in his hand to kill me.

No one that shall ever read this account, will expect that I should be
able to describe the horrors of my soul at this terrible vision; I mean,
that even while it was a dream, I even dreamed of those horrors; nor is
it any more possible to describe the impression that remained upon my
mind when I awaked and found it was but a dream.

I had, alas! no divine knowledge; what I had received by the good
instruction of my father was then worn out, by an uninterrupted series,
for eight years, of seafaring wickedness, and a constant conversation
with nothing but such as were, like myself, wicked and profane to the
last degree. I do not remember that I had, in all that time, one thought
that so much as tended either to looking upwards toward God, or inwards
towards a reflection upon my ways; but a certain stupidity of soul,
without desire of good, or conscience of evil, had entirely over-whelmed
me; and I was all that the most hardened, unthinking, wicked creature
among our common sailors can be supposed to be; not having the least
sense, either of the fear of God, in danger, or of thankfulness to God,
in deliverances.

In the relating what is already past of my story, this will be the more
easily believed, when I shall add, that through all the variety of
miseries that had to this day befallen me, I never had so much as one
thought of it being the hand of God, or that it was a just punishment
for my sin; my rebellious behavior against my father, or my present
sins, which were great; or so much as a punishment for the general
course of my wicked life. When I was on the desperate expedition on the
desert shores of Africa, I never had so much as one thought of what
would become of me; or one wish to God to direct me whither I should go,
or to keep me from the danger which apparently surrounded me, as well
from voracious creatures as cruel savages. But I was merely thoughtless
of a God or a Providence; acted like a mere brute from the principles of
Nature, and by the dictates of common sense only, and indeed hardly
that.

When I was delivered and taken up at sea by the Portugal captain, well
used, and dealt justly and honorably with, as well as charitably, I had
not the least thankfulness in my thoughts. When again I was shipwrecked,
ruined, and in danger of drowning on this island, I was as far from
remorse, or looking on it as a judgment; I only said to myself often,
that I was an unfortunate dog, and born to be always miserable.

It is true, when I got on shore first here, and found all my ship's crew
drowned, and myself spared, I was surprised with a kind of ecstasy, and
some transports of soul, which, had the grace of God assisted, might
have come up to true thankfulness; but it ended where it begun, in a
mere common flight of joy, or, as I may say, being glad I was alive,
without the least reflection upon the distinguishing goodness of the
Hand which had preserved me, and had singled me out to be preserved,
when all the rest were destroyed; or an inquiry why Providence had been
thus merciful to me; even just the same common sort of joy which seamen
generally have after they are got safe ashore from a shipwreck, which
they drown all in the next bowl of punch, and forget almost as soon as
it is over, and all the rest of my life was like it.

Even when I was afterwards, on due consideration, made sensible of my
condition, how I was cast on this dreadful place, out of the reach of
human kind, out of all hope of relief, or prospect of redemption, as
soon as I saw but a prospect of living, and that I should not starve and
perish for hunger, all the sense of my affliction wore off, and I began
to be very easy, applied myself to the works proper for my preservation
and supply, and was far enough from being afflicted at my condition, as
a judgment from heaven, or as the hand of God against me; these were
thoughts which very seldom entered my head.

The growing up of the corn, as is hinted in my journal, had at first
some little influence upon me, and began to affect me with seriousness,
as long as I thought it had something miraculous in it; but as soon as
ever that part of the thought was removed, all the impression which was
raised from it wore off also, as I have noted already.

Even the earthquake, though nothing could be more terrible in its
nature, or more immediately directing to the invisible Power, which
alone directs such things, yet no sooner was the first fright over, but
the impression it had made went off also. I had no more sense of God or
His judgments, much less of the present affliction of my circumstances
being from His Hand, than if had been in the most prosperous condition
of life.

But now, when I began to be sick, and a leisurely view of the miseries
of death came to place itself before me; when my spirits began to sink
under the burden of a strong distemper, and Nature was exhausted with
the violence of the fever; conscience, that had slept so long, began to
awake, and I began to reproach myself with my past life, in which I had
so evidently, by uncommon wickedness, provoked the justice of God to lay
me under uncommon strokes, and to deal with me in so vindictive a
manner.

These reflections oppressed me for the second or third day of my
distemper; and in the violence, as well of the fever as of the dreadful
reproaches of my conscience, extorted some words from me, like praying
to God, though I cannot say they were either a prayer attended with
desires or with hopes; it was rather the voice of mere fright and
distress. My thoughts were confused, the convictions great upon my mind,
and the horror of dying in such a miserable condition, raised vapors
into my head with the mere apprehensions; and in these hurries of my
soul, I know not what my tongue might express; but it was rather
exclamation, such as, "Lord! what a miserable creature am I! If I should
be sick, I shall certainly die for want of help; and what will become of
me?" Then the tears burst out of my eyes, and I could say no more for a
good while.

In this interval, the good advice of my father came to my mind, and
presently his prediction, which I mentioned at the beginning of this
story, viz., that if I did take this foolish step, God would not bless
me, and I would have leisure hereafter to reflect upon having neglected
his counsel, when there might be none to assist in my recovery. "Now,"
said I aloud, "my dear father's words are come to pass; God's justice
has overtaken me, and I have none to help or hear me. I rejected the
voice of Providence, which had mercifully put me in a posture or station
of life wherein I might have been happy and easy; but I would neither
see it myself nor learn to know the blessing of it from my parents. I
left them to mourn over my folly, and now I am left to mourn under the
consequences of it. I refused their help and assistance, who would have
lifted me into the world, and would have made everything easy to me; and
now I have difficulties to struggle with, too great for even Nature
itself to support, and no assistance, no help, no comfort, no advice."
Then I cried out, "Lord, be my help, for I am in great distress."

This was the first prayer, if I may call it so, that I had made for many
years. But I return to my journal.

June 28. - Having been somewhat refreshed with the sleep I had had, and
the fit being entirely off, I got up; and though the fright and terror
of my -dream was very great, yet I considered that the fit of the ague
would return again the next day, and now was my time to get something to
refresh and support myself when I should be ill. And the first thing I
did I filled a large square case-bottle with water, and set it upon my
table in reach of my bed; and to take off the chill or aguish
disposition of the water, I put about a quarter of a pint of rum into
it, and mixed them together. Then I got me a piece of the goat's flesh,
and broiled it on the coals, but could eat very little. I walked about,
but was very weak, and withal very sad and heavy-hearted in the sense of
my miserable condition, dreading the return of my distemper the next
day. At night I made my supper of three of the turtle's eggs, which I
roasted in the ashes, and eat, as we call it, in the shell; and this was
the first bit of meat I had ever asked God's blessing to, even as I
could remember, in my whole life.

After I had eaten, I tried to walk, but found myself so weak that I
could hardly carry the gun (for I never went out without that); so I
went but a little way, and sat down upon the ground, looking out upon
the sea, which was just before me, and very calm and smooth. As I sat
here, some such thoughts as these occurred to me.

What is this earth and sea, of which I have seen so much? Whence is it
produced? And what am I, and all the other creatures, wild and tame,
human and brutal, whence are we? Sure we are all made by some secret
Power, who formed the earth and sea, the air and sky. And who is that?

Then it followed most naturally, It is God that has made it all. Well,
but then it came on strangely, if God has made all these things, He
guides and governs them all, and all things that concern them; for the
Power that could make all things, must certainly have power to guide and
direct them.

If so, nothing can happen in the great circuit of His works, either
without His knowledge or appointment. And if nothing happens without His
knowledge, He knows that I am here, and am in this dreadful condition.
And if nothing happens without His appointment, He has appointed all
this to befall me.

Nothing occurred to my thoughts to contradict any of these conclusions;
and therefore it rested upon me with the greater force, that it must
needs be that God has appointed all this to befall me; that I was
brought to this miserable circumstance by His direction, He having the
sole power, not of me only, but of everything that happened in the
world. Immediately it followed, Why has God done this to me? What have I
done to be thus used?

My conscience presently checked me in that inquiry, as if I had
blasphemed, and methough it spoke to me like a voice: Wretch! dost thou
ask what thou hast done? Look back upon a dreadful misspent life, and
ask thyself what thou hast done? Ask, why is it that thou wert not long
ago destroyed? Why wert thou not drowned in Yarmouth Roads; killed in
the fight when the ship was taken by the Sallee man-of-war; devoured by
the wild beasts on the coast of Africa; or drowned here, when all the
crew perished but thyself Dost thou ask, What have I done?

I was struck dumb with these reflections, as one astonished, and had not
a word to say, no, not to answer to myself, but rose up pensive and sad,
walked back to my retreat, and went up over my wall, as if I had been
going to bed. But my thoughts were sadly disturbed, and I had no
inclination to sleep; so I sat down in my chair, and lighted my lamp,
for it began to be dark. Now, as the apprehension of the return of my
distemper terrified me very much, it occurred to my thought that the
Brazilians take no physic but their tobacco for almost all distempers;
and I had a piece of a roll of tobacco in one of the chests, which was
quite cured, and some also that was green, and not quite cured.

I went, directed by Heaven no doubt; for in this chest I found a cure
both for soul and body. I opened the chest, and found what I looked for,
viz., the tobacco, and as the few books I had saved lay there too, I
took out one of the Bibles which I mentioned before, and which to this
time I had not found leisure, or so much as inclination, to look into. I
say, I took it out, and brought both that and the tobacco with me to the
table.

What use to make of the tobacco I knew not, as to my distemper, or
whether it was good for it or no; but I tried several experiments with
it, as if I was resolved it should hit one way or other. I first took a
piece of a leaf, and chewed it in my mouth, which indeed at first almost
stupefied my brain, the tobacco being green and strong, and that I had
not been much used to it. Then I took some and steeped it an hour or two
in some rum, and resolved to take dose of it when I lay down. And
lastly, I burnt some upon a pan of coals, and held my nose close over
the smoke of it as long as I could bear it, as well for the heat, as
almost for suffocation.

In the interval of this operation, I took up the Bible, and began to
read, but my head was too much disturbed with the tobacco to bear
reading, at least that time; only having opened the book casually, the
first words that occurred to me were these, "Call on Me in the day of
trouble, and I will deliver, and thou shalt glorify Me."

The words were very apt to my case, and made some impression upon my
thoughts at the time of reading them, though not so much as they did
afterwards; for as for being delivered, the word had no sound, as I may
say, to me, the thing was so remote, so impossible in my apprehension of
things, that I began to say, as the children of Israel did when they
were promised flesh to eat, "Can God spread a table in the wilderness?"
so I began to say, Can God Himself deliver me from this place? And as it
was not for many years that any hope appeared, this prevailed very often
upon my thoughts. But, however, the words made a great impression upon
me, and I mused upon them very often.

It grew now late, and the tobacco had, as I said, dozed my head so much,
that I inclined to sleep; so I left my lamp burning in the cave, lest I
should want anything in the night, and went to bed. But before I lay
down, I did what I never had done in all my life: I kneeled down and
prayed to God to fulfill the promise to me, that if I called upon Him in
the day of trouble, He would deliver me. After my broken and imperfect
prayer was over, I drank the rum in which I had steeped the tobacco;
which was so strong and rank of the tobacco that indeed I could scarcely
get it down. Immediately upon this I went to bed. I found presently it
flew up in my head violently; but I fell into a sound sleep, and waked
no more till, by the sun, it must necessarily be near three o'clock in
the afternoon the next day. Nay, to his hour I am partly of the opinion
that I slept all the next day and night, and till almost three that day
after; for otherwise I know not how I should lose a day out of my
reckoning in the days of the week, as it appeared some years after had
done. For if I had lost it by crossing and recrossing the line, I should
have lost more than one day. But certainly I lost a day in my account,
and never knew which way.

Be that, however, one way or the other, when I awaked I found myself
exceedingly refreshed, and my spirits lively and cheerful. I got up, I
was stronger than I was the day before, and my stomach better, for I was
hungry; and, in short, I had no fit the next day, but continued much
altered for the better. This was the 29th.

The 30th was my well day, of course, and I went abroad with my gun, but
did not care to travel too far. I killed a sea-fowl or two, something
like a brand-goose, and brought them home, but was not very forward to
eat them; so I eat some more of the turtle's eggs, which were very good.
This evening I renewed the medicine, which I had supposed did me good
the day before, viz., the tobacco steeped in rum; only I did not take so
much as before, nor did I chew any of the leaf, or hold my head over the
smoke. However, I was not so well the next day, which was the first of
July, as I hoped I should have been; for I had a little spice of the
cold fit, but it was not much.

July 2. - I renewed the medicine all the three ways; and dosed myself
with it as at first, and doubled the quantity which I drank.

July 2. - I missed the fit for good and all, though I did not recover my
full strength for some weeks after. While I was thus gathering strength,
my thoughts ran exceedingly upon this Scripture, "I will deliver thee;"
and the impossibility of my deliverance lay much upon my mind, in bar of
my ever expecting it. But as I was discouraging myself with such
thoughts, it occurred to my mind that I pored so much upon my
deliverance from the main affliction, that I disregarded the deliverance
I had received; and I was, as it were, made to ask myself such questions
as these, viz., Have I not been delivered, and wonderfully too, from
sickness? from the most distressed condition that could be, and that was
so frightful to me? and what notice I had taken of it? Had I done my
part? God had delivered me, but I had not glorified Him; that is to say,
I had not owned and been thankful for that as a deliverance; and how
could I expect greater deliverance?

This touched my heart very much; and immediately I kneeled down, and
gave God thanks aloud for my recovery from my sickness.

July 4. - In the morning I took the Bible; and beginning at the new
Testament, I began seriously to read it, and imposed upon myself to read
awhile every morning and every night, not tying myself to the number of
chapters, but as long as my thoughts should engage me.
 It was not long afer I set seriously to this work, but I found my heart
more deeply and sincerely affected with the wickedness of my past life.
The impression of my dream revived, and the words, "All these things
have not brought thee to repentance," ran seriously in my thought. I was
earnestly begging of God to give me repentance, when it happened
providentially, the very day, that, reading the I came to these words,
"He is exalted a Prince and a Saviour, to give repentance, and to give
remission." I threw down the book; and with my heart as well as my hands
lifted up to heaven, in a kind of ecstasy of joy, I cried out aloud,
"Jesus, Thou son of David! Jesus, Thou exalted Prince and Saviour, give
me repentance!"

This was the first time that I could say, in the true sense of the
words, that I prayed in all my life; for now I prayed with a sense of my
condition, and with a true Scripture view of hope founded on the
encouragement of the Word of God; and from this time, I may say, I began
to have hope that God would hear me.

Now I began to construe the words mentioned above, "Call on Me, and I
will deliver you," in a different sense from what I had ever done
before; for then I had no notion of anything being called deliverance
but my being delivered from the captivity I was in; for though I was
indeed at large in the place, yet the island was certainly a prison to
me, and that in the worst sense in the world. But now I learned to take
it in another sense; now I looked back upon my past life with such
horror, and my sins appeared so dreadful, that my soul sought nothing of
God but deliverance from the load of guilt that bore down all my
comfort. As for my solitary life, it was nothing; I did not so much as
pray to be delivered from it, or think of it; it was all of no
consideration, in comparison to this. And I add this part here, to hint
to whoever shall read it, that whenever they come to a true sense of
things, they will find deliverance from a sin a much greater blessing
than deliverance from affliction.

But leaving this part, I return to my journal.

My condition began now to be, though not less miserable as to my way of
living, yet much easier to my mind; and my thoughts being directed, by a
constant reading the Scripture, and praying to God, to things of a
higher nature, I had a great deal of comfort within, which, till now, I
knew nothing of. Also, as my health and strength returned, I bestirred
myself to furnish myself with everything that I wanted, and make my way
of living as regular as I could.

From the 4th of July to the 14th I was chiefly employed in walking about
with my gun in my hand, a little and a little at a time, as a man that
was gathering up his strength after a fit of sickness; for it is hardly
to be imagined how low I was, and to what weakness I was reduced. The
application which I made use of was perfectly new, and perhaps what had
never cured an ague before; neither can I recommend it to any one to
practise, by this experiment; and though it did carry off the fit, yet
it rather contributed to weakening me; for I had frequent convulsions in
my nerves and limbs for some time.

I learnt from it also this, in particular, that being abroad in the rain
season was the most pernicious thing to my health that could be,
especially in those rains which came attended with storms and hurricanes
of wind; for as the rain which came in the dry season was always most
accompanied with such storms, so I found that rain was much more
dangerous than the rain which fell in September and October.

I had been now on this unhappy island above ten months; all possibility
of deliverance from this condition seemed to be entirely taken from me;
and I firmly believed that no human shape had ever set foot upon that
place. Having now secured my habitation, as I thought, fully to my mind,
I had a great desire to make a more perfect discovery of the island, and
to see what other productions I might find, which I yet knew nothing of.

It was the 15th of July that I began to take a more particular survey of
the island itself. I went up the creek first, where, as I hinted, I
brought my rafts on shore. I found, after I came about two miles up,
that the tide did not flow any higher, and that it was no more than a
little brook of running water, and very fresh and good; but this being
the dry season, there was hardly any water in some parts of it, at
least, not enough to run in any stream, so as it could be perceived.

On the bank of this brook I found many pleasant savannas or meadows,
plain, smooth, and covered with grass; and on the water, as might be
supposed, never overflowed, I found a great deal of tobacco, green, and
growing to a great and very strong stalk. There were diverse other
plants, which I had no notion of, or understanding about, and might,
perhaps, have virtues of their own which I could not find out.

I searched for the cassava root, which the Indians, in all that climate,
make their bread of, but I could find none. I saw large plants of aloes,
but did not then understand them. I saw several sugar-canes, but wild,
and, for want of cultivation, imperfect. I contented myself with these
discoveries for this time, and came back, musing with myself what course
I might take to know the virtue and goodness of any of the fruits or
plants which I should discover; but could bring it to no conclusion;
for, in short, I had made so little observation while I was in the
Brazils, that I knew little of the plants in the field, at least very
little that might serve me to any purpose now in my distress.

The next day, the 16th, I went up the same way again; and after going
something farther than I had gone the day before, I found the brook and
the savannas began to cease, and the country became more woody than
before. In this part I found different fruits, and particularly I found
melons upon the ground in great abundance, and grapes upon the trees.
The vines had spread indeed over the trees, and the clusters of grapes
were just now in their prime, very ripe and rich. This was a surprising
discovery, and I was exceeding glad of them; but I was warned by my
experience to eat sparingly of them, remembering that when I was ashore
in Barbary the eating of grapes killed several of our Englishmen, who
were slaves there, by throwing them into fluxes and fevers. But I found
an excellent use of these grapes; and that was, to cure or dry them in
the sun, and keep them as dried grapes or raisins are kept, which I
thought would be, as indeed they were, as wholesome as agreeable to eat,
when no grapes; might be to be had.

I spent all that evening there, and went not back to my habitation;
which, by the way, was the first night, as I might say, I had lain from
home. In the night, I took my first contrivance, and got up into a tree,
where I slept well; and the next morning proceeded upon my discovery,
travelling near four miles, as I might judge by the length of the
valley, keeping still due north, with a ridge of hills on the south and
north side of me.

At the end of this march I came to an opening, where the country seemed
to descend to the west; and a little spring of fresh water, which issued
out of the side of the hill by me, ran the other way, that is, due east;
and the country appeared so fresh, so green, so flourishing, everything
being in a constant verdure or flourish of spring, that it looked like a
planted garden.

I descended a little on the side of that delicious vale, surveying it
with a secret kind of pleasure, though mixed with my other afflicting
thoughts, to think that this was all my own; and I was king and lord of
all this country indefeasibly, and had a right of possession; and, if I
could convey it, I might have it in inheritance as completely as any
lord of a manor in England. I saw here abundance of cocoa trees, orange,
and lemon, and citron trees; but all wild, and very few bearing any
fruit, at least not then. However, the green limes that I gathered were
not only pleasant to eat, but very wholesome; and I mixed their juice
afterwards with water, which made it very wholesome, and very cool and
refreshing.

I found now I had business enough to gather and carry home; and I
resolved to lay up a store, as well of grapes as limes and lemons to
furnish myself for the wet season, which I knew was approaching.

In order to this, I gathered a great heap of grapes in one place, and a
lesser heap in another place; and a great parcel of limes and lemons in
another place; and taking a few of each with me, I travelled homeward;
and resolved to come again, and bring a bag or sack, or what I could
make, to carry the rest home.

Accordingly, having spent three days in this journey, I came home (so I
must now call my tent and my cave); but before I got thither, the grapes
were spoiled; the richness of the fruits, and the weight of the juice,
having broken them and bruised them, they were good for little or
nothing: as to the limes, they were good, but I could bring but a few.

The next day, being the 19th, I went back, having made me two small bags
to bring home my harvest; but I was surprised, when, coming to my heap
of grapes, which were so rich and fine when I gathered them, I found
them all spread about, trod to pieces, and dragged about, some here,
some there, and abundance eaten and devoured. By this I concluded there
were some wild creatures thereabouts, which had done this; but what they
were, I knew not.

However, as I found that there was no laying them up on heaps, and no
carrying them away in a sack, but that one way they would be destroyed,
and the other way they would be crushed with their own weight, I took
another course; for I gathered a large quantity of the grapes, and hung
them up upon the out-branches of the trees, that they might cure and dry
in the sun; and as for the limes and lemons, I carried as many back as I
could well stand under.

When I came home from this journey, I contemplated with great pleasure
the fruitfulness of that valley, and the pleasantness of the situation;
the security from storms on that side, the water and the wood; and
concluded that I had pitched upon a place to fix my abode, which was by
far the worst part of the country. Upon the whole, I began to consider
of removing my habitation, and to look out for a place equally safe as
where I now was situate, if possible, in that pleasant fruitful part of
the island.

This thought ran long in my head, and I was exceeding fond of it for
some time, the pleasantness of the place tempting me; but when I came to
a nearer view of it, and to consider that I was now by the seaside,
where it was at least possible that something might happen to my
advantage, and, by the same ill fate that brought me hither, might bring
some other unhappy wretches to the same place; and though it was scarce
probable that any such thing should ever happen, yet to enclose myself
among the hills and woods in the centre of the island, was to anticipate
my bondage, and to render such an affair not only improbable, but
impossible; and that therefore I ought not by any means to remove.

However, I was so enamored of this place that I spent much of my time
there for the whole remaining part of the month of July; and though,
upon second thoughts, I resolved as above, not to remove, yet I built me
a little kind of bower, and surrounded it at a distance with a strong
fence, being a double hedge as high as I could reach, well staked, and
filled between with brushwood. And here I lay very secure, sometimes two
or three nights together, always going over it with a ladder, as before;
so that I fancied now I had my country-house and my sea-coast house; and
this work took me up to the beginning of August.

I had but newly finished my fence, and began to enjoy my labor, but the
rains came on, and made me stick close to my first habitation; for
though I had made me a tent like the other, with a piece of a sail, and
spread it very well, yet I had not the shelter of a hill to keep me from
storms, nor a cave behind me to retreat into when the rains were
extraordinary.

About the beginning of August, as I said, I had finished my bower, and
began to enjoy myself. The 3rd of August I found the grapes I had hung
up were perfectly dried, and indeed were excellent good raisins of the
sun; so I began to take them down from the trees. And it was very happy
that I do so, for the rains which followed would have spoiled them, and
I had lost the best part of my winter food; for I had above two hundred
large bunches of them. No sooner had I taken them all down, and carried
most of them home to my cave, but it began to rain; and from hence,
which was the 14th of August, it rained, more or less, every day till
the middle of October, and sometimes so violently, that I could not stir
out of my cave for several days.

In this season, I was much surprised with the increase of my family. I
had been much concerned for the loss of one of my cats, who run away
from me, or, as I thought, had been dead, and I heard no more tale or
tidings of her, still, to my astonishment, she came home about the end
of August with three kittens. This was the more strange to me, because,
though I had killed a wildcat, as I called it, with my gun, yet I
thought it was a quite different kind from our European cats; yet the
young cats were the same kind of house-breed like the old one; and both
my cats being females, I thought it very strange. But from these three
cats I afterwards came to be so pestered with cats, that I was forced to
kill them like vermin, or wild beasts, and to drive them from my house
as much as possible.

From the 14th of August to the 26th, incessant rain, so that I could not
stir, and was now very careful not to be much wet. In this confinement,
I began to be straitened for food; but venturing out twice, I one day
killed a goat, and the last day, which was the 26th, found a very large
tortoise, which was a treat to me, and my food was regulated thus: I eat
a bunch of raisins for my breakfast, a piece of the goat's flesh, or of
the turtle, for my dinner, broiled; for, to my great misfortune, I had
no vessel to boil or stew anything; and two or three of the turtle's
eggs for my supper.

During this confinement in my cover by the rain, I worked daily two or
three hours at enlarging my cave, and by degrees worked it on towards
one side, till I came to the outside of the hill, and made a door, or
way out, which came beyond my fence or wall; and so I came in and out
this way. But I was not perfectly easy at lying so open; for as I had
managed myself before, I was in a perfect enclosure; whereas now, I
thought I lay exposed, and open for anything to come in upon me; and yet
I could not perceive that there was any living thing to fear, the
biggest creature that I had yet seen upon the island being a goat.

September 20. - I was now come to the unhappy anniversary of my landing.
I cast up the notches on my post, and found I had been on shore three
hundred and sixty-five days. I kept this day as a solemn fast, setting
it apart to religious exercise, prostrating myself on the ground with
the most serious humiliation, confessing my sins to God, acknowledging
His righteous judgments upon me, and praying to Him to have mercy on me
through Jesus Christ; and having not tasted the least refreshment for
twelve hours, even till the going down of the sun, I then eat a
biscuit-cake and a bunch of grapes and went to bed, finishing the day as
I began it.

I had all this time observed no Sabbath day, for as at first I had no
sense of religion upon my mind, I had, after some time, omitted to
distinguish the weeks, by making a longer notch than ordinary for the
Sabbath day, and so did not really know what any of the days were. But
now, having cast up the days, as above, I found I had been there a year,
so I divided it into weeks, and set apart every seventh day for a
Sabbath; though I found at the end of my account, I had lost a day or
two in my reckoning.

A little after this my ink began to fail me, and so I contented myself
to use it more sparingly, and to write down only the most remarkable
events of my life, without continuing a daily memorandum of other
things.

The rainy season and the dry season began now to appear regular to me,
and I learned to divide them so as to provide for them accordingly; but
I bought all my experience before I had it, and this I am going to
relate was one of the most discouraging experiments that I made at all.
I have mentioned that I had saved the few ears of barley and rice, which
I had so surprisingly found spring up, as I thought, of themselves, and
believe there were about thirty stalks of rice, and about twenty of
barley; and now I thought it a proper time to sow it after the rains,
the sun being in its southern position, going from me.

Accordingly I dug up a piece of ground as well as I could with my wooden
spade, and dividing it into two parts, I sowed my grain; but as I was
sowing it, it casually occurred to my thoughts that I would not sow it
all at first, because I did not know when was the proper time for it, so
I sowed about two-thirds of the seed, leaving about a handful of each.

It was a great comfort to me afterwards that I did so, for not one grain
of that I sowed this time came to anything, for the dry months
following, the earth having had no rain after the seed was sown, it had
no moisture to assist its growth, and never came up at all till the wet
season had come again, and then it grew as if it had been but newly
sown.

Finding my first seed did not grow, which I easily imagined was by the
drought, I sought for a moister piece of ground to make another trial
in, and I dug up a piece of ground near my new bower, and sowed the rest
of my seed in February, a little before the vernal equinox. And this
having the rainy months of March and April to water it, sprung up very
pleasantly, and yielded a very good crop; but having part of the seed
left only, and not daring to sow all that I had, I had but a small
quantity at last, my whole crop not amounting to above half a peck of
each kind. But by this experiment I was made master of my business, and
knew exactly when the proper season was to sow, and that I might expect
two seed-times and two harvests every year.

While this corn was growing, I made a little discovery, which was of use
to me afterwards. As soon as the rains were over, and the weather began
to settle, which was about the month of November, I made a visit up the
country to my bower, where, though I had not been some months, yet I
found all things just as I left them. The circle or double hedge that I
had made was not only firm and entire, but the stakes which I had cut
out of some trees that grew hereabouts were all shot out, and grown with
long branches, as much as a willow-tree usually shoots the first year
after loping its head. I could not tell what tree to call it that these
stakes were cut from. I was surprised, and yet very well pleased to see
the young trees grow, and I pruned them, and led them up to grow as much
alike as I could. And it is scarce credible how beautiful a figure they
grew into in three years; so that though the hedge made a circle of
about twenty-five yards in diameter, yet the trees, for such I might now
call them, soon covered it, and it was a complete shade, sufficient to
lodge under all the dry season.

This made me resolve to cut some more stakes, and make me a hedge like
this, in a semicircle round my wall (I mean that of my first dwelling,
which I did; and placing the trees or stakes in a double row, at about
eight yards distance from my first fence, they grew presently, and were
at first a fine cover to my habitation, and afterward served for defence
also, as I shall observe in its order. I found now that the seasons of
the year might generally be divided, not into summer and winter, as in
Europe, but into the rainy seasons and the dry seasons; which were
generally thus:


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


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


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


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


The rainy season sometimes held longer or shorter as the winds happened
to blow, but this was the general observation I made. After I had found
by experience the ill consequence of being abroad in the rain, I took
care to furnish myself with provisions beforehand, that I might not be
obliged to go out; and I sat within doors, as much as possible during
the wet months.

In this time I found much employment, and very suitable also to the
time, for I found great occasion of many things which I had no way to
furnish myself with but by hard labor and constant application;
particularly, I tried many ways to make myself a basket; but all the
twigs I could get for the purpose proved so brittle, that they would do
nothing. It proved of excellent advantage to me now, that when I was a
boy I used to take great delight in standing at a basket maker's in the
town where my father lived, to see them make their wicker-ware; and
being, as boys usually are, very officious to help, and a great observer
of the manner how they work those things, and sometimes lending a hand,
I had by this means full knowledge of the methods of it. That I wanted
nothing but the materials; when it came into my mind that the twigs of
that tree from whence I cut my stakes that grew might possibly be as
tough as the sallows, and willows, and osiers in England, and I resolved
to try.

Accordingly, the next day, I went to my country-house, as I called it;
and cutting some of the smaller twigs, I found them to my purpose as
much as I could desire; whereupon I came the next time prepared with a
hatchet to cut down a quantity, which I soon found, for there was great
plenty of them. These I set up to dry within my circle or hedge, and
when they were fit for use, I carried them to my cave; and here during
the next season I employed myself in making, as well as I could, a great
many baskets, both to carry earth, or to carry or lay up anything as I
had occasion. And though I did not finish them very handsomely, yet I
made them sufficiently serviceable for my purpose. And thus, afterwards,
I took care never to be without them; and as my wicker-ware decayed, I
made more; especially I made strong deep baskets to place my corn in,
instead of sacks, when I should come to have any quantity of it.

Having mastered this difficulty, and employed a world of time about it,
I bestirred myself to see, if possible, how to supply two wants. I had
no vessels to hold anything that was liquid, except two runlets, which
were almost full of rum, and some glass bottles, some of the common
size, and others which were case-bottles square, for the holding of
waters, spirits, etc. I had not so much as a pot to boil anything except
a great kettle, which I saved out of the ship, and which was too big for
such use as I desired it, viz., to make broth, and stew a bit of meat by
itself. The second thing I would fain have had was a tobacco-pipe; but
it was impossible to me to make one. However, I found contrivance for
that, too, at last.

I employed myself in planting my second rows of stakes or piles, and in
this wicker-working all the summer or dry season, when another business
took me up more time that it could be imagined I could spare.

I mentioned before that I had a great mind to see the whole island, and
that I had travelled up the brook, and so on to where I built my bower,
and where I had an opening quite to the sea, on the other side of the
island. I now resolved to travel quite across to the seashore on that
side; so taking my gun, a hatchet, and my dog, and a larger quantity of
powder and shot than usual, with two biscuit-cakes and a great bunch of
raisins in my pouch for my store, I began my journey. When I had passed
the vale where my bower stood, as above, I came within view of the sea
to the west; and it being a very clear day, I fairly descried land,
whether an island or a continent I could not tell; but it lay very high,
extending from the west to the WSW. at a very great distance; by my
guess, it could not be less than fifteen or twenty leagues off.

I could not tell what part of the world this might be, otherwise than
that I know it must be part of America, and, as I concluded, by all my
observations, must be near the Spanish dominions, and perhaps was all
inhabited by savages, where, if I should have landed, I had been in a
worse condition than I was now; and therefore I acquiesced in the
dispositions of Providence which I began now to own and to believe
ordered everything for the best. I say, I quieted my mind with this, and
left afflicting myself with fruitless wishes of being there.

Besides, after some pause upon this affair, I considered that if this
land was the Spanish coast I should certainly, one time or other, see
some vessel pass or repass one way or other; but if not, then it was the
savage coast between the Spanish country and Brazils, which are indeed
the worst of savages; for they are cannibals or men-eaters, and fail not
to murder and devour all the human bodies that fall into their hands.

With these considerations I walked very leisurely forward. I found that
side of the island, where I now was, much pleasanter than mine, the open
or savanna fields sweet, adorned with flowers and grass, and full of
very fine woods.

I saw abundance of parrots, and fain would have caught one, if possible,
to have kept it to be tame, and taught it to speak to me. I did, after
some painstaking, catch a young parrot, for I knocked it down with a
stick, and having recovered it, I brought it home; but it was some years
before I could make him speak. However, at last I taught him to call me
by my name very familiarly. But the accident that followed, though it be
a trifle, will be very diverting in its place.

I was exceedingly diverted with this journey. I found in the low grounds
bares, as I thought them to be, and foxes; but they differed greatly
from all the other kinds I had met with, nor could I satisfy myself to
eat them, though I killed several. But I had no need to be venturous,
for I had no want of food, and of that which was very good too;
especially these three sorts, viz., goats, pigeons, and turtle, or
tortoise; which, added to my grapes, Leadenhall Market could not have
furnished a table better than I, in proportion to the company. And
though my case was deplorable enough, yet I had great cause for
thankfulness, and that I was not driven to any extremities for food,
rather plenty, even to dainties.

I never travelled in this journey above two miles outright in a day, or
thereabouts; but I took so many turns and returns, to see what
discoveries I could make, that I came weary enough to the place where I
resolved to sit down for all night; and then I either reposed myself in
a tree, or surrounded myself with a row of stakes, set upright in the
ground, either from one tree to another, or so as no wild creature could
come at me without waking me.

As soon as I came to the seashore, I was surprised to see that I had
taken up my lot on the worst side of the island, for here indeed the
shore was covered with innumerable turtles; whereas, on the other side,
I had found but three in a year and a half. Here was also an infinite
number of fowls of many kinds, some which I had seen, and some which I
had not see of before, and many of them were very good meat, but such as
I knew not the names of, except those called penguins.

I could have shot as many as I pleased, but was very sparing of my
powder and shot, and therefore had more mind to kill a she-goat, if I
could, which I could better feed on; and though there were many goats
here, more than on my side the island, yet it was with much more
difficulty that I could come near them, the country being flat and even,
and they saw me much sooner then when I was on the hill.

I confess this side of the country was much pleasanter than mine; but
yet I had not the least inclination to remove, for as I was fixed in my
habitation, it became natural to me, and I seemed all the while I was
here to be as it were upon a journey, and from home. However, I
travelled along the shore of the sea towards the east, I suppose about
twelve miles, and then setting up a great pole upon the shore for a
mark, I concluded I would go home again; and that the next journey I
took should be on the other side of the island, east from my dwelling,
and so round till I came to my post again; of which in its place.

I took another way to come back than that I went, thinking I could
easily keep all the island so much in my view that I could not miss
finding my first dwelling by viewing the country. But I found myself
mistaken; for being come about two or three miles, I found myself
descended into a very large valley, but so surrounded with hills, and
those hill covered with wood, that I could not see which was my way by
any direction but that of the sun, nor even then, unless I knew very
well the position of the sun at that time of the day.

It happened to my farther misfortune that the weather proved hazy for
three or four days while I was in this valley; and not being able to see
the sun, I wandered about very uncomfortably, and at last was obliged to
find out the seaside, look for my post, and come back the same way I
went; and then by easy journeys I turned homeward, the weather being
exceeding hot, and my gun, ammunition, hatchet, and other things very
heavy.

In this journey my dog surprised a young kid, and seized upon it, and I
running in to take hold of it, caught it, and saved it alive from the
dog. I had a great mind to bring it home if I could, for I had often
been musing whether it might not be possible to get a kid or two, and so
raise a breed of tame goats, which might supply me when my powder and
shot should be all spent.

I made a collar to this little creature, and with a string, which I made
of some rope-yarn, which I always carried about me, I led him along,
though with some   difficulty, till I came to my bower, and there I
enclosed him and left him, for I was very impatient to be at home, from
whence I had been absent above a month.

I cannot express what a satisfaction it was to me to come into my old
hutch, and lie down in my hammock-bed. This little wandering journey,
without settled place of abode, had been so unpleasant to me, that my
own house, as I called it to myself, was a perfect settlement to me
compared to that; and it rendered everything about me so comfortable,
that I resolved I would never go a great way from it again, while it
should be my lot to stay on the island.

I reposed myself here a week, to rest and regale myself af after my long
journey; during which most of the time was taken up in the weighty
affair of making a cage for my Poll, who began now to be a mere
domestic, and to be mighty well acquainted with me. Then I began to
think of the poor kid which I had penned in within my little circle, and
resolved to go and fetch it home, or give it some food. Accordingly I
went, and found it where I left it, for indeed it could not get out, but
almost starved for want of food. I went out and cut boughs of trees, and
branches of such shrubs as I could find, and threw it over, and having
fed it, I tied it as I did before, to lead it away; but it was so tame
with being hungry, that I had no need to have tied it, for it followed
me like a dog. And as I continually fed it, the creature became so
loving, so gentle, and so fond, that it became from that time one of my
domestics also, and would never leave me afterwards.

The rainy season of the autumnal equinox was now come, and I kept the
30th of September in the same solemn manner as before, being the
anniversary of my landing on the island, having now been there two
years, and no more prospect of being delivered than the first day I came
there. I spent the whole day in humble and thankful acknowledgments of
the many wonderful mercies which my solitary condition was attended
with, and without which it might have been infinitely more miserable. I
gave humble and hearty thanks that God had been pleased to discover to
me even that it was possible I might be more happy in this solitary
condition, than I should have been in a liberty of society, and in all
the pleasures of the world; that He could fully make up to me the
deficiences of my solitary state, and the want of human society, by His
presence, and the communication of His grace to my soul, supporting,
comforting, and encouraging me to depend upon His providence here, and
hope for His eternal presence hereafter.

It was now that I began sensibly to feel how much more happy this life I
now led was, with all its miserable circumstances, than the wicked,
cursed, abominable life I led all the past part of my days. And now I
changed both my sorrows and my joys; my very desires altered, my
affections changed their gusts, and my delights were perfectIy new from
what they were at my first coming, or indeed for the two years past.

Before, as I walked about, either on my hunting, or for viewing the
country, the anguish of my soul at my condition would break out upon me
on a sudden, and my very heart would die within me, to think of the
woods, the mountains, the deserts I was in, and how I was a prisoner,
locked up with the eternal bars and bolts of the ocean, in an
uninhibited wilderness, without redemption. In the midst of the greatest
composures of my mind, this would break out upon me like a storm, and
make me wring my hands and weep like a child. Sometimes it would take me
in the middle of my work, and I would immediately sit down and sigh, and
look upon the ground for an hour or two together; and this was still
worse to me, for if I could burst out into tears, or vent myself by
words, it would go off, and the grief, having exhausted itself, would
abate.

But now I began to exercise myself with new thoughts. I daily read the
Word of God, and applied all the comforts of it to my present state. One
morning, being very sad, I opened the Bible upon these words, "I will
never, never leave thee, nor forsake thee." Immediately it occurred that
these words were to me; why else should they be directed in such a
manner, just at the moment when I was mourning over my condition, as one
forsake of God and man? "Well, then," said I, "if God does not forsake
me, of what ill consequence can it be, or what matters it, though the
world should all forsake me, seeing on the other hand, if I had all the
world, and should lose the favor and blessing of God, there would be no
comparison in the loss?"

From this moment I began to conclude in my mind that it was possible for
me to be more happy in this forsaken solitary condition, that it was
probable I should ever have been in any other particular state in the
world, and with this thought I was going to give thanks to God for
bringing me to this place.

I know not what it was, but something shocked my mind at that thought,
and I durst not speak the words. "How canst thou be such a hypocrite,"
said I, even audibly, "to pretend to be thankful for a condition which,
however thou mayest endeavor to be contented with, thou wouldest rather
pray heartily to be delivered from?" So I stopped there; but though I
could not say I thanked God for being there, yet I sincerely gave thanks
to God for opening my eyes, by whatever afflicting providences, to see
the former condition of my life, and to mourn for my wickedness, and
repent. I never opened the Bible, or shut it, but my very soul within me
blessed God for directing my friend in England, without any order of
mine, to pack it up among my goods, and for assisting me afterwards to
save it out of the wreck of the ship.

Thus, and in this disposition of mind, I began my third year; and though
I have not given the reader the trouble of so particular account of my
works this year as the first, yet in general it may be observed, that I
was very seldom idle, but having regularly divided my time, according to
the several daily employments that were before me, such as, first my
duty to God, and the reading the Scriptures, which I constantly set
apart some time for, thrice every day; secondly, the going abroad with
my gun for food, which generally took me up three hours in every
morning, when it did not rain; thirdly, the ordering, curing,
preserving, and cooking what I had killed or catched for my supply;
these took up great part of the day; also it is to be considered that
the middle of the day, when the sun was in the zenith, the violence of
the heat was too great to stir out; so that about four hours in the
evening was all the time I could be supposed to work in, with this
exception, that sometimes I changed my hours of hunting and working, and
went to work in the morning, and abroad with my gun in the afternoon.

To this short time allowed for labor, desire may be added the exceeding
laboriousness of my work; the many hours which, for want of tools, want
of help, and want of skill, everything I did took up out of my time. For
example, I was full two and forty days making me a board for a long
shelf, which I wanted in my cave; whereas two sawyers, with their tools
and a saw-pit, would have cut six of them out of the same tree in half a
day.

My case was this: it was to be a large tree which was to be cut down,
because my board was to be a broad one. This tree I was three days
a-cutting down, and two more cutting off the boughs, and reducing it to
a log, or piece of timber. With inexpressible hacking and hewing, I
reduced both sides of it into chips till it begun to be light enough to
move; then I turned it, and made one side of it smooth and flat as a
board from end to end; then turning that side downward, cut the other
side, till I brought the plank to be about three inches thick, and
smooth on both sides. Any one may judge the labor of my hands in such a
piece of work; but labor and patience carried me through that, and many
other things. I only observe this in particular, to show the reason why
so much of my time went away with so little work, viz., that what might
be a little to be done with help and tools, was a vast labor, and
required a prodigious time to do alone, and by hand. But not
withstanding this, with patience and labor, I went through many things,
and, indeed, everything that my circumstances made necessary to me to
do, as will appear by what follows.

I was now, in the months of November and December, expecting my crop of
barley and rice. The ground I had manured or dug up for them was not
great; for as I observed, my seed of each was not above the quantity of
half a peck; for I had lost one whole crop by sowing in the dry season.
But now my crop promised very well, when on a sudden I found I was in
danger of losing it all again by enemies of several sorts, which it was
scarce possible to keep from it; as, first the goats and wild creatures
which I called hares, who, tasting the sweetness of the blade, lay in it
night and day, as soon as it came up, and eat it so close, that it could
get no time to shoot up into stalk.

This I saw no remedy for but by making an enclosure about it with a
hedge, which I did with a great deal of toil, and the more, because it
required speed. However, as my arable land was small, suited to my crop,
I got it totally well fenced in about three weeks' time, and shooting
some of the creatures in the daytime, I set my dog to guard it in the
night, tying him up to a stake at the gate, where he would stand and
bark all night long; so in a little time the enemies forsook the place,
and the corn grew very strong and well, and began to ripen apace.

But as the beasts ruined me before while my corn was in the blade, so
the birds were as likely to ruin me now when it was in the ear; for
going along by the place to see how it throve, I saw my little crop
surrounded with fowls, of I know not how many sorts, who stood, as it
were, watching till I should be gone. I immediately let fly among them,
for I always had my gun with me. I had no sooner shot, but there rose up
a little cloud of fowls, which I had not seen at all, from among the
corn itself.

This touched me sensibly, for I foresaw that in a few days they would
devour all my hopes, that I should be starved, and never be able to
raise a crop at all, and what to do I could not tell. However, I
resolved not to lose my corn, if possible, though I should watch it
night and day. In the first place, I went among it to see what damage
was already done, and found they had spoiled a good deal of it; but that
as it was yet too green for them, the loss was not so great but that the
remainder was like to be a good crop if it could be saved.

I stayed by it to load my gun, and then coming away, I could easily see
the thieves sitting upon all the trees about me, as if they only waited
till I was gone away. And the event proved it to be so; for as I walked
off, as if I was gone, I was no sooner out of their sight but they
dropped down, one by one, into the corn again. I was so provoked, that I
could not have patience to stay till more came on, knowing that every
grain that they eat now was, as it might be said, a peck-loaf to me in
the consequence; but coming up to the hedge, I fired again, and killed
three of them. This was what I wished for; so I took them up, and served
them as we serve notorious thieves in England, viz., hanged them in
chains, for a terror to others. It is impossible to imagine almost that
this should have such an effect as it had, for the fowls would not only
not come at the corn, but, in short, they forsook all that part of the
island, and I could never see a bird near the place as long as my
scare-crows hung there.

This I was very glad of, you may be sure; and about the latter end of
December, which was our second harvest of the year, I reaped my crop.

I was sadly put to it for a scythe or a sickle to cut it down, and all I
could do was to make one as well as I could out of one of the
broadswords, or cutlasses, which I saved among the arms out of the ship.
However, as my first crop of corn was but small, I had no great
difficulty to cut it down; in short, I reaped it my way, for I cut
nothing off but the ears, and carried it away in a great basket which I
had made, and so rubbed it out with my hands; and at the end of all my
harvesting, I found that out of my half peck of seed I had near two
bushels of rice, and above two bushels and a half of barley, that is to
say, by my guess, for I had no measure at that time.

However, this was a great encouragement to me, and I foresaw that, in
time, it would please God to supply me with bread. And yet here I was
perplexed again, for I neither knew how to grind or make meal of my
corn, or indeed how to clean it and part it; nor, if made into meal, how
to make bread of it, and if how to make it, yet I knew not how to bake
it. These things being added to my desire of having a good quantity for
store, and to secure a constant supply, I resolved not to taste any of
this crop, but to preserve it all for seed against the next season, and,
in the meantime, to employ all my study and hours of working to
accomplish this great work of providing myself with corn and bread.

It might be truly said, that now I worked for my bread. 'Tis a little
wonderful, and what I believe few people have thought upon, viz., the
strange multitude of little things necessary in the providing,
producing, curing, dressing, making, and finishing this one article of
bread.

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

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

However, this I bore with, and was content to work it out with patience,
and bear with the badness of the performance. When the corn was sowed, I
had no harrow, but was forced to go over it myself, and drag a great
heavy bough of a tree over it, to scratch it, as it may be called,
rather than rake or harrow it.

When it was growing and grown, I have observed already how many things I
wanted to fence it, secure it, mow or reap it, cure and carry it home,
thrash, part it from the chaff, and save it. Then I wanted a mill to
grind it, sieves to dress it, yeast and salt to make it into bread, and
an oven to bake it, and yet all these things I did without, as shall be
observed; and yet the corn was an inestimable comfort and advantage to
me too. All this, as I said, made everything laborious and tedious to
me, but that there was no help for; neither was my time so much loss to
me, because, as I had divided it, a certain part of it was every day
appointed to these works, and as I resolved to use none of the corn for
bread till I had a greater quantity by me, I had the next six months to
apply myself wholly, by labor and invention, to furnish myself with
utensils proper for the performing all the operations necessary for the
making the corn, when I had it, fit for my use.

But first I was to prepare more land, for I had now seed enough to sow
above an acre of ground. Before I did this, I had a week's work at least
to make me a spade, which, when it was done, was but a sorry one indeed,
and very heavy, and required double labor to work with it. However, I
went through that, and sowed my seed in two large flat pieces of ground,
as near my house as I could find them to my mind, and fenced them in
with a good hedge, the stakes of which were all cut of that wood which I
had set before, and knew it would grow; so that in one year's time I
knew I should have a quick or living hedge, that would want but little
repair. This work was not so little as to take me up less than three
months, because great part of that time was of the wet season, when I
could not go abroad.

Within doors, that is, when it rained, and I could not go out, I found
employment on the following occasions; always observing, that all the
while I was at work, I diverted myself with talking to my parrot, and
teaching him to speak, and I quickly learned him to know his own name,
and at last to speak it out pretty loud, "Poll," which was the first
word I ever heard spoken in the island by any mouth but my own. This,
therefore, was not my work, but an assistant to my work; for now, as I
said, I had a great employment upon my hands, as follows, viz., I had
long studied, by some means or other, to make myself some earthern
vessels, which indeed I wanted sorely, but knew not where to come at
them. However, considering the heat of the climate, I did not doubt but
if I could find out any such clay, I might botch up some such a pot as
might, being dried in the sun, be hard enough and strong enough to bear
handling, and to hold anything that was dry, and required to be kept so;
and as this was necessary in the preparing corn, meal, etc., which was
the thing I was upon, I resolved to make some as large as I could, and
fit only to stand like jars, to hold what should be put into them.

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

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

Though I miscarried so much in my design for large pots, yet I made
several smaller things with better success; such as little round pots,
flat dishes, pitchers, and pipkins, and any things my hand turned to;
and the heat of the sun baked them strangely hard. But all this would
not answer my end, which was to get an earthen pot to hold what was
liquid, and bear the fire, which none of these could do. It happened
after some time, making a pretty large fire for cooking my meat, when I
went to put it out after I had done with it, I found a broken piece of
one of my earthenware vessels in the fire, burnt as hard as a stone, and
red as a tile. I was agreeably surprised to see it, and said to myself,
that certainly they might be made to burn whole, if they would burn
broken.

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

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

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

My next concern was to get me a stone mortar to stamp or beat some corn
in; for as to the mill, there was no thought at arriving to that
perfection of art with one pair of hands. To supply this want I was at a
great loss; for, of all trades in the world, I was as perfectly
unqualified for a stone-cutter as for any whatever; neither had I any
tools to go about it with. I spent many a day to find out a great stone
big enough to cut hollow, and make fit for a mortar, and could find none
at all, except what was in the solid rock, and which I had no way to dig
or cut out; nor, indeed, were the rocks in the island of hardness
sufficient, but were all of a sandy crumbling stone, which neither would
bear the weight of a heavy pestle, or would break the corn without
filling it with sand. So, after a great deal of time lost in searching
for a stone, I gave it over, and resolved to look out for a great block
of hard wood, which I found indeed much easier; and getting one as big
as I had strength to stir, I rounded it, and formed it in the outside
with my axe and hatchet, and then, with the help of fire, and infinite
labor, made a hollow place in it, as the Indians in Brazil make their
canoes. After this, I made a great heavy pestle, or beater, of the wood
called the iron-wood; and this I prepared and laid by against I had my
next crop of corn, when I proposed to myself to grind, or rather pound,
my corn into meal, to make my bread.

My next difficulty was to make a sieve, or search, to dress my meal, and
to part it from the bran and the husk, without which I did not see it
possible I could have any bread. This was a most difficult thing, so
much as but to think on, for to be sure I had nothing like the necessary
thing to make it; I mean fine thin canvas or stuff, to search the meal
through. And here I was at a full stop for many months, nor did I really
know what to do; linen I had none left, but what was mere rags; I had
goats'-hair, but neither knew I how to weave it or spin it; and had I
known how, here was no tools to work it with. All the remedy that I
found for this was, that at last I did remember I had, among the
seamen's clothes which were saved out of the ship, some neckcloths of
calico or muslin; and with some pieces of these I made three small
sieves, but proper enough for the work; and thus I made shift for some
years. How I did afterwards, I shall show in its place.

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

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

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

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

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

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

But all this while I made no allowance for the dangers of such a
condition, and how I might fall into the hands of savages, and perhaps
such as I might have reason to think far worse than the lions and tigers
of Africa; that if I once came into their power, I should run a hazard
more than a thousand to one of being killed, and perhaps of being eaten;
for I had heard that the people of the Caribbean coasts were cannibals,
or maneaters, and I knew by the latitude that I could not be far off
from that shore. That supposed they were not cannibals, yet that they
might kill me, as many Europeans who had fallen into their hands had
been served, even when they had been often or twenty together, much more
I, that was but one, and could make little or no defence; all these
things, I say, which I ought to have considered well of, and did cast up
in my thoughts afterwards, yet took up none of my apprehensions at
first, but my head ran mightily upon the thought of getting over to the
shore.

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

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

I spared no pains, indeed, in this piece of fruitless toil, and spent, I
think, three of four weeks about it. At last finding it impossible to
heave it up with my little strength, I fell to digging away the sand, to
undermine it, and so make it fall down, setting pieces of wood to thrust
and guide it right in the fall. But when I had done this, I was unable
to stir it up again, or to get under it, much less to move it forward
towards the water; so I was forced to give it over. And yet, though I
gave over the hopes of the boat, my desire to venture over for the main
increased, rather than decreased, as the means for it seemed impossible.

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

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

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

This was a most preposterous method; but the eagerness of my fancy
prevailed, and to work I went. I felled a cedar tree: I questioned much
whether Solomon ever had such a one for the building of the Temple at
Jerusalem. It was five feet often inches diameter at the lower part next
the stump, and four feet eleven inches diameter at the end of twenty-two
feet, after which it lessened for awhile, and then parted into branches.
It was not without infinite labor that I felled this tree. I was twenty
days hacking and hewing at it at the bottom; I was fourteen more getting
the branches and limbs, and the vast spreading head of it cut off, which
I hacked and hewed through with axe and hatchet, and inexpressible
labor. After this, it cost me a month to shape it and dub it to a
proportion, and to something like the bottom of a boat, that it might
swim upright as it ought to do. It cost me near three months more to
clear the inside, and work it so as to make an exact boat of it. This I
did, indeed, without fire, by mere mallet and chisel, and by the dint of
hard labor, till I had brought it to be a very handsome periagua, and
big enough to have carried six and twenty men, and consequently big
enough to have carried me and my cargo.

When I had, gone through this work, I was extremely delighted with it.
The boat was really much bigger than I ever saw a canoe or periagua,
that was made of one tree, in my life. Many a weary stroke it had cost,
you may be sure; and there remained nothing but to get it into the
water; and.had I gotten it into the water, I made no question but I
should have begun the maddest voyage, and the most unlikely to be
performed, that ever was undertaken.

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

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

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

In the middle of this work I finished my fourth year in this place, and
kept my anniversary with the same devotion, and with as much comfort as
ever before; for, by a constant study and serious application of the
Word of God, and by the assistance of His grace, I gained a different
knowledge from what I had before. I entertained different notions of
things. I looked now upon the world as a thing remote, which I had
nothing to do with, no expectation from, and, indeed, no desires about.
In a word, I had nothing indeed to do with it, nor was ever like to
have; so I thought it looked, as we may perhaps look upon it hereafter,
viz., as a place I had lived in, but was come out of it; and well might
I say, as father Abraham to Dives, "Between me and thee is a great gulf
fixed."

In the first place, I was removed from all the wickedness of the world
here. I had neither the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, or the
pride of life. I had nothing to covet, for I had all that I was now
capable of enjoying. I was lord of the whole manor; or, if I pleased, I
might call myself king or emperor over the whole country which I had
possession of. There were no rivals: I had no competitor, none to
dispute sovereignty or command with me. I might have raised
ship-loadings of corn, but I had no use for it; so I let as little grow
as I thought enough for my occasion. I had tortoise or turtles enough,
but now and then one was as much as I could put to any use. I had timber
enough to have built a fleet of ships. I had grapes enough to have made
wine, or to have cured into raisins, to have loaded that fleet when they
had been built.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With these reflections, I worked my mind up, not only to resignation to
the will of God in the present disposition of my circumstances, but even
to a sincere thankfulness for my condition; and that I, who was yet a
living man, ought not to complain, seeing I had not the due punishment
of my sins; that I enjoyed so many mercies, which I had no reason to
have expected in that place; that I ought nevermore to repine at my
condition, but to rejoice, and to give daily thanks for that daily
bread, which nothing but a crowd of wonders could have brought; that I
ought to consider I had been fed even by miracle, even as great as that
of feeding Elijah by ravens; nay, by a long series of miracles; and that
I could hardly have named a place in the unhabitable part of the world
where I could have been cast more to my advantage; a place where, as I
had no society, which was my affliction on one had, so I found no
ravenous beasts, no furious wolves or tigers, to threaten my life; no
venomous creatures, or poisonous, which I might feed on to my hurt; no
savages to murder and devour me.

In a word, as my life was a life of sorrow one way, so it was a life of
mercy another; and I wanted nothing to make it a life of comfort; but to
be able to make my sense of God's goodness to me, and care over me in
this condition, be my daily consolation; and after I did make a just
improvement of these things, I went away, and was no more sad.

I had now been here so long that many -things which I brought on shore
for my help were either quite gone, or very much wasted, and near spent.
My ink, as I observed, had been gone for some time, all but a very
little, which I eked out with water, a little and a little, till it was
so pale it scarce left any appearance of black upon the paper. As long
as it lasted, I made use of it to minute down the days of the month on
which any remarkable thing happened to me. And, first, by casting up
times past, I remember that there was a strange concurrence of days in
the various providences which befell me, and which, if I had been
superstitiously inclined to observe days as fatal or fortunate, I might
have had reason to have looked upon with a great deal of curiosity.

First, I had observed that the same day that I broke away from my father
and my friends, and run away to Hull, in order to go to sea, the same
day afterwards I was taken by the Sallee man-of-war, and made a slave.

The same day of the year that I escaped out of the wreck of that ship in
Yarmouth Roads, that same day-year afterwards I made my escape from
Sallee in the boat.

The same day of the year I was born on viz., the 30th of September, that
same day I had my life so miraculously saved twenty-six years after,
when I was cast on the shore in this island; so that my wicked life and
my solitary life began both on a day.

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

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

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

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

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

After this I spent a great deal of time and pains to make me an
umbrella. I was indeed in great want of one, and had a great mind to
make one. I had seen them made in the Brazils, where they are very
useful in the great heats which are there; and I felt the heats every
jot as great here, and greater too, being nearer the equinox. Besides,
as I was obliged to be much abroad, it was a most useful thing to me, as
well for the rains as the heats. I took a world of pains at it, and was
a great while before I could make anything likely to hold; nay, after I
thought I had hit the way, I spoiled two or three before I made one to
my mind; but at last I made one that answered indifferently well. The
main difficulty I found was to make it to let down. I could make it to
spread; but if it did not let it down too, and draw in, it was not
portable for me any way but just over my head, which would not do.
However, at last, as I said, I made one to answer, and covered with
skins, the hair upwards, so that it cast off the rains like a
pent-house, and kept off the sun so effectually that I could walk out in
the hottest of the weather with greater advantage than I could before in
the coolest; and when I had no need of it, could close it, and carry it
under my arm.

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

I cannot say that after this, for five years, any extraordinary thing
happened to me; but I lived on in the same course, in the same posture
and place, just as before. The chief things I was employed in, besides
my yearly labor of planting my barley and rice, and curing my raisins,
of both which I always kept up just enough to have sufficient stock of
one year's provisions beforehand - I say, besides this yearly labor, and
my daily labor of going out with my gun, I had one labor, to make me a
canoe, which at last I finished; so that by digging a canal to it of six
feet wide, and four feet deep, I brought it into the creek, almost half
a mile. As for the first, which was so vastly big, as I made it without
considering beforehand, as I ought to do, how I should be able to launch
it; so, never being able to bring it to the water, or bring the water to
it, I was obliged to let it lie where it was, as a memorandum to teach
me to be wiser next time. Indeed, the next time, though I could not get
a tree proper for it, and in a place where I could not get the water to
it at any less distance than, as I have said, near half a mile, yet as I
saw it was at last, I never gave it over; and though I was near two
years about it, yet I never grudged my labor, in hopes of having a boat
to go off to sea at last.

However, though my little periagua was finished, yet the size of it was
not at all answerable to the design which I had in view when I made the
first; I mean, of venturing over to the terra firma, where it was above
forty miles broad. Accordingly, the smallness of my boat assisted to put
an end to that design, and now I thought no more of it. But as I had a
boat, my next design was to make a tour round the island; for as I had
been on the other side in one place, crossing, as I have already
described it, over the land, so the discoveries I made in that little
journey made me very eager to see other parts of the coast; and now I
had a boat, I thought of nothing but sailing round the island.

For this purpose, that I might do everything with discretion and
consideration, I fitted up a little mast to my boat, and made a sail to
it out of some of the pieces of the ship's sail, which lay in store, and
of which I had a great stock by me.

Having fitted my mast and sail, and tried the boat, I found she would
sail very well. Then I made little lockers, or boxes, at either end of
my boat, to put provisions, necessaries, and ammunition, etc., into, to
be kept dry, either from rain or the spray of the sea; and a little long
hollow place I cut in the inside of the boat, where I could lay my gun,
making a flap to hang down over it to keep it dry.

I fixed my umbrella also in a step at the stern, like a mast, to stand
over my head, and keep the heat of the sun off of me, like an awning;
and thus I every now and then took a little voyage upon the sea, but
never went far out, nor far from the little creek. But at last, being
eager to view the circumference of my little kingdom, I resolved upon my
tour; and accordingly I victualled my ship for the voyage, putting in
two dozen of my loaves (cakes I should rather call them) of barley
bread, an earthen pot full of parched rice, a food I eat a great deal
of, a little bottle of rum, half a goat, and powder and shot for killing
more, and two large watch-coats, of those which, as I mentioned before,
I had saved out of the seamen's chests; these I took, one to lie upon,
and the other to cover me in the night.

It was the 6th of November, in the sixth year of my reign, or my
captivity, which you please, that I set out on this voyage, and I found
it much longer than I expected; for though the island itself was not
very large, yet when I came to the east side of it I found a great ledge
of rocks lie out above two leagues into the sea, some above water, some
under it, and beyond that a shoal of sand, lying dry half a league more;
so that I was obliged to go a great way out to sea to double the point.

When first I discovered them, I was going to give over my enterprise,
and come back again, not knowing how far it might oblige me to go out to
sea, and, above all, doubting how I should get back again, so I came to
an anchor; for I had made me a kind of an anchor with a piece of broken
grappling which I got out of the ship.

Having secured my boat, I took my gun and went on shore, climbing up
upon a hill, which seemed to overlook that point, where I saw the full
extent of it, and resolved to venture.

In my viewing the sea from that hill, where I stood, I perceived a
strong, and indeed a most furious current, which run to the east, and
even came close to the point; and I took the more notice of because I
saw there might be some danger that when I came into it I might be
carried out to sea by the strength of it, and not be able to make the
island again. And indeed, had I not gotten first up upon this hill, I
believe it would have been so; for there was the same current on the
other side of the island, only that it set off at a farther distance;
and I saw there was a strong eddy under the shore; so I had nothing to
do but to get in out of the first current, and I should presently be in
an eddy.

I lay here, however, two days; because the wind, blowing pretty fresh at
ESE., and that being just contrary to the said current, made a great
breach of the sea upon the point; so that it was not safe for me to keep
too close to the shore for the breach, nor to go too far off because of
the stream.

The third day, in the morning, the wind having abated over-night, the
sea was calm, and I ventured. But I am a warning piece again to all rash
and ignorant pilots; for no sooner was I come to the point, when even I
was not my boat's length from the shore, but I found myself in a great
depth of water, and a current like the sluice of a mill. It carried my
boat along with it with such violence, that all I could do could not
keep her so much as on the edge of it, but I found it hurried me farther
and farther out from the eddy, which was on my left hand. There was no
wind stirring to help me, and all I could do with my paddlers signified
nothing. And now I began to give myself over for lost; for, as the
current was on both sides the island, I knew in a few leagues distance
they must join again, and then I was irrecoverably gone. Nor did I see
any possibility of avoiding it; so that I had no prospect before me but
of perishing; not by the sea, for that was calm enough, but of starving
for hunger. I had indeed found a tortoise on the shore, as big almost as
I could lift, and had tossed it into the boat; and I had a great jar of
fresh water, that is to say, one of my earthen pots; but what was all
this to being driven into the vast ocean, where, to be sure, there was
no shore, no mainland or island, for a thousand leagues at least.

And now I saw how easy it was for the providence of God to make the most
miserable condition mankind could be in worse. Now I looked back upon my
desolate solitary island as the most pleasant place in the world, and
all the happiness my heart could wish for was to be but there again. I
stretched out my hands to it, with eager wishes. "O happy desert!" said
I, "I shall never see thee more. O miserable creature," said I, "whither
am I going?" Then I reproached myself with my unthankful temper, and how
I had repined at my solitary condition; and now what would I give to be
on shore there again. Thus we never see the true state of our condition
till it is illustrated to us by its contraries; nor know how to value
what we enjoy, but by the want of it. It is scarce possible to imagine
the consternation I was now in, being driven from my beloved island (for
so it appeared to me now to be) into the wide ocean, almost two leagues,
and in the utmost despair of ever recovering it again. However, I worked
hard, till indeed my strength was almost exhausted, and kept my boat as
much to the northward, that is, towards the side of the current which
the eddy lay on, as possibly I could; when about noon, as the sun passed
the meridian, I thought I felt a little breeze of wind in my face,
springing up from the SSE. This cheered my heart a little, and
especially when, in about an hour more, it blew a pretty small gentle
gale. By this time I was gotten at a frightful distance from the island;
and had the least cloud or hazy weather intervened, I had been undone
another way too; for I had no compass on board, and should never have
known how to have steered towards the island if I had but once lost
sight of it. But the weather continuing clear, I applied myself to get
up my mast again, and spread my sail, standing away to the north as much
as possible, to get out of the current.

Just as I had set my mast and sail, and the boat began to stretch away,
I saw even by clearness of the water some alteration of the current was
near; for where the current was so strong, the water was foul. But
perceiving the water clear, I found the current abate, and presently I
found to the east, at about half a mile, a breach of the sea upon some
rocks. These rocks I found caused the current to part again; and as the
main stress of it ran away more southerly, leaving the rocks to the
north-east, so the other returned by the repulse of the rocks, and made
a strong eddy, which ran back again to the north-west with a very sharp
stream.

They who know what it is to have a reprieve brought to them upon the
ladder, or to be rescued from thieves just going to murder them, or who
have been in such like extremities, may guess what my present surprise
of joy was, and how gladly I put my boat into the stream of this eddy;
and the wind also freshening, how gladly I spread my sail to it, running
cheerfully before the wind, and with a strong tide or eddy under foot.

This eddy carried me about a league in my way back again, directly
towards the island, but about two leagues more to the northward than the
current which carried me away at first; so that when I came near the
island, I found myself open to the northern shore of it, that is to say,
the other end of the island, opposite to that which I went out from.

When I had made something more than a league of way by the help of this
current or eddy, I found it was spent, and served me no farther.
However, I found that being between the two great currents, viz., that
on the south side, which had hurried me away, and that on the north,
which lay about a league on the other side; I say, between these two, in
the wake of the island, I found the water at least still, and running no
way; and having still a breeze of wind fair for me, I kept on steering
directly for the island, though not making such fresh way as I did
before.

About four o'clock in the evening, being then within about a league of
the island, I found the point of the rocks which occasioned this
disaster stretching out, as is described before, to the southward, and
casting off the current more southwardly had, of course, made another
eddy to the north, and this I found very strong, but not directly
setting the way my course lay, which was due west, but almost full
north. However, having a fresh gale, I stretched across this eddy,
slanting north-west; and in about an hour came within about a mile of
the shore, where, it being smooth water, I soon got to land.

When I was on shore, I fell on my knees, and gave God thanks for my
deliverance, resolving to lay aside all thoughts of my deliverance by my
boat; and refreshing myself with such things as I had, I brought my boat
close to the shore, in a little cove that I had spied under some trees,
and laid me down to sleep, being quite spent with the labor and fatigue
of the voyage.

I was now at a great loss which way to get home with my coat. I had run
so much hazard, and knew too much the case, to think of attempting it by
the way I went out; and what might be at the other side (I mean the west
side) I knew not, nor had I any mind to run any more ventures. So I only
resolved in the morning to make my way westward along the shore, and to
see if there was no creek where I might lay up my frigate in safety, so
as to have her again if I wanted her. In about three miles, or
thereabouts, coasting the shore, I came to a very good inlet or bay,
about a mile over, which narrowed till it came to a very little rivulet
or brook, where I found a very convenient harbor for my boat, and where
she lay as if she had been in a little dock made on purpose her. Here I
put in, and having stowed my boat very safe, I went on shore to look
about me, and see where I was.

I soon found I had but a little passed by the place where I had been
before, when I travelled on foot to that shore; so taking nothing out of
my boat but my gun and my umbrella, for it was exceedingly hot, I began
my march. The way it was comfortable enough after such a voyage as I had
been upon, and I reach my old bower in the evening, where I found
everything standing as I left it; for I always kept it in good order,
being, as I said before, my country-house.

I got over the fence, and laid me down in the shade to rest my limbs,
for I was very weary, and fell asleep. But judge you, if you can, that
read my story, what a surprise I must be in, when I was waked out of my
sleep by a voice calling me by my name several times, "Robin, Robin,
Robin Crusoe, poor Robin Crusoe! Where are you, Robin Crusoe? Where are
you? Where have you been?"

I was so dead asleep at first, being fatigued with rowing, or paddling,
as it is called, the first part of the day, and with walking the latter
part, that I did not wake thoroughly; but dozing between sleeping and
waking, thought I dreamed that somebody spoke to me. But as the voice
continued to repeat, "Robin Crusoe, Robin Crusoe," at last I began to
wake more perfectly, and was at first dreadfully frighted, and started
up in the utmost consternation. But no sooner were my eyes open, but I
saw my Poll sitting on the top of the hedge, and immediately knew that
it was he that spoke to me; for just in such bemoaning language I had
used to talk to him, and teach him; and he had learned it so perfectIy,
that he would sit upon my finger, and lay his bill close to my face, and
cry, "Poor Robin. Crusoe! Where are you? Where have you been? How come
you here?" and such things as I had taught him.

However, even though I knew it was the parrot, and that indeed it could
be nobody else, it was a good while before I could compose myself. First
I was amazed how the creature got thither, and then, how he should just
keep about the place, and nowhere else. But as I was well satisfied it
could be nobody but honest Poll, I got it over; and holding out my hand,
and calling him by name, Poll, the sociable creature came to me, and sat
upon my thumb, as he used to do, and continued talking to me, "Poor
Robin Crusoe! and how did I come here? and where had I been?" just as if
he had been overjoyed to see me again; and so I carried him home along
with me.

I had now had enough of rambling to sea for some time, and had enough to
do for many days to sit still and reflect upon the danger I had been in.
I would have been very glad to have had my boat again on my side of the
island; but I knew not how it was practicable to get it about. As to the
east side of the island, which I had gone round, I knew well enough
there was no venturing that way; my very heart would shrink and my very
blood run chill, but to think of it. And as to the other side of the
island, I did not know how it might be there; but supposing the current
ran with the same force against the shore at the east as it passed by it
on the other, I might run the same risks of being driven down the
stream, and carried by the island, as I had been before of being carried
away from it. So, with these thoughts, I contented myself to be without
any boat, though it had been the product of so many months' labor to
make it, and of so many more to get it into the sea.

In this government of my temper I remained near a year, lived a very
sedate, retired life, as you may well suppose; and my thoughts being
very much composed as to my condition, and fully comforted in resigning
myself to the dispositions of Providence, I thought I lived really very
happily in all things, except that of society.

I improved myself in this time in all the mechanic exercises which my
necessities put me upon applying myself to, and I believe could, upon
occasion, make a very good carpenter, especially considering how few
tools I had. Besides this, I arrived at an unexpected perfection in my
earthenware, and contrived well enough to make them with a wheel, which
I found infinitely easier and better, because I made things round and
shapable which before were filthy things indeed to look on. But I think
I was never more vain of my own performance, or more joyful for anything
I found out, than for my being able to make a tobacco-pipe. And though
it was a very ugly, clumsy thing when it was done, and only burnt red,
like other earthenware, yet as it was hard and firm, and would draw the
smoke, I was exceedingly comforted with it; for I had been always used
to smoke, and there were pipes in the ship, but I forgot them at first,
not knowing that there was tobacco in the island; and afterwards, when I
searched the ship again, I could not come at any pipes at all.

In my wickerware also I improved much, and made abundance of necessary
baskets, as well as my invention showed me; though not very handsome,
yet they were such as were very handy and convenient for my laying
things up in, or fetching things home in. For example, if I killed a
goat abroad, I could hang it up in a tree, flay it, and dress it, and
cut it in pieces, and bring it home in a basket; and the like by a
turtle; I could cut it up, take out the eggs, and a piece or two of the
flesh, which was enough for me, and bring them home in a basket, and
leave the rest behind me. Also, large deep baskets were my receivers for
my corn, which I always rubbed out as soon as it was dry, and cured, and
kept it in great baskets.

I began now to perceive my powder abated considerably, and this was a
want which it was impossible for me to supply, and I began seriously to
consider what I must do when I should have no more powder; that is to
say, how I should do to kill any goats. I had, as it observed, in the
third year of my being here, kept a young kid, and bred her up tame, and
I was in hope of getting a he-goat. But I could not by any means bring
it to pass, till my kid grew an old goat; and I could never find it in
my heart to kill her, till she dies at last of mere age.

But being now in the eleventh year of my residence, and, as I have said,
my ammunition growing low, I set myself to study some art to trap and
snare the goats, to see whether I could not catch some of them alive;
and particularly, I wanted a she-goat great with young.

To this purpose, I made snares to hamper them, and I do believe they
were more than once taken in them: but my tackle was not good, for I had
no wire, and I always found them broken, and my bait devoured. At length
I resolved to try a pitfall; so I dug several large pits in the earth,
in places where I had observed the goats used to feed, and over these
pits I placed hurdles, of my own making too, with a great weight upon
them; and several times I put ears of barley and dry rice, without
setting the trap, and I could easily perceive that the goats had gone in
and eaten up the corn, for I could see the mark of their feet. At length
I set three traps in one night, and going the next morning, I found them
all standing, and yet the bait eaten and gone; this was very
discouraging. However, I altered my trap; and, not to trouble you with
particulars, going one morning to see my trap, I found in one of them a
large old he-goat, and in one of the other three kids, a male and two
females.

As to the old one, I knew not what to do with him, he was so fierce I
durst not go into the pit to him; that is to say, to go about to bring
him away alive, which was what I wanted. I could have killed him, but
that was not my business, nor would it answer my end; so I even let him
out, and he ran away, as if he had been frighted out of his wits. But I
had forgot then what I learned afterwards, that hunger will tame a lion.
If I had let him stay there three or four days without food, and then
have carried him some water to drink, and then a little corn, he would
have been as tame as one of the kids, for they are mighty sagacious,
tractable creatures where they are well used.

However, for the present I let him go, knowing no better at that time.
Then I went to the three kids, and taking them one by one, I tied them
with strings together, and with some difficulty brought them all home.

It was a good while before they would feed, but throwing them some sweet
corn, it tempted them, and they began to be tame. And now I found that
if I expected to supply myself with goat-flesh when I had no powder or
shot left, breeding some up tame was my only way, when perhaps I might
have them about my house like a flock of sheep.

But then it presently occurred to me that I must keep the tame from the
wild, or else they would always run wild when they grew up; and the only
way for this was to have some enclosed piece of ground, well fenced
either with hedge or pale, to keep them in so effectually that those
within might not break out, or those without break in.

This was a great undertaking for one pair of hands; yet as I saw there
was an absolute necessity of doing it, my first piece of work was to
find out a proper piece of ground, viz., where there was likely to be
herbage for them to eat, water for them to drink, and cover to keep them
from the sun.

Those who understand such enclosures will think I had very little
contrivance when I pitched upon a place very proper for all these, being
a plain open piece of meadow land, or savanna (as our people call it in
the western colonies), which had two or three little drills of fresh
water in it, and at one end was very woody; I say, they will smile at my
forecast, when I shall tell them I began my enclosing of this piece of
ground in such a manner, that my hedge or pale must have been at least
two miles about. Nor was the madness of it so great as to the compass,
for if it was often miles about, I was like to have time enough to do it
in. But I did not consider that my goats would be as wild in so much
compass as if they had had the whole island and I should have so much
room to chase them in that I should never catch them.

My hedge was begun and carried on, I believe, about fifty yards, when
this thought occurred to me, so I presently stopped short, and, for the
first beginning, I resolved to enclose a piece of about 150 yards in
length, and 100 yards in breadth; which, as it would maintain as many as
should have in any reasonable time, so, as my flock increased, I could
add more ground to my enclosure.

This was acting with some prudence, and I went to work with courage. I
was about three months hedging in the first piece, and, till I had done
it, I tethered the three kids in the best part of it, and used them to
feed as near me as possible, to make them familiar; and very often I
would go and carry them some ears of barley, or a handful of rice, and
feed them out of my hand; so that after my enclosure was finished, and I
let them loose, they would follow me up and down, bleating after me for
a handful of corn.

This answered my end, and in about a year and a half I had a flock of
about twelve goats, kids and all; and in two years more I had three and
forty, besides several that I took and killed for my food. And after
that I enclosed five several pieces of ground to feed them in, and with
little pens to drive them into, to take them as I wanted, and gates out
of one piece of ground into another.

But this was not all, for now I not only had goat's flesh to feed on
when I pleased, but milk, too, a thing which, indeed, in my beginning, I
did not so much as think of, and which, when it came into my thoughts,
was really an agreeable surprise. For now I set up my dairy, and had
sometimes a gallon or two of milk in a day; and as Nature, who gives
supplies of food to every creature, dictates even naturally how to make
use of it, so I, that had never milked a cow, much less a goat, or seen
butter or cheese made, very readily and handily, though after a great
many essays and miscarriages, made me both butter and cheese last, and
never wanted it afterwards.

How mercifully can our great Creator treat His creatures, even in those
conditions in which they seemed to be overwhelmed in destruction! How
can He sweeten the bitterest providences, and give us cause to praise
Him for dungeons and prisons! What a table was here spread for me in a
wilderness, where I saw nothing at first but to perish for hunger!

It would have made a stoic smile, to have seen me and my little family
sit down to dinner. There was my majesty, the prince and lord of the
whole island; I had the lives of all my subjects at my absolute command.
I could hang, draw, give liberty, and take it away; and no rebels among
all my subjects.

Then to see how like a king I dined, too, all alone, attended by my
servants. Poll, as if he had been my favorite, was the only person
permitted to talk to me. My dog, who was now grown very old and crazy,
and had found no species to multiply his kind upon, sat always at my
right hand, and two cats, one on one side and table, and one on the
other, expecting now and then a bit form my hand, as a mark of special
favor.

But these were not the two cats which I brought on shore at first, for
they were both of them dead, and had been interred near my habitation,
by my own hand. But one of them having multiplied by I know not what
kind of creature, these were two which I had preserved tame, whereas the
rest run wild in the woods, and became indeed troublesome to me at last;
for they would often come into my house, and plunder me too, till at
last I was obliged to shoot them, and did kill a great many; at length
they left me. With this attendance, and in this plentiful manner, I
lived; neither could I be said to want anything but society; and of that
in some time after this, I was like to have too much.

I was something impatient, as I have observed, to have the use of my
boat, though very loth to run any more hazards; and therefore sometimes
I sat contriving ways to get her about the island, which I drew together
with two thongs of the same, instead of buckles; and in a kind of a frog
on either side of this, instead of a sword and a dagger, hung a little
saw and a hatchet, one on one side, one on the other. I had another
belt, not so broad, and fastened in the same manner, which hung over my
shoulder; and at the end of it, under my left arm, hung two pouches,
both made of goat's skin, too; in one of which hung my powder, in the
other my shot. At my back I carried my basket, on my shoulder my gun,
and over my head a. great clumsy ugly goat-skin umbrella, but which,
after all, was the most necessary thing I had about me, next to my gun.
As for my face, the color of it was really not so mulatto-like as one
might expect from a man not at all careful of it, and living within
nineteen degrees of the equinox. My beard I had once suffered to grow
till it was about a quarter of a yard long; but as I had both scissors
and razors sufficient, I had cut it pretty short, except what grew on my
upper lip, which I had trimmed into a large pair of Mahometan whiskers,
such as I had seen worn by some Turks whom I saw at Sallee; for the
Moors did not wear such, though the Turks did. Of these mustachios or
whiskers I will not say they were long enough to hang my hat upon them,
but they were of a length and shape monstrous enough, and such as, in
England, would have passed for frightful.

But all this is by-the-bye; for, as to my figure, I had so few to
observe me, that it was of no manner of consequence; so I say no more to
that part. In this kind of figure I went my new journey, and was out
five or six days. I travelled first along the sea-shore, directly to the
place where I first brought my boat to an anchor, to get upon the rocks.
And having no boat flow to take care of, I went over the land, a nearer
way, to the same height that I was upon before; when, looking forward to
the point of the rocks which lay out, and which I was obliged to double
with my boat, as is said above, I was surprised to see the sea all
smooth and quiet, no rippling, no motion, no current, any more there
than in any other places.

I was at a strange loss to understand this, and resolved to spend some
time in the observing it, to see if nothing from the sets of the tide
had occasioned it. But I was presently convinced how it was, viz., that
the tide of ebb setting from the west, and joining with the current of
waters from some great river on the shore, must be the occasion of this
current; and that according as the wind blew more forcibly from the
west, or from the north, this current came near, or went farther from
the shore; for waiting thereabouts till evening, I went up to the rock
again, and then the tide of ebb being made, I plainly saw the current
again as before, only that it run farther off, being near half a league
from the shore; whereas in my case it set close upon the shore, and
hurried me and my canoe along with it, which, at another time, it would
not have done.

This observation convinced me that I had nothing to do but to observe
the ebbing and the flowing of the tide, and I might very easily bring my
boat about the island again. But when I began to think of putting it in
practice, I had such a terror upon my spirits at the remembrance of the
danger I had been in, that I could not think of it again with any
patience; but, on the contrary, I took up another resolution, which was
more safe, though more laborious; and this was, that I would build, or
rather make me another periagua or canoe; and so have one for one side
of the island, and one for the other.

You are to understand that now I had, as I may call it, two plantations
in the island; one, my little fortification or tent, with the wall about
it, under the rock, with the cave behind me, which, by this time, I had
enlarged into several apartments or caves, one within another. One of
these, which was the driest and largest, and had a door out beyond my
wall or fortification, that is to say, beyond where my wall joined to
the rock, was all filled up with the large earthen pots, of which I have
given an account, and with fourteen or fifteen great baskets, which
would hold five or six bushels each, where I laid up my stores of
provision, especially my corn, some in the ear, cut off short from the
straw, and the other rubbed out with my hand.

As for my wall, made, as before, with long stakes or piles, those piles
grew all like trees, and were by this time grown so big, and spread so
very much, that there was not the least appearance, to any one's view,
of any habitation behind them.

Near this dwelling of mine, but a little farther within the land, and
upon lower ground, lay my two pieces of corn ground, which I kept duly
cultivated and sowed, and which duly yielded me their harvest in its
season; and whenever I had occasion for more corn, I had more land
adjoining as fit as that.

Besides this, I had my country seat, and I had now a tolerable
plantation there also; for, first, I had my little bower, as I called
it, which I kept in repair; that is to say, I kept the hedge which
circled it in constantly fitted up to its usual height, the ladder
standing always in the inside. I kept the trees, which at first were no
more than my stakes, but were now grown very firm and tall, I kept them
always so cut, that they might spread and grow thick and wild, and make
the more agreeable shade, which they did effectually to my mind. In the
middle of this, I had my tent always standing, being a piece of a sail
spread over poles, set up for that purpose, and which never wanted any
repair or renewing; and under this I had made me a squab or couch, with
the skins of the creatures I had killed, and with other soft things, and
a blanket laid on them, such as belonged to our sea-bedding, which I had
saved, and a great watch-coat to cover me; and here, whenever I had
occasion to be absent from my chief seat, I took up my country
habitation.

Adjoining to this I had my enclosure for my cattle, that is to say, my
goats. And as I had taken an inconceivable deal of pains to fence and
enclose this ground, so I was uneasy to see it kept entire, less the
goats should break through, that I never left off till, with infinite
labor, I had struck the outside of the hedge so full of small stakes,
and so near to one another, that it was rather a pale than a hedge, and
there was scarce room to put a hand through them; which afterwards, when
those stakes grew, as they all did in the next rainy season, made the
enclosure strong like a wall, indeed, stronger than any wall.

This will testify for me that I was not idle, and that I spared no pains
to bring to pass whatever appeared necessary for my comfortable support;
for I considered the keeping up a breed of tame creatures thus at my
hand would be a living magazine of flesh, milk, butter, and cheese for
me as long as I lived in the place, if it were to be forty years; and
that keeping them in my reach depended entirely upon my perfecting my
enclosures to such a degree that I might be sure of keeping them
together; which, by this method, indeed, I so effectually secured that
when these little stakes began to grow, I had planted them so very thick
I was forced to pull some of them up again.

In this place also I had my grapes growing, which I principally depended
on for my winter store of raisins, and which I never failed to preserve
very carefully, as the best and most agreeable dainty of my whole diet.
And indeed they were not agreeable only, but physical, wholesome,
nourishing, and refreshing to the last degree.

As this was also about half-way between my other habitation and the
place where I had laid up my boat, I generally stayed and lay here in my
way thither; for I used frequently to visit my boat, and I kept all
things about, or belonging to her, in very good order. Sometimes I went
out in her to divert myself, but no more hazardous voyages would I go,
nor scarce ever above a stone's cast or two from the shore, I was so
apprehensive of being hurried out of my knowledge again by the currents
or winds, or any other accident. But now I come to a new scene of my
life.