Robinson Crusoe

A BOAT

But first I was to prepare more land, for I had now seed enough to sow
above an acre of ground. Before I did this, I had a week’s work at
least to make me a spade, which, when it was done, was but a sorry one
indeed, and very heavy, and required double labour to work with it.
However, I got through that, and sowed my seed in two large flat pieces
of ground, as near my house as I could find them to my mind, and fenced
them in with a good hedge, the stakes of which were all cut off that
wood which I had set before, and knew it would grow; so that, in a
year’s time, I knew I should have a quick or living hedge, that would
want but little repair. This work did not take me up less than three
months, because a great part of that time was the wet season, when I
could not go abroad. Within-doors, that is when it rained and I could
not go out, I found employment in the following occupations—always
observing, that all the while I was at work I diverted myself with
talking to my parrot, and teaching him to speak; and I quickly taught
him to know his own name, and at last to speak it out pretty loud,
“Poll,” which was the first word I ever heard spoken in the island by
any mouth but my own. This, therefore, was not my work, but an
assistance to my work; for now, as I said, I had a great employment
upon my hands, as follows: I had long studied to make, by some means or
other, some earthen vessels, which, indeed, I wanted sorely, but knew
not where to come at them. However, considering the heat of the
climate, I did not doubt but if I could find out any clay, I might make
some pots that might, being dried in the sun, be hard enough and strong
enough to bear handling, and to hold anything that was dry, and
required to be kept so; and as this was necessary in the preparing
corn, meal, &c., which was the thing I was doing, I resolved to make
some as large as I could, and fit only to stand like jars, to hold what
should be put into them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now I wished for my boy Xury, and the long-boat with shoulder-of-mutton
sail, with which I sailed above a thousand miles on the coast of
Africa; but this was in vain: then I thought I would go and look at our
ship’s boat, which, as I have said, was blown up upon the shore a great
way, in the storm, when we were first cast away. She lay almost where
she did at first, but not quite; and was turned, by the force of the
waves and the winds, almost bottom upward, against a high ridge of
beachy, rough sand, but no water about her. If I had had hands to have
refitted her, and to have launched her into the water, the boat would
have done well enough, and I might have gone back into the Brazils with
her easily enough; but I might have foreseen that I could no more turn
her and set her upright upon her bottom than I could remove the island;
however, I went to the woods, and cut levers and rollers, and brought
them to the boat resolving to try what I could do; suggesting to myself
that if I could but turn her down, I might repair the damage she had
received, and she would be a very good boat, and I might go to sea in
her very easily.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But all my devices to get it into the water failed me; though they cost
me infinite labour too. It lay about one hundred yards from the water,
and not more; but the first inconvenience was, it was up hill towards
the creek. Well, to take away this discouragement, I resolved to dig
into the surface of the earth, and so make a declivity: this I began,
and it cost me a prodigious deal of pains (but who grudge pains who
have their deliverance in view?); but when this was worked through, and
this difficulty managed, it was still much the same, for I could no
more stir the canoe than I could the other boat. Then I measured the
distance of ground, and resolved to cut a dock or canal, to bring the
water up to the canoe, seeing I could not bring the canoe down to the
water. Well, I began this work; and when I began to enter upon it, and
calculate how deep it was to be dug, how broad, how the stuff was to be
thrown out, I found that, by the number of hands I had, being none but
my own, it must have been ten or twelve years before I could have gone
through with it; for the shore lay so high, that at the upper end it
must have been at least twenty feet deep; so at length, though with
great reluctancy, I gave this attempt over also.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With these reflections I worked my mind up, not only to a resignation
to the will of God in the present disposition of my circumstances, but
even to a sincere thankfulness for my condition; and that I, who was
yet a living man, ought not to complain, seeing I had not the due
punishment of my sins; that I enjoyed so many mercies which I had no
reason to have expected in that place; that I ought never more to
repine at my condition, but to rejoice, and to give daily thanks for
that daily bread, which nothing but a crowd of wonders could have
brought; that I ought to consider I had been fed even by a miracle,
even as great as that of feeding Elijah by ravens, nay, by a long
series of miracles; and that I could hardly have named a place in the
uninhabitable part of the world where I could have been cast more to my
advantage; a place where, as I had no society, which was my affliction
on one hand, so I found no ravenous beasts, no furious wolves or
tigers, to threaten my life; no venomous creatures, or poisons, which I
might feed on to my hurt; no savages to murder and devour me. In a
word, as my life was a life of sorrow one way, so it was a life of
mercy another; and I wanted nothing to make it a life of comfort but to
be able to make my sense of God’s goodness to me, and care over me in
this condition, be my daily consolation; and after I did make a just
improvement on these things, I went away, and was no more sad. I had
now been here so long that many things which I had brought on shore for
my help were either quite gone, or very much wasted and near spent.

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

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

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

My clothes, too, began to decay; as to linen, I had had none a good
while, except some chequered shirts which I found in the chests of the
other seamen, and which I carefully preserved; because many times I
could bear no other clothes on but a shirt; and it was a very great
help to me that I had, among all the men’s clothes of the ship, almost
three dozen of shirts. There were also, indeed, several thick
watch-coats of the seamen’s which were left, but they were too hot to
wear; and though it is true that the weather was so violently hot that
there was no need of clothes, yet I could not go quite naked—no, though
I had been inclined to it, which I was not—nor could I abide the
thought of it, though I was alone. The reason why I could not go naked
was, I could not bear the heat of the sun so well when quite naked as
with some clothes on; nay, the very heat frequently blistered my skin:
whereas, with a shirt on, the air itself made some motion, and
whistling under the shirt, was twofold cooler than without it. No more
could I ever bring myself to go out in the heat of the sun without a
cap or a hat; the heat of the sun, beating with such violence as it
does in that place, would give me the headache presently, by darting so
directly on my head, without a cap or hat on, so that I could not bear
it; whereas, if I put on my hat it would presently go away.

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

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

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

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