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שיתם אמנם בוhas. I resolved to remove my tent from the pla wood, being just under the hanging precipice of th shid be shaken again, would certainly fa I spent the next two days, being the 19th and 20t w.where and how to remove my habitation.

:ge to work with all speed to build me a wa esta circie as before, and set my tent in אין: sted her that I would venture to stay where I wa emove to. This was the 21st. next morning I began to consider of means to pu evention and I was at a great loss about the

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tools. I had three large axes, and abundance of hatchets (for we carried the hatchets for traffic with the Indians); but with much shopping and cutting knotty hard wood, they were e all full of notches, and dull: and though I had a grindstone, I could nor turn it and grind my tools too. This caused 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.

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 that my bread had been low a great

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I now took a survey of it, and reduced myself to one biscuitday, which made my heart very heavy.

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ROBINSON OBTAINS MORE ARTICLES FROM THE WRECKILLNESS AND AFFLICTION.

MAY 1. In the morning, looking towards the sea-side, the tide being low, I saw something lie on the shore bigger than ordinary, and it looked like a cask; when I came to it I found a small barrel, and two or three pieces of the wreck of the ship, which were driven on shore by the late hurricane; and looking towards the wreck itself, I thought it seemed to lie higher out of the water than it used to do. I examined the barrel that 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 the shore for the present, and went on upon the sands, as near as I could to the wreck of the ship, to look for more.

When I came down to the ship, I found it strangely removed. The forecastle, which lay buried in the sand, was heaved up at least six feet; and the stern (which was broke 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 I could now walk quite up to her when the tide was out.

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

and that I should not starve and perish for hunger, all the sense of affliction wore off, and I became 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 into my head.

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But now, when I began to be sick, and a leisure 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 reproached 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.

"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 station of life wherein I might have been happy and easy; but I would neither see it myself, nor learn from my parents the blessing of it. I left them to mourn over my folly; and now I am left to mourn under the consequences of it." 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.

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HIS RECOVERY-HIS COMFORT IN READING THE SCRIPTURESMAKES AN EXCURSION INTO THE INTERIOR OF THE ISLANDFORMS HIS "BOWER."

JUNE 28. Having been somewhat refreshed with the sleep I had had, and the fit being entirely off, I got up, and considered now was my time to get something to refresh and support myself when I should be ill. The first thing I did was to fill a large 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.

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, nor whether it was good for it or not; 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 stupified my brain; the tobacco being green and strong, and such as I had not been much used to. Then I took some and steeped it an hour or two in some rum, and resolved to take a dose of it when I lay down: and lastly, I burnt some upon a pan of coals, and held my nose close over the smoke of it as long as I could bear it; as well for the heat, as almost for suffocation. In the interval of this operation, I took up the Bible, and began to read: but my head was too much disturbed by the tobacco to bear reading, at least at that time; only, having opened the book casually, the first words that occurred to me were these: "Call on me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me." These words were very apt to my case; and made some impression upon my thoughts at the time of reading them, though not so much as they did afterwards; for, as for being delivered, the word had no sound, as I may say, to me; the thing was so remote, so impossible in my apprehension of things, that, as the children of Israel said when they were promised flesh to eat, "Can God spread a table in the wilderness?" so I began to say, "Can even God himself deliver me from this place?" And as it was not for many years that any hopes appeared, this prevailed very often upon my thoughts: but, however, the words made a great impression upon me, and I mused upon them very often. It now grew late: and the tobacco had, as I said, dozed my head so much, that I inclined to sleep: so I left my lamp burning in the cave, lest I should want anything in the night, and went to bed. But before I lay down, I did what I never had done in all my life: I kneeled down, and prayed to God to fulfil the promise to me, that if I called upon him in the day of trouble, he would deliver me. After my broken and imperfect prayer was over, I drank the rum in which I had steeped the tobacco; which was so strong and rank of the tobacco, that indeed I could scarce get it down; immediately upon this I went to bed. I found presently the rum flew up into my head violently; but I fell into a sound sleep, and waked no more till by the sun, it must necessarily be near three o'clock in the afternoon the next day; nay, to this hour, I am partly of opinion, that I slept all the next day and night, and till almost three the day after; for otherwise, I know not how I should lose a day out of my reckoning in the days of the week, as it appeared some years after I had done; for if I had lost it by crossing and re-crossing the Line, I should have lost more than one day; but certainly I lost a day in my account, and never knew which way. Be that, however, one way or the other, when I awaked I found myself exceedingly refreshed, and my spirits lively and cheerful: when I got up I was stronger than I was the day before, and my

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