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 scamen'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 carthen 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 bearth was very hot. Then, sweeping away all the embers, I set my loaf or loaves, and whelming down the earthern 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-a difficulty much harder for me to surmount than all time, a good pastrycook into the bargain; for I made the consequences of want of tools could be to them; myself several cakes and puddings of the rice; but I for what was it to me, if when I had chosen a vast tree made no pies, neither had I anything to put into them, in the woods, and with much trouble cut it down, if I supposing I had, except the flesh either of fowls or had been able with my tools to hew and dub the outside goats. into the proper shape of a boat, and burn or out out It need not be wondered at if all these things took the inside to make it hollow, so as to make a boat of it me up most part of the third year of my abode here; if, after all this, I must leave it just there where for, it is to be observed, that in the intervals of these I found it, and not be able to launch it into the things I had my new harvest and husbandry to manage; water? 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 main-land, and an inhabited country, I might find some way or other to convey myself farther, and perhaps at last find some means of escape. 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 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 in 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 cagerness 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 But all this while I made no allowance for the dangers which it lessened for a while, and then parted into of such an undertaking, and how I might fall into the branches. It was not without infinite labour that hands of savages, and perhaps such as I might have felled this tree; I was twenty days hacking and hewing reason to think far worse than the lions and tigers of at it at the bottom; I was fourteen more getting the Africa: that if I once came in their power, I should run branches and limbs, and the vast spreading head cut off, a hazard of more than a thousand to one of being killed, which I hacked and hewed through with axe and and perhaps of being eaten; for I had heard that the hatchet, and inexpressible labour: after this, it cost me people of the Caribbean coast were cannibals, or man- a month to shape it and dub it to a proportion, and to eaters, and I knew by the latitude that I could not be something like the bottom of a boat, that it might far from that shore. Then, supposing they were not swim upright as it ought to do. It cost me near three cannibals, yet they might kill me, as many Europeans months more to clear the inside, and work it out so as who had fallen into their hands had been served, even to make an exact boat of it; this I did, indeed, without when they had been ten or twenty together-much fire, by mere mallet and chisel, and by the dint of hard more I, that was but one, and could make little or no labour, till I had brought it to be a very handsome defence; all these things, I say, which I ought to have periagua, and big enough to have carried six and twenty considered well, and did come into my thoughts after-men, and consequently big enough to have carried his wards, yet gave me no apprehensions at first, and my and all my cargo. head ran mightily upon the thought of getting over to the shore. 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. Now I wished for my boy Xury, and the long-boat 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 But all my devices to get it into the water failed me; not quite; and was turned, by the force of the waves though they cost me infinite labour too. It lay about and the winds, almost bottom upward, against a high one hundred yards from the water, and not more; but ridge of beachy, rough sand, but no water about her. the first inconvenience was, it was up hill towards the If I had had hands to have refitted her, and to have creek. Well, to take away this discouragement, I launched her into the water, the boat would have done resolved to dig into the surface of the earth, and so well enough, and I might have gone back into the make a declivity: this I began, and it cost me a proBrazils with her easily enough; but I might have fore- digious deal of pains (but who grudge pains that have seen that I could no more turn her and set her upright their deliverance in view ?); but when this was worked upon her bottom, than I could remove the island; how-through, and this difficulty managed, it was still much ever, I went to the woods, and cut levers and rollers, the same, for I could no more stir the canoe than I could and brought them to the boat, resolving to try what I the other boat. Then I measured the distance of ground, could do; suggesting to myself, that if I could but turn and resolved to cut a dock or canal, to bring the water her down, I might repair the damage she had received, up to the canoe, seeing I could not bring the canoe and she would be a very good boat, and I might go to sea down to the water. Well, I began this work; and in her very easily. 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. 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 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 expectation 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 thougat it looked, as we may perhaps look upon it hereafter, viz. as a place I had 20 LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF ROBINSON CRUSOE. liyed 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 énough to have made wine, or to have cured into rasins, 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 If I killed more flesh than I could all the rest to me? eat, the dog must eat it, or vermin; if I sowed more corn than I could eat, it must be spoiled; the trees that could I cut down were lying to rot on the ground: make no more use of them but for fuel, and that I had no occasion for but to dress my food. no more. use. ship; this I had husbanded to the last degree, allowing their case might have been, if Providence had thought my bread, I mean the biscuit which I brought out of the I had another reflection, which assisted me also to myself but one cake of bread a day for above a year; fit. comfort my mind with hopes; and this was compar- and yet I was que without bread for near a year beto expect from the hand of to be thankful that I had any at all, the getting it ing my present situation with what I had deserved, and fore I got any corn of my own; and great reason I had I had lived a dreadful life, perfectly being, as has already been observed, next to mirahad therefore reason My clothes, too, began to decay; as to linen, I had Providence. destitute of the knowledge and fear of God.. I had culous. been well instructed by father and mother; neither had they been wanting to me, in their early endeavours to had none a good while, except some chequered shirts infuse a religious awe of God into my mind, a sense of which I found in the chests of the other seamen, an my duty, and what the nature and end of my being which I carefully preserved; because many times I required of me. But, alas! falling early into the seafaring could bear no other clothes on but a shirt; and it was a life, which, of all lives, is the most destitute of the fear very great help to me that I had, among all the men's of God, though his terrors are always before them; I clothes of the ship, almost three dozen of shirts. There say, falling early into seafaring life, and into seafaring were also, indeed, several thick watch-coats of the company, all that little sense of religion which I had seamen's which were left, but they were too hot to by a hardened despising of dangers, and the views of violently hot that there was no need of clothes, yet I entertained was laughed out of me by the messmates; wear; and though it is true that the weather was so was alone. The reason why I death, which grew habitual to me by my long absence could not go quite, naked-no, though I had been incould not go naked was, I could not bear the heat from all manners of opportunities to converse with any-clined to it, which I was not;-nor could I abide the thing but what was like myself, or to hear anything thought of it, though of the sun so well when quite naked as with some that was good or tended towards it. 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 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. 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 great while; as for breeches or drawers, I made but a work of it. However, I made shift to make two or three new waistcoats, which I hoped would serve me 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 those 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 must not omit to 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. 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. 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 The most covetous, griping miser in the world would have been cured of the vice of covetousness, I had terrible reflections upon my mind for many 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 months, as I have already observed, on account of my were but trifles, though, indeed, of great use to me. I wicked and hardened life past; and when I looked had, as I hinted before, a parcel of money, as well gold about me, and considered what particular providences as silver, about thirty-six pounds sterling. Alas! there had attended me since my coming into this place, and the sorry, useless stuff lay; I had no manner of business how God had dealt bountifully with me-had not only for it; and often thought with myself, that I would punished me less than my iniquity had deserved, but have given a handful of it for a gross of tobacco-pipes; had so plentifully provided for me-this gave me great or for a hand-mill to grind my corn; nay, I would have hopes that my repentance was accepted, and that God With these reflections, I worked my mind up, not given it all for a sixpenny-worth of turnip and carrot had yet mercy in store for me 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 ad-only to a resignation to the will of God in the present vantage by it or benefit from it; but there it lay in a disposition of my circumstances, but even to a sincere drawer, and grew mouldy with the damp of the cave, in thankfulness for my condition; and that I, who was yet the wet seasons; and if I had had the drawer full a living man, ought not to complain, seeing I had not of diamonds, it had been the same case, they had the due punishment of my sins; that I enjoyed so many been of no manner of value to me, because of no mercies which I had no reason to have expected in that place; that I ought never more to repine at any condition, but to rejoice, and 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; 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 After this, I spent a great deal of time and pains to no ravenous beasts, no furious wolves or tigers, to threaten my life; no venomous creatures, or poisons, In a word, as my life was a make an umbrella; I was indeed in great want of one, which I might feed on to my hurt; no savages to murder and devour me. life of sorrow one way, so it was a life of mercy another; and had a great mind to make one: I had seen them to be able to make my sense of God's goodness to me, great heats there, and I felt the heats every jot as great and I wanted nothing to make it a life of comfort, but made in the Brazils, where they are very useful in the and care over me in this condition, be my daily consola-here, and greater too, being nearer the equinox; besides, had I took a world of pains with it, and was a great while tion; and after I did make a just improvement on as I was obliged to be much abroad, it was a most these things, I went away, and was no more sad. I had useful thing to me, as well for the rains as the heats. I thought I had hit the way, I spoiled two or three now been here so long, that many things which brought on shore for my help were either quite gone, or before I could make anything likely to hold: nay, after before I made one to my mind: but at last I made one very much wasted and near spent. 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 would not do. However, at last, as I said, I made one could walk portable for me any way but just over my head, which 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 had no need of it, could close it, and carry it under out in the hottest of the weather with greater advantage than I could before in the coolest, and when I my arm. 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. 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 on which any remarkable thing happened to me; and made use of it to minute down the days of the month I spent whole hours, I may say whole days, in repre- first, by casting up times past, I remembered that there senting to myself, in the most lively colours, how I was a strange concurrence of days in the various provimust have acted if I had got nothing out of the ship. dences which befell me, and which if I had been superHow I could not have so much as got any food, except stitiously inclined to observe days as fatal or fortunate, fish and turtles; and that, as it was long before I found I might have had reason to have looked upon with a First, I had observed, that the same day that I broke one of them, I must have perished first; that I should great deal of curiosity. have lived, if I had not perished, like a mere savage; that if I had killed a goat or a fowl, by any contrivance, away from my father and friends, and ran away to I had no way to flay or open it, or part the flesh from Hull, in order to go to sea, the same day afterwards I the skin and the bowels, or to cut it up; but must gnaw was taken by the Sallee man-of-war, and made a slave; wreck of that ship in Yarmouth Roads, that same day it with my teeth, and pull it with my claws, like a the same day of the year that I escaped out of the beast. These reflections made me very sensible of the good-year afterwards I made my escape from Sallee in a ness of Providence to me, and very thankful for my boat; the same day of the year I was born on, viz. the present condition, with all its hardships and mis- 30th of September, that same day I had my life so fortunes: and this part also I cannot but recommend to miraculously saved twenty-six years after, when I was the reflection of those who are apt, in their misery, to cast on shore in this island; so that my wicked life and Let them consider my solitary life began both on a day. say, "Is any affliction Nike mine ?" how much worse the cases of some people are, and The next thing to my ink being wasted, was that of 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 for when I began to regret the want of conversation, I His providence. This made my life better than sociable, 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 cujoyment 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, as bafore: the chief things I was employed in, besides my yearly labour 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 provision beforehand; I say, besides this yearly labour, and my daily pursuit of going out with my gun, I had one labour, to make 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, for I made it without considering beforehand, as I ought to have done, how I should be able to launch it, so, never being able to bring it into 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 the next time: indeed, the next time, though I could not get a tree proper for it, and was 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 practicable at last, I never gave it over; and though was near two years about it, yet I never grudged my labour, 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. As I had a boat, my next design was to make a cruise 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 in my boat, and made a sail too out of some of the pieces of the ship's sails which lay in store, and of which I had a great stock by me. Having fitted my mast and sail, end tried the boat, I found she would sail very well then I made little lockers, or boxes, at each end of my boat, to put provisions, necessaries, ammunition, &c., 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 me, like an awning; and thus I every now and then took a little voyage upon the sea: but never went far out, not far from the little creek. At last, being eager to view the circumference of my little kingdom, I resolved upon my cruise; and accordingly I victualled my ship for the voyage, putting in two dozen of loaves (cakes I should rather call them) of barley bread, an earthen pot full of parched rice (a food I ate 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. upon the point; so that it was not safe for me to keep too close to the shore for the beach, nor to go too far off, because of the stream. The third day, in the morning, the wind having abated overnight, the sea was calm, and I ventured: but I am a warning to all rash and ignorant pilots; for no sooner was I come to the point, when I was not even 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 paddles signified nothing: and now I began to give myself over for lost; for as the current was on both sides of 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 from 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 main land or island, for a thousand leagues at least? And now I saw how easy it was for the providence of God to make even the most miserable condition of mankind 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! whither am I going?" Then I reproached mys If with my unthankful temper, and that 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 scarcely 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 I possibly 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 S.S.E. This cheered my heart a little, and especially when, in about half an hour more, it blew a pretty gentle gale. By this time, I had got at a frightful distance from the island, and had the least cloudy 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. It was the sixth 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 ex-gan to stretch away, I saw even by the clearness of the pected; 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 about 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 a kind of an anchor with a piece of a broken grappling which I got out of the ship. Having secured my boat, I took my gun and went on shore, climbing up 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 ran to the east, and even came close to the point; and I took the more notice of it, 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 got first upon, this hill, I believe it would have been so; for there was the same current on the other side 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 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 E.S.E., and that being just contrary to the current, made a great breach of the sea Just as I had set my mast and sail, and the boat bewater 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 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 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 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 southerly, 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 northwest; 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 asido 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 unler some trecs, and laid me down to sleep, being quite spent with the labour and fatigue of the voyage. I was now at a great loss which way to get home with my boat! I had run so much hazard, and knew too much of 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 resolved on the next 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 harbour for my boat, and where she lay as if she had been in a little dock made on purpose for 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 umbrella, for it was exceedingly hot, I began my march. The way was comfortable enough after such a voyage as I had been upon, and I reached my old bower in the evening, where I found every thing 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 awaked 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 frightened, 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 perfectly 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 came 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 over it; and holding out my hand, and calling him by his 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 risk of being 22 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' labour to make it, and of so many more to get it into the sea. It was a good while before they would feed; but And now I found that if I throwing them some sweet corn, it tempted them, and they began to be tame. expected to supply myself with goats' 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 In this government of my temper, I remained near a house like a flock of sheep. But, then, it occurred to year; and lived a very sedate, retired life, as you may me that I must keep the tame from the wild, or else well suppose; and my thoughts being very much com-they would always run wild when they grew up; and posed, as to my condition, and fully comforted in the only way for this was to have some inclosed piece resigning myself to the dispositions of Providence, I of ground, well fenced either with hedge or pale, to keep thought I lived really very happily in all things except them in so effectually, that those within might not break out, or those without break in. 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 I should, upon occasion, have made 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 shaped, which But I before were filthy things indeed to look on. 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 ngly, clumsy thing when it was done, and only burned 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 thinking that there was tobacco in the island; and afterwards, when I searched the ship again, I could not come at any pipes. 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 laying things up in, or fetching things home. For example, if I killed a goat abroad, I could hang it up in a tree, flay it, 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 Also, large deep baskets leave the rest behind me. were the receivers of my corn, which I always rubbed out as soon as it was dry, and cured, and kept in great baskets. I began now to perceive my powder abated considerably; 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, I had, as is observed, in how I should kill any goats. the third year of my being here, kept a young kid, and bred her up tame, and I was in hopes of getting a hegoat: but I could not by any means bring it to pass, till my kid grew an old goat; and as I could never find in my heart to kill her, she died 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 For 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 placed the goats used to feed, and over those pits 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 marks 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 traps; and, not to trouble you with particulars, going one morning to see my traps, I found in one of them a large old he-goat; and in one of the others, 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 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 frightened out of his wits. But I did not then know what I afterwards learned, 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. This was a great undertaking for one pair of hands; My hedge was begun and carried on, I believe about 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 inclosure 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 But this was not all; for now, I not only had goats' It would have made a Stoic smile to have seen me But these were not the two cats which I brought on one of them having multiplied by I know not what kind I was something impatient, as I have observed, to have I had a great high shapeless cap, made of a goat's skin, with a flap hanging down behind, as well to keep the sun from me as to shoot the rain off from running into my neck, nothing being so hurtful in these climates as the rain upon the flesh under the clothes. I had a short jacket of goat's skin, the skirts coming down to about the middle of the thighs, and a pair of open-kneed breeches of the same; the breeches were made of the skin of an old he-goat, whose hair hung down such a length on either side, that, like pantaloons, it reached to the middle of my legs; stocking and shoes I had none, but had made me a pair of somethings, I scarce know what to call them, like buskins, to flap over of a most barbarous shape, as indeed were all the rest my legs, and lace on either side like spatter-dashes, but of my clothes. I had on a broad belt of goat's skin dried, which I had drew together with two thongs of the same instead of buckles, and in a kind of frog on either side of this, instead of a sword and dagger, hung a little saw and a hatchet, one on one side, and one on the other. another belt not so broad, and fastened in the same manner, which hung over my shoulder, and at the end of goat's skin too, in one of which hung my powder, in the it, under my left arm, hung two pouches, both made of other my shot. At my back I carried my basket, and on my shoulder my gun, and over my head a great clumsy ugly, goat's-skin umbrella, but which, after all, was the most necessary thing I had about me next to my gun. As for my face, the colour of it was really not so mulatto-like as one might expect from a man not at all the equinox. My beard I had once suffered to grow till careful of it, and living within nine or ten degrees of 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 at Sallee, for the Moors did not wear such, though the Turks did; of these moustachios, 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 by; 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 of that. In this kind of dress I went my new journey, and was out five or six the place where I first brought my boat to an anchor to days. I travelled first along the sea-shore, directly to get upon the rocks; and having no boat now 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 obliged to double with my boat, as is said above, I was the points of the rocks which lay out, and which 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 went farther from the shore; for, waiting thereabouts the west or from the north, this current came nearer, or 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 ran 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 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 provisions, 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 land, 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. It happened one day, about noon, going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man's naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen on the sand. I stood like one thunderstruck, or as if I had seen an apparition. I listened, I looked round me, but I could hear nothing, nor see anything; I went up to a rising ground, to look farther; I went up the shore, and down the shore, but it was all one: I could see no other impression but that one. I went to it again to see if there were any more, and to observe if it might not be my fancy; but there was no room for that, for there was exactly the print of a foot-toes, heel, and every part of a foot. How it came thither I knew not, nor could I in the least imagine; but after innumerable fluttering thoughts, like a man perfectly confused and out of myself, I came home to my fortification, not feeling, as we say, the ground I went on, but terrified to the last degree, looking behind me at every two or three steps, mistaking every bush and tree, and fancying every stump at a distance to be a man. Nor is it possible to describe how many various shapes my affrighted imagination represented things to me in, how many wild ideas were found every moment in my fancy, and what strange, unaccountable whimseys came into my thoughts by the way. When I came to my castle (for so I think I called it ever after this), I fled into it like one pursued. Whether I went over by the ladder, as first contrived, or went in at the hole in the rock, which I had called a door, I cannot remember; no, nor could I remember the next morning, for never frightened hare fled to, cover, or fox to earth, with more terror of mind than I to this retreat. I slept none that night; the farther I was from the occasion of my fright, the greater my apprehensions were, which is something contrary to the nature of such things, and especially to the usual practice of all creatures in fear; but I was so embarrassed with my own frightful ideas of the thing, that I formed nothing Besides this, I had my country seat, and I had now a but dismal imaginations to myself, even though I was tolerable plantation there also; for, first, I had my now a great way off. Sometimes I fancied it must be little bower, as I called it, which I kept in repair-that the devil, and reason joined in with me in this supis to say, I kept the hedge, which encircled it in, con- position, for how should any other thing in human stantly fitted up to its usual height, the ladder standing shape come into the place? Where was the vessel always in the inside. I kept the trees, which at first that brought them? What marks were there of any were no more than stakes, but were now grown very other footstep? And how was it possible a man should firm and tall, always cut, so that they might spread come there? But then, to think that Satan should and grow thick and wild, and make the more agreeable take human shape upon him in such a place, where shade, which they did effectually to my mind. In the there could be no manner of occasion for it, but to middle of this I had my tent always standing, being a leave the print of his foot behind him, and that even piece of a sail spread over poles, set up for that purpose, for no purpose too, for he could not be sure I should and which never wanted any repair or renewing; and see it, this was an amusement the other way. I under this I had made me a squab or couch, with the considered that the devil might have found out abunskins of the creatures I had killed, and with other soft dance of other ways to have terrified me than this of things, and a blanket laid on them, such as belonged to the single print of a foot; that as I lived quite on the our sea-bedding, which I had saved; and a great watch-other side of the island, he would never have been so coat to cover me. And here, whenever I had occasion simple as to leave a mark in a place where it was ten to be absent from my chief seat, I took up my country thousand to one whether I should ever see it or not, habitation. and in the sand too, which the first surge of the sea, upon a high wind, would have defaced entirely. All this seemed inconsistent with the thing itself, and with all the notions we usually entertain of the subtilty of the devil. Adjoining to this, I had my inclosures for my cattle, that is to say, my goats, and I had taken an inconceivable deal of pains to fence and inclose this ground. I was so anxious to see it kept entire, lest the goats should break through, that I never left off till, with infinite labour, I had stuck 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 between them; which afterwards, when those stakes grew, as they all did in the next rainy season, made the inclosure 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 inclosures 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, that I was forced to pull some of them up again. Abundance of such things as these assisted to argue me out of all apprehensions of its being the devil; and I presently concluded then, that it must be some more dangerous creature, viz. that it must be some of the savages of the main land opposite, who had wandered out to sea in their canoes, and either driven by the currents or by contrary winds, had made the island, and had been on shore, but were gone away again to sea; being as loath, perhaps, to have stayed in this desolate island as I would have been to have had them. While these reflections were rolling in my mind, I was very thankful in my thoughts, that I was so happy as not to be thereabouts at that time, or that they did not see my boat, by which they would have concluded that some inhabitants had been in the place, and perhaps have searched farther for me. Then terrible thoughts racked my imagination about their having found out my boat, and that there were people here; and that, if so, I should certainly have them come again in greater numbers, and devour me; that if it should happen that they should not find me, yet they would find my inclosure, destroy all my corn, and carry away all my flock of tame goats, and I should perish at last for mere want. 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; Thus my fear banished all my religious hope, all that and indeed they were not only agreeable, but medicinal, former confidence in God, which was founded upon such wholesome, nourishing, and refreshing to the last degree. wonderful experience as I had bad of His goodness; as As this was also about half-way between my other if He that had fed me by miracle hitherto could not habitation and the place where I had laid up my boat, I preserve, by His power, the provision which He had generally staid and lay here in my way thither, for I made for me by His goodness. I reproached myself used frequently to visit my boat; and I kept all things with my laziness, that would not sow any more corn one about, or belonging to her, in very good order. Some-year than would just serve me till the next season, as times I went out in her to divert myself, but no more if no accident could intervene to prevent my enjoying hazardous voyages would I go, scarcely ever above a the crop that was upon the ground; and this I thought 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. so just a reproof, that I resolved for the future to have two or three years' corn beforehand; so that, whatever might come, I might not perish for want of bread. How strange a chequer-work of Providence is the life of man! and by what secret different springs are the affections hurried about, as different circumstances present! To-day we love what to-morrow we hate; to-day we seek what to-morrow we shun; to-day we desire what to-morrow we fear, nay, even tremble at the apprehensions of. This was exemplified in me, at this time, in the most lively manner imaginable, for I, whose only affliction was that I seemed banished from human society, that I was alone, circumscribed by the boundless ocean, cut off from mankind, and condemned to what I call silent life; that I was as one whom Heaven thought not worthy to be numbered among the living, or to appear among the rest of His creatures; that to have seen one of my own species would have seemed to me a raising me from death to life, and the greatest blessing that Heaven itself, next to the supreme blessing of salvation, could bestow. I say, that I should now tremble at the very apprehensions of seeing a man, and was ready to sink into the ground at but the shadow or silent appearance of a man having set his foot in the island. Such is the uneven state of human life; and it afforded me a great many curious speculations afterwards, when I had a little recovered my first surprise. I considered that this was the station of life the infinitely wise and good providence of God had determined for me; that as I could not foresee what the ends of Divine wisdom might be in all this, so I was not to dispute His sovereignty; who, as I was His creature, had an undoubted right, by creation, to govern and dispose of me absolutely as He thought fit; and who, as I was a creature that had offended Him, had likewise a judicial right to condemn me to what punishment He thought fit; and that it was my part to submit to bear His indignation, because I had sinned against Him. I then reflected, that as God, who was not only righteous, but omnipotent, had thought fit thus to punish and afflict me, so He was able to deliver me: that if He did not think fit to do so, it was my unquestioned duty to resign myself absolutely and entirely to His will; and, on the other hand, it was my duty also to hope in Him, pray to Him, and quietly to attend to the dictates and directions of His daily providence. These thoughts took me up many hours, days, nay, I may say weeks and months: and one particular effect of my cogitations on this occasion I cannot omit. One morning early, lying in my bed, and filled with thoughts about my danger from the appearances of savages, I found it discomposed me very much; upon which these words of the Scripture came into my thoughts: "Call upon Me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me." Upon this, rising cheerfully out of my bed, my heart was not only comforted, but I was guided and encouraged to pray earnestly to God for deliverance: when I had done praying, I took up my Bible, and opening it to read, the first words that presented to me were, "Wait on the Lord, and be of good cheer, and He shall strengthen thy heart; wait, I say, on the Lord." It is impossible to express the comfort this gave me. In answer, I thankfully laid down the book, and was no more sad, at least on that occasion. a In the middle of these cogitations, apprehensions, and reflections, it came into my thoughts one day, that all this might be a mere chimera of my own, and that this foot might be the print of my own foot, when I came on shore from my boat: this cheered me up a little, too, and I began to persuade myself it was all delusion; that it was nothing else but my own foot; and why might I not come that way from the boat, as well as I was going that way to the boat? Again I considered also, that I could by no means tell, for certain, where I had trod, and where I had not; and that if, at last, this was only the print of my own foot, I had played the part of those fools who try to make stories of spectres and apparitions, and then are frightened at them more than anybody. Now I began to take courage, and to peep abroad again, for I had not stirred out of my castle for three days and nights, so that I began to starve for provisions; for I had little or nothing within doors but some barley-cakes and water; then I knew that my goats wanted to be milked too, which usually was my evening diversion; and the poor creatures were in great pain and inconvenience for want of it; and, indeed, it almost spoiled some of them, and almost dried up their milk. Encouraging myself, therefore, with the belief that this was nothing but the print of one of my own feet, and that I might be truly said to start at my own shadow, I began to go abroad again, and went to my country house to milk my flock: but to see with what fear I went forward, how often I looked behind me, how I was ready, every now and then, to lay down my basket, and run for my life, it would have made any one have thought I was haunted with an evil conscience, or that I had been lately most terribly frightened; and so, indeed, I had. However, I went down thus two or three days, and having seen nothing, I began to be a little bolder, and to think there was really nothing in |