But I think I never was more vain of my own performance, or more joyful for any thing I found out, than for my being able to make a tobacco-pipe; and though it was a very ugly, clumsy thing when it was done, and only burnt red like other earthen-ware, yet as it was hard and firm, and would draw the smoke, I was exceedingly comforted with it—for I had been always used to smoke, and there were pipes in the ship, but I forgot them at first, not knowing there was tobacco in the island; and afterwards, when I searched the ship again, I could not come at any pipes at all.

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

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

To this purpose I made snares to hamper them, and believe they were more than once taken in them; but my tackle was not good, for I had no wire, and always found them broken, and my bait devoured.

At length I resolved to try a pitfall; so I dug several large pits in the earth, in places where I had observed the goats used to feed, and over these pits I placed hurdles, of my own making, too, with a great weight upon them: and several times I put ears of barley, and dry rice, without setting the trap; and I could easily perceive that the goats had gone in, and eaten up the corn, for I could see the 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 trap; 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 other, three kids—a male, and two females.

As to the old one, I knew not what to do with him; he was so fierce, I durst not go into the pit to him—that is to say, to go about to bring him away alive, which was what I wanted. I could have killed him, but that was not my business, nor would it answer my end; so I even let him out, and he ran away as if he had been frightened out of his wits; but I did not then know what I afterwards learned, that hunger would 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 and 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 considerable difficulty brought them all home.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Chapter XI

I WAS something impatient, as I had observed, to have the use of my boat, though very loath to run any more hazard; and therefore sometimes I sat contriving ways to get her about the island, and at other times I sat myself down contented enough without her. But I had a strange uneasiness in my mind to go down to the point of the island, where, as I have said in my last ramble, I went up the hill to see how the shore lay, and how the current set, that I might see what I had to do. This inclination increased upon me every day, and at length I resolved to travel thither by land, and, following the edge of the shore, I did so; but had any one in England been to meet such a man as I was, it must either have frightened him, or raised a great deal of laughter; and as I frequently stood still to look at myself, I could not but smile at the notion of my travelling through Yorkshire with such an equipage, and in such a dress. Be pleased to take a sketch of my figure as follows:—

I had a great high shapeless cap, made of 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 my 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. Stockings and shoes I had none; but I had made me a pair of something, I scarce knew what to call them, like buskins, to flap over my legs, and lace on either side like spatter-dashes, but of a most barbarous shape, as indeed were all the rest of my clothes.

I had on a broad belt of goat's skin dried, which I drew together with two thongs of the same, instead of buckles; and in a kind of a frog on either side of this, instead of a sword and dagger, hung a little saw and a hatchet—one on one side, one on the other; I had another belt not so broad, and fastened in the same manner, which hung over my shoulder; and at the end of it, under my left arm, hung two pouches, both made of goat's skin, too, in one of which hung my powder, in the other my shot: at my back I carried my basket, on my shoulder my gun, and over my head a great clumsy ugly goat'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 careful of it, and living within nine or ten degrees of the equinox. My beard I had once suffered to grow till it was about a quarter of a yard long; but as I had both scissors and razors sufficient, I had cut it pretty short, except what grew on my upper lip, which I had trimmed into a large pair of Mahometan whiskers, such as I had seen worn by Turks whom I saw at Sallee; for the Moors did not wear such, though the Turks did; of these mustachios, or whiskers, I will not say they were long enough to hang my hat upon them; but they were of length and shape monstrous enough, and such as in England would have passed for frightful.

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

I was at a strange loss to understand this, and resolved to spend some time in the observing of it, to see if nothing from the sets of the tide had occasioned it; but I was presently convinced how it was; namely, 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 winds blew more forcible from the west, or from the north, this current came near, or went farther from the shore; for, waiting thereabouts till evening, I went up to the rock again, and then, the tide of ebb being made, I plainly saw the current again as before, only that it ran farther off, being near half a league from the shore; whereas in my case, it set close upon the shore, and hurried me in 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 into practice, I had such a terror upon my spirits at the remembrance of the danger I had been in, that I could not think of it again with any patience; but, on the contrary, I took up another resolution, which was more safe, though more laborious; and this was, that I would build, or rather make, me another periagua, or canoe; and so have 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 large earthen pots, of which I have given an account, and with fourteen or fifteen great baskets, which would hold five or six bushels each, where I laid up my stores of provision, especially my corn, some in the ear cut off short from the straw, and the other rubbed out with my hands.

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

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

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

Adjoining to this, I had my enclosures for my cattle, that is to say, my goats; and as I had taken an inconceivable deal of pains to fence and enclose this ground, I was so uneasy 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 enclosure strong like a wall, indeed, stronger than any wall.

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

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

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

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 in the sand; I stood like one thunderstruck, or as if I had seen an apparition; I listened, I looked round me—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 very print of a foot; toes, heel, and every part of a foot: how it came thither I knew not, nor could 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 an affrighted imagination represented things to me in—how many wild ideas were formed every moment in my fancy—and what strange unaccountable whimsies 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, at first contrived, or went in at the hole in the rock, which I called a door, I cannot remember; for never frighted hare fled to cover, or fox to earth, with more terror of mind than I to this retreat.

I had no sleep 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 but dismal imaginations to myself, even though I was now a great way off it. Sometimes I fancied it must be the devil: and reason joined in with me upon this supposition. For how should any other thing in human shape come into the place? Where was the vessel that brought them? What marks were there of any other footsteps? And how was it possible a man should come there? But then to think that Satan should take human shape upon him in such a place, where there could be no manner of occasion for it but to leave the print of his foot behind him, and that even for no purpose too (for he could not be sure I should see it), this was an amazement the other way; I considered that the devil might have found out abundance of other ways to have terrified me, than this of the single print of a foot; that, as I lived quite on the other side of the island, he would never have been so simple as to leave a mark in a place where it was ten thousand to one whether I should ever see it or not, 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 notions we usually entertain of the subtlety of the devil.

Abundance of such things as these assisted to argue me out of all apprehensions of its being the devil; and I presently concluded that it must be some more dangerous creature—namely, that it must be some of the savages of the mainland over against me, 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 staid in this desolate island, as I would have been to have had them.

While these reflections were rolling upon my mind, I was very thankful in my thought, 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 known 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 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 so that they should not find me, yet they would find my enclosure, destroy all my corn, carry away all my flock of tame goats, and I should perish at last for mere want.

Thus my fear banished all my religious hope: all that former confidence in God, which was founded upon such wonderful experience as I had had of his goodness, now vanished; as if he that had fed me by miracle hitherto, could not preserve by his power the provision which he had made for me by his goodness. I reproached myself with my laziness, that I would not sow any more corn one year than would just serve me till the next season, as if no accident could intervene to prevent my enjoying the crop that was upon the ground. And this I thought 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 differing springs are the affections hurried about, as differing 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 called a 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's having set his foot on 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.