The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
hopes appeared, this prevailed very often upon my thoughts; but,
however, the words made a great impression upon me, and I mused upon
them very often. It grew now late, and the tobacco had, as I said,
dozed my head so much that I inclined to sleep; so I left my lamp
burning in the cave, lest I should want anything in the night, and went
to bed. But before I lay down, I did what I never had done in all my
life—I kneeled down, and prayed to God to fulfil the promise to me,
that if I called upon Him in the day of trouble, He would deliver me.
After my broken and imperfect prayer was over, I drank the rum in which
I had steeped the tobacco, which was so strong and rank of the tobacco
that I could scarcely get it down; immediately upon this I went to bed.
I found presently it flew up into my head violently; but I fell into a
sound sleep, and waked no more till, by the sun, it must necessarily be
near three o’clock in the afternoon the next day—nay, to this hour I am
partly of opinion that I slept all the next day and night, and till
almost three the day after; for otherwise I know not how I should lose
a day out of my reckoning in the days of the week, as it appeared some
years after I had done; for if I had lost it by crossing and recrossing
the line, I should have lost more than one day; but certainly I lost a
day in my account, and never knew which way. Be that, however, one way
or the other, when I awaked I found myself exceedingly refreshed, and
my spirits lively and cheerful; when I got up I was stronger than I was
the day before, and my stomach better, for I was hungry; and, in short,
I had no fit the next day, but continued much altered for the better.
This was the 29th.
The 30th was my well day, of course, and I went abroad with my gun, but
did not care to travel too far. I killed a sea-fowl or two, something
like a brandgoose, and brought them home, but was not very forward to
eat them; so I ate some more of the turtle’s eggs, which were very
good. This evening I renewed the medicine, which I had supposed did me
good the day before—the tobacco steeped in rum; only I did not take so
much as before, nor did I chew any of the leaf, or hold my head over
the smoke; however, I was not so well the next day, which was the first
of July, as I hoped I should have been; for I had a little spice of the
cold fit, but it was not much.
_July_ 2.—I renewed the medicine all the three ways; and dosed myself
with it as at first, and doubled the quantity which I drank.
_July_ 3.—I missed the fit for good and all, though I did not recover
my full strength for some weeks after. While I was thus gathering
strength, my thoughts ran exceedingly upon this Scripture, “I will
deliver thee”; and the impossibility of my deliverance lay much upon my
mind, in bar of my ever expecting it; but as I was discouraging myself
with such thoughts, it occurred to my mind that I pored so much upon my
deliverance from the main affliction, that I disregarded the
deliverance I had received, and I was as it were made to ask myself
such questions as these—viz. Have I not been delivered, and wonderfully
too, from sickness—from the most distressed condition that could be,
and that was so frightful to me? and what notice had I taken of it? Had
I done my part? God had delivered me, but I had not glorified Him—that
is to say, I had not owned and been thankful for that as a deliverance;
and how could I expect greater deliverance? This touched my heart very
much; and immediately I knelt down and gave God thanks aloud for my
recovery from my sickness.
_July_ 4.—In the morning I took the Bible; and beginning at the New
Testament, I began seriously to read it, and imposed upon myself to
read a while every morning and every night; not tying myself to the
number of chapters, but long as my thoughts should engage me. It was
not long after I set seriously to this work till I found my heart more
deeply and sincerely affected with the wickedness of my past life. The
impression of my dream revived; and the words, “All these things have
not brought thee to repentance,” ran seriously through my thoughts. I
was earnestly begging of God to give me repentance, when it happened
providentially, the very day, that, reading the Scripture, I came to
these words: “He is exalted a Prince and a Saviour, to give repentance
and to give remission.” I threw down the book; and with my heart as
well as my hands lifted up to heaven, in a kind of ecstasy of joy, I
cried out aloud, “Jesus, thou son of David! Jesus, thou exalted Prince
and Saviour! give me repentance!” This was the first time I could say,
in the true sense of the words, that I prayed in all my life; for now I
prayed with a sense of my condition, and a true Scripture view of hope,
founded on the encouragement of the Word of God; and from this time, I
may say, I began to hope that God would hear me.
Now I began to construe the words mentioned above, “Call on Me, and I
will deliver thee,” in a different sense from what I had ever done
before; for then I had no notion of anything being called
_deliverance_, but my being delivered from the captivity I was in; for
though I was indeed at large in the place, yet the island was certainly
a prison to me, and that in the worse sense in the world. But now I
learned to take it in another sense: now I looked back upon my past
life with such horror, and my sins appeared so dreadful, that my soul
sought nothing of God but deliverance from the load of guilt that bore
down all my comfort. As for my solitary life, it was nothing. I did not
so much as pray to be delivered from it or think of it; it was all of
no consideration in comparison to this. And I add this part here, to
hint to whoever shall read it, that whenever they come to a true sense
of things, they will find deliverance from sin a much greater blessing
than deliverance from affliction.
But, leaving this part, I return to my Journal.
My condition began now to be, though not less miserable as to my way of
living, yet much easier to my mind: and my thoughts being directed, by
a constant reading the Scripture and praying to God, to things of a
higher nature, I had a great deal of comfort within, which till now I
knew nothing of; also, my health and strength returned, I bestirred
myself to furnish myself with everything that I wanted, and make my way
of living as regular as I could.
From the 4th of July to the 14th I was chiefly employed in walking
about with my gun in my hand, a little and a little at a time, as a man
that was gathering up his strength after a fit of sickness; for it is
hardly to be imagined how low I was, and to what weakness I was
reduced. The application which I made use of was perfectly new, and
perhaps which had never cured an ague before; neither can I recommend
it to any to practise, by this experiment: and though it did carry off
the fit, yet it rather contributed to weakening me; for I had frequent
convulsions in my nerves and limbs for some time. I learned from it
also this, in particular, that being abroad in the rainy season was the
most pernicious thing to my health that could be, especially in those
rains which came attended with storms and hurricanes of wind; for as
the rain which came in the dry season was almost always accompanied
with such storms, so I found that rain was much more dangerous than the
rain which fell in September and October.
CHAPTER VII. AGRICULTURAL EXPERIENCE
I had now been in this unhappy island above ten months. All possibility
of deliverance from this condition seemed to be entirely taken from me;
and I firmly believe that no human shape had ever set foot upon that
place. Having now secured my habitation, as I thought, fully to my
mind, I had a great desire to make a more perfect discovery of the
island, and to see what other productions I might find, which I yet
knew nothing of.
It was on the 15th of July that I began to take a more particular
survey of the island itself. I went up the creek first, where, as I
hinted, I brought my rafts on shore. I found after I came about two
miles up, that the tide did not flow any higher, and that it was no
more than a little brook of running water, very fresh and good; but
this being the dry season, there was hardly any water in some parts of
it—at least not enough to run in any stream, so as it could be
perceived. On the banks of this brook I found many pleasant savannahs
or meadows, plain, smooth, and covered with grass; and on the rising
parts of them, next to the higher grounds, where the water, as might be
supposed, never overflowed, I found a great deal of tobacco, green, and
growing to a great and very strong stalk. There were divers other
plants, which I had no notion of or understanding about, that might,
perhaps, have virtues of their own, which I could not find out. I
searched for the cassava root, which the Indians, in all that climate,
make their bread of, but I could find none. I saw large plants of
aloes, but did not understand them. I saw several sugar-canes, but
wild, and, for want of cultivation, imperfect. I contented myself with
these discoveries for this time, and came back, musing with myself what
course I might take to know the virtue and goodness of any of the
fruits or plants which I should discover, but could bring it to no
conclusion; for, in short, I had made so little observation while I was
in the Brazils, that I knew little of the plants in the field; at
least, very little that might serve to any purpose now in my distress.
The next day, the sixteenth, I went up the same way again; and after
going something further than I had gone the day before, I found the
brook and the savannahs cease, and the country become more woody than
before. In this part I found different fruits, and particularly I found
melons upon the ground, in great abundance, and grapes upon the trees.
The vines had spread, indeed, over the trees, and the clusters of
grapes were just now in their prime, very ripe and rich. This was a
surprising discovery, and I was exceeding glad of them; but I was
warned by my experience to eat sparingly of them; remembering that when
I was ashore in Barbary, the eating of grapes killed several of our
Englishmen, who were slaves there, by throwing them into fluxes and
fevers. But I found an excellent use for these grapes; and that was, to
cure or dry them in the sun, and keep them as dried grapes or raisins
are kept, which I thought would be, as indeed they were, wholesome and
agreeable to eat when no grapes could be had.
I spent all that evening there, and went not back to my habitation;
which, by the way, was the first night, as I might say, I had lain from
home. In the night, I took my first contrivance, and got up in a tree,
where I slept well; and the next morning proceeded upon my discovery;
travelling nearly four miles, as I might judge by the length of the
valley, keeping still due north, with a ridge of hills on the south and
north side of me. At the end of this march I came to an opening where
the country seemed to descend to the west; and a little spring of fresh
water, which issued out of the side of the hill by me, ran the other
way, that is, due east; and the country appeared so fresh, so green, so
flourishing, everything being in a constant verdure or flourish of
spring that it looked like a planted garden. I descended a little on
the side of that delicious vale, surveying it with a secret kind of
pleasure, though mixed with my other afflicting thoughts, to think that
this was all my own; that I was king and lord of all this country
indefensibly, and had a right of possession; and if I could convey it,
I might have it in inheritance as completely as any lord of a manor in
England. I saw here abundance of cocoa trees, orange, and lemon, and