The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
bake it. These things being added to my desire of having a good
quantity for store, and to secure a constant supply, I resolved not to
taste any of this crop but to preserve it all for seed against the next
season; and in the meantime to employ all my study and hours of working
to accomplish this great work of providing myself with corn and bread.
It might be truly said, that now I worked for my bread. I believe few
people have thought much upon the strange multitude of little things
necessary in the providing, producing, curing, dressing, making, and
finishing this one article of bread.
I, that was reduced to a mere state of nature, found this to my daily
discouragement; and was made more sensible of it every hour, even after
I had got the first handful of seed-corn, which, as I have said, came
up unexpectedly, and indeed to a surprise.
First, I had no plough to turn up the earth—no spade or shovel to dig
it. Well, this I conquered by making me a wooden spade, as I observed
before; but this did my work but in a wooden manner; and though it cost
me a great many days to make it, yet, for want of iron, it not only
wore out soon, but made my work the harder, and made it be performed
much worse. However, this I bore with, and was content to work it out
with patience, and bear with the badness of the performance. When the
corn was sown, I had no harrow, but was forced to go over it myself,
and drag a great heavy bough of a tree over it, to scratch it, as it
may be called, rather than rake or harrow it. When it was growing, and
grown, I have observed already how many things I wanted to fence it,
secure it, mow or reap it, cure and carry it home, thrash, part it from
the chaff, and save it. Then I wanted a mill to grind it, sieves to
dress it, yeast and salt to make it into bread, and an oven to bake it;
but all these things I did without, as shall be observed; and yet the
corn was an inestimable comfort and advantage to me too. All this, as I
said, made everything laborious and tedious to me; but that there was
no help for. Neither was my time so much loss to me, because, as I had
divided it, a certain part of it was every day appointed to these
works; and as I had resolved to use none of the corn for bread till I
had a greater quantity by me, I had the next six months to apply myself
wholly, by labour and invention, to furnish myself with utensils proper
for the performing all the operations necessary for making the corn,
when I had it, fit for my use.
CHAPTER IX. A BOAT
But first I was to prepare more land, for I had now seed enough to sow
above an acre of ground. Before I did this, I had a week’s work at
least to make me a spade, which, when it was done, was but a sorry one
indeed, and very heavy, and required double labour to work with it.
However, I got through that, and sowed my seed in two large flat pieces
of ground, as near my house as I could find them to my mind, and fenced
them in with a good hedge, the stakes of which were all cut off that
wood which I had set before, and knew it would grow; so that, in a
year’s time, I knew I should have a quick or living hedge, that would
want but little repair. This work did not take me up less than three
months, because a great part of that time was the wet season, when I
could not go abroad. Within-doors, that is when it rained and I could
not go out, I found employment in the following occupations—always
observing, that all the while I was at work I diverted myself with
talking to my parrot, and teaching him to speak; and I quickly taught
him to know his own name, and at last to speak it out pretty loud,
“Poll,” which was the first word I ever heard spoken in the island by
any mouth but my own. This, therefore, was not my work, but an
assistance to my work; for now, as I said, I had a great employment
upon my hands, as follows: I had long studied to make, by some means or
other, some earthen vessels, which, indeed, I wanted sorely, but knew
not where to come at them. However, considering the heat of the
climate, I did not doubt but if I could find out any clay, I might make
some pots that might, being dried in the sun, be hard enough and strong
enough to bear handling, and to hold anything that was dry, and
required to be kept so; and as this was necessary in the preparing
corn, meal, &c., which was the thing I was doing, I resolved to make
some as large as I could, and fit only to stand like jars, to hold what
should be put into them.
It would make the reader pity me, or rather laugh at me, to tell how
many awkward ways I took to raise this paste; what odd, misshapen, ugly
things I made; how many of them fell in and how many fell out, the clay
not being stiff enough to bear its own weight; how many cracked by the
over-violent heat of the sun, being set out too hastily; and how many
fell in pieces with only removing, as well before as after they were
dried; and, in a word, how, after having laboured hard to find the
clay—to dig it, to temper it, to bring it home, and work it—I could not
make above two large earthen ugly things (I cannot call them jars) in
about two months’ labour.
However, as the sun baked these two very dry and hard, I lifted them
very gently up, and set them down again in two great wicker baskets,
which I had made on purpose for them, that they might not break; and as
between the pot and the basket there was a little room to spare, I
stuffed it full of the rice and barley straw; and these two pots being
to stand always dry I thought would hold my dry corn, and perhaps the
meal, when the corn was bruised.
Though I miscarried so much in my design for large pots, yet I made
several smaller things with better success; such as little round pots,
flat dishes, pitchers, and pipkins, and any things my hand turned to;
and the heat of the sun baked them quite hard.
But all this would not answer my end, which was to get an earthen pot
to hold what was liquid, and bear the fire, which none of these could
do. It happened after some time, making a pretty large fire for cooking
my meat, when I went to put it out after I had done with it, I found a
broken piece of one of my earthenware vessels in the fire, burnt as
hard as a stone, and red as a tile. I was agreeably surprised to see
it, and said to myself, that certainly they might be made to burn
whole, if they would burn broken.
This set me to study how to order my fire, so as to make it burn some
pots. I had no notion of a kiln, such as the potters burn in, or of
glazing them with lead, though I had some lead to do it with; but I
placed three large pipkins and two or three pots in a pile, one upon
another, and placed my firewood all round it, with a great heap of
embers under them. I plied the fire with fresh fuel round the outside
and upon the top, till I saw the pots in the inside red-hot quite
through, and observed that they did not crack at all. When I saw them
clear red, I let them stand in that heat about five or six hours, till
I found one of them, though it did not crack, did melt or run; for the
sand which was mixed with the clay melted by the violence of the heat,
and would have run into glass if I had gone on; so I slacked my fire
gradually till the pots began to abate of the red colour; and watching
them all night, that I might not let the fire abate too fast, in the
morning I had three very good (I will not say handsome) pipkins, and
two other earthen pots, as hard burnt as could be desired, and one of
them perfectly glazed with the running of the sand.
After this experiment, I need not say that I wanted no sort of
earthenware for my use; but I must needs say as to the shapes of them,
they were very indifferent, as any one may suppose, when I had no way
of making them but as the children make dirt pies, or as a woman would
make pies that never learned to raise paste.
No joy at a thing of so mean a nature was ever equal to mine, when I
found I had made an earthen pot that would bear the fire; and I had
hardly patience to stay till they were cold before I set one on the
fire again with some water in it to boil me some meat, which it did
admirably well; and with a piece of a kid I made some very good broth,
though I wanted oatmeal, and several other ingredients requisite to
make it as good as I would have had it been.
My next concern was to get me a stone mortar to stamp or beat some corn
in; for as to the mill, there was no thought of arriving at that
perfection of art with one pair of hands. To supply this want, I was at
a great loss; for, of all the trades in the world, I was as perfectly
unqualified for a stone-cutter as for any whatever; neither had I any
tools to go about it with. I spent many a day to find out a great stone
big enough to cut hollow, and make fit for a mortar, and could find
none at all, except what was in the solid rock, and which I had no way
to dig or cut out; nor indeed were the rocks in the island of hardness
sufficient, but were all of a sandy, crumbling stone, which neither
would bear the weight of a heavy pestle, nor would break the corn
without filling it with sand. So, after a great deal of time lost in
searching for a stone, I gave it over, and resolved to look out for a
great block of hard wood, which I found, indeed, much easier; and
getting one as big as I had strength to stir, I rounded it, and formed
it on the outside with my axe and hatchet, and then with the help of
fire and infinite labour, made a hollow place in it, as the Indians in
Brazil make their canoes. After this, I made a great heavy pestle or
beater of the wood called the iron-wood; and this I prepared and laid
by against I had my next crop of corn, which I proposed to myself to
grind, or rather pound into meal to make bread.
My next difficulty was to make a sieve or searce, to dress my meal, and
to part it from the bran and the husk; without which I did not see it
possible I could have any bread. This was a most difficult thing even
to think on, for to be sure I had nothing like the necessary thing to
make it—I mean fine thin canvas or stuff to searce the meal through.
And here I was at a full stop for many months; nor did I really know
what to do. Linen I had none left but what was mere rags; I had goat’s
hair, but neither knew how to weave it or spin it; and had I known how,
here were no tools to work it with. All the remedy that I found for
this was, that at last I did remember I had, among the seamen’s clothes
which were saved out of the ship, some neckcloths of calico or muslin;
and with some pieces of these I made three small sieves proper enough
for the work; and thus I made shift for some years: how I did
afterwards, I shall show in its place.
The baking part was the next thing to be considered, and how I should
make bread when I came to have corn; for first, I had no yeast. As to
that part, there was no supplying the want, so I did not concern myself
much about it. But for an oven I was indeed in great pain. At length I
found out an experiment for that also, which was this: I made some
earthen-vessels very broad but not deep, that is to say, about two feet
diameter, and not above nine inches deep. These I burned in the fire,
as I had done the other, and laid them by; and when I wanted to bake, I
made a great fire upon my hearth, which I had paved with some square
tiles of my own baking and burning also; but I should not call them
square.
When the firewood was burned pretty much into embers or live coals, I
drew them forward upon this hearth, so as to cover it all over, and
there I let them lie till the hearth was very hot. Then sweeping away
all the embers, I set down my loaf or loaves, and whelming down the
earthen pot upon them, drew the embers all round the outside of the