The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
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 time
a good pastrycook into the bargain; for I made myself several cakes and
puddings of the rice; but I made no pies, neither had I anything to put
into them supposing I had, except the flesh either of fowls or goats.
It need not be wondered at if all these things took me up most part of
the third year of my abode here; for it is to be observed that in the
intervals of these things I had my new harvest and husbandry to manage;
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 mainland, and an inhabited
country, I might find some way or other to convey myself further, and
perhaps at last find some means of escape.
But all this while I made no allowance for the dangers of such an
undertaking, and how I might fall into the hands of savages, and
perhaps such as I might have reason to think far worse than the lions
and tigers of Africa: that if I once came in their power, I should run
a hazard of more than a thousand to one of being killed, and perhaps of
being eaten; for I had heard that the people of the Caribbean coast
were cannibals or man-eaters, and I knew by the latitude that I could
not be far from that shore. Then, supposing they were not cannibals,
yet they might kill me, as many Europeans who had fallen into their
hands had been served, even when they had been ten or twenty
together—much more I, that was but one, and could make little or no
defence; all these things, I say, which I ought to have considered
well; and did come into my thoughts afterwards, yet gave me no
apprehensions at first, and my head ran mightily upon the thought of
getting over to the shore.
Now I wished for my boy Xury, and the long-boat with 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 not quite; and was turned, by the force of the
waves and the winds, almost bottom upward, against a high ridge of
beachy, rough sand, but no water about her. If I had had hands to have
refitted her, and to have launched her into the water, the boat would
have done well enough, and I might have gone back into the Brazils with
her easily enough; but I might have foreseen that I could no more turn
her and set her upright upon her bottom than I could remove the island;
however, I went to the woods, and cut levers and rollers, and brought
them to the boat resolving to try what I could do; suggesting to myself
that if I could but turn her down, I might repair the damage she had
received, and she would be a very good boat, and I might go to sea in
her very easily.
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—a difficulty much harder for me to surmount
than all the consequences of want of tools could be to them; for what
was it to me, if when I had chosen a vast tree in the woods, and with
much trouble cut it down, if I had been able with my tools to hew and
dub the outside into the proper shape of a boat, and burn or cut out
the inside to make it hollow, so as to make a boat of it—if, after all
this, I must leave it just there where I found it, and not be able to
launch it into the water?
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 I 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 of
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 eagerness 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 which it lessened for a while, and then parted
into branches. It was not without infinite labour that I felled this
tree; I was twenty days hacking and hewing at it at the bottom; I was
fourteen more getting the branches and limbs and the vast spreading
head cut off, which I hacked and hewed through with axe and hatchet,
and inexpressible labour; after this, it cost me a month to shape it
and dub it to a proportion, and to something like the bottom of a boat,
that it might swim upright as it ought to do. It cost me near three
months more to clear the inside, and work it out so as to make an exact
boat of it; this I did, indeed, without fire, by mere mallet and
chisel, and by the dint of hard labour, till I had brought it to be a
very handsome periagua, and big enough to have carried six-and-twenty
men, and consequently big enough to have carried me and all my cargo.
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.
But all my devices to get it into the water failed me; though they cost
me infinite labour too. It lay about one hundred yards from the water,
and not more; but the first inconvenience was, it was up hill towards
the creek. Well, to take away this discouragement, I resolved to dig
into the surface of the earth, and so make a declivity: this I began,
and it cost me a prodigious deal of pains (but who grudge pains who
have their deliverance in view?); but when this was worked through, and
this difficulty managed, it was still much the same, for I could no
more stir the canoe than I could the other boat. Then I measured the
distance of ground, and resolved to cut a dock or canal, to bring the
water up to the canoe, seeing I could not bring the canoe down to the
water. Well, I began this work; and 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.
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 expectations 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 thought it looked, as we may perhaps look upon it
hereafter—viz. as a place I had lived 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 enough
to have made wine, or to have cured into raisins, 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 all the rest to me? If I killed
more flesh than I could eat, the dog must eat it, or vermin; if I sowed
more corn than I could eat, it must be spoiled; the trees that I cut
down were lying to rot on the ground; I could make no more use of them