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 citron trees; but all wild, and
very few bearing any fruit, at
least not then. However, the green
limes that I gathered were not
only pleasant to eat, but very
wholesome; and I mixed their juice
afterwards with water, which made it
very wholesome, and very cool
and refreshing. I found now I had
business enough to gather and
carry home; and I resolved to lay up
a store as well of grapes as
limes and lemons, to furnish myself
for the wet season, which I
knew was approaching. In order to do
this, I gathered a great heap
of grapes in one place, a lesser
heap in another place, and a great
parcel of limes and lemons in
another place; and taking a few of
each with me, I travelled homewards;
resolving to come again, and
bring a bag or sack, or what I could
make, to carry the rest home.
Accordingly, having spent three days
in this journey, I came home
(so I must now call my tent and my
cave); but before I got thither
the grapes were spoiled; the
richness of the fruit and the weight
of the juice having broken them and
bruised them, they were good
for little or nothing; as to the
limes, they were good, but I could
bring but a few. The next day, being the nineteenth,
I went back, having made me two
small bags to bring home my harvest;
but I was surprised, when
coming to my heap of grapes, which
were so rich and fine when I
gathered them, to find them all
spread about, trod to pieces, and
dragged about, some here, some
there, and abundance eaten and
devoured. By this I concluded there
were some wild creatures
thereabouts, which had done this;
but what they were I knew not.
However, as I found there was no
laying them up on heaps, and no
carrying them away in a sack, but
that one way they would be
destroyed, and the other way they
would be crushed with their own
weight, I took another course; for I
gathered a large quantity of
the grapes, and hung them trees,
that they might cure and dry in
the sun; and as for the limes and
lemons, I carried as many back as
I could well stand under. When I came home from this journey,
I contemplated with great
pleasure the fruitfulness of that
valley, and the pleasantness of
the situation; the security from
storms on that side of the water,
and the wood: and concluded that I
had pitched upon a place to fix
my abode which was by far the worst
part of the country. Upon the
whole, I began to consider of
removing my habitation, and looking
out for a place equally safe as
where now I was situate, if
possible, in that pleasant, fruitful
part of the island. This thought ran long in my head,
and I was exceeding fond of it
for some time, the pleasantness of
the place tempting me; but when
I came to a nearer view of it, I
considered that I was now by the
seaside, where it was at least
possible that something might happen
to my advantage, and, by the same
ill fate that brought me hither
might bring some other unhappy
wretches to the same place; and
though it was scarce probable that
any such thing should ever
happen, yet to enclose myself among
the hills and woods in the
centre of the island was to
anticipate my bondage, and to render
such an affair not only improbable,
but impossible; and that
therefore I ought not by any means
to remove. However, I was so
enamoured of this place, that I
spent much of my time there for the
whole of the remaining part of the
month of July; and though upon
second thoughts, I resolved not to
remove, yet I built me a little
kind of a bower, and surrounded it
at a distance with a strong
fence, being a double hedge, as high
as I could reach, well staked
and filled between with brushwood;
and here I lay very secure,
sometimes two or three nights
together; always going over it with
a
ladder; so that I fancied now I had
my country house and my sea-
coast house; and this work took me
up to the beginning of August. I had but newly finished my fence,
and began to enjoy my labour,
when the rains came on, and made me
stick close to my first
habitation; for though I had made me
a tent like the other, with a
piece of a sail, and spread it very
well, yet I had not the shelter
of a hill to keep me from storms,
nor a cave behind me to retreat
into when the rains were
extraordinary. About the beginning of August, as I
said, I had finished my bower,
and began to enjoy myself. The 3rd
of August, I found the grapes I
had hung up perfectly dried, and,
indeed, were excellent good
raisins of the sun; so I began to
take them down from the trees,
and it was very happy that I did so,
for the rains which followed
would have spoiled them, and I had
lost the best part of my winter
food; for I had above two hundred
large bunches of them. No sooner
had I taken them all down, and
carried the most of them home to my
cave, than it began to rain; and
from hence, which was the 14th of
August, it rained, more or less,
every day till the middle of
October; and sometimes so violently,
that I could not stir out of
my cave for several days. In this season I was much surprised
with the increase of my family;
I had been concerned for the loss of
one of my cats, who ran away
from me, or, as I thought, had been
dead, and I heard no more
tidings of her till, to my
astonishment, she came home about
the
end of August with three kittens.
This was the more strange to me
because, though I had killed a wild
cat, as I called it, with my
gun, yet I thought it was quite a
different kind from our European
cats; but the young cats were the
same kind of house-breed as the
old one; and both my cats being
females, I thought it very strange.
But from these three cats I
afterwards came to be so pestered
with
cats that I was forced to kill them
like vermin or wild beasts, and
to drive them from my house as much
as possible. From the 14th of August to the 26th,
incessant rain, so that I
could not stir, and was now very
careful not to be much wet. In
this confinement, I began to be
straitened for food: but venturing
out twice, I one day killed a goat;
and the last day, which was the
26th, found a very large tortoise,
which was a treat to me, and my
food was regulated thus: I ate a
bunch of raisins for my breakfast;
a piece of the goat's flesh, or of
the turtle, for my dinner,
broiled - for, to my great
misfortune, I had no vessel to boil
or
stew anything; and two or three of
the turtle's eggs for my supper. During this confinement in my cover
by the rain, I worked daily two
or three hours at enlarging my cave,
and by degrees worked it on
towards one side, till I came to the
outside of the hill, and made
a door or way out, which came beyond
my fence or wall; and so I
came in and out this way. But I was
not perfectly easy at lying so
open; for, as I had managed myself
before, I was in a perfect
enclosure; whereas now I thought I
lay exposed, and open for
anything to come in upon me; and yet
I could not perceive that
there was any living thing to fear,
the biggest creature that I had
yet seen upon the island being a
goat. SEPT. 30. - I was now come to the
unhappy anniversary of my
landing. I cast up the notches on my
post, and found I had been on
shore three hundred and sixty-five
days. I kept this day as a
solemn fast, setting it apart for
religious exercise, prostrating
myself on the ground with the most
serious humiliation, confessing
my sins to God, acknowledging His
righteous judgments upon me, and
praying to Him to have mercy on me
through Jesus Christ; and not
having tasted the least refreshment
for twelve hours, even till the
going down of the sun, I then ate a
biscuit-cake and a bunch of
grapes, and went to bed, finishing
the day as I began it. I had
all this time observed no Sabbath
day; for as at first I had no
sense of religion upon my mind, I
had, after some time, omitted to
distinguish the weeks, by making a
longer notch than ordinary for
the Sabbath day, and so did not
really know what any of the days
were; but now, having cast up the
days as above, I found I had been
there a year; so I divided it into
weeks, and set apart every
seventh day for a Sabbath; though I
found at the end of my account
I had lost a day or two in my
reckoning. A little after this, my
ink began to fail me, and so I
contented myself to use it more
sparingly, and to write down only
the most remarkable events of my
life, without continuing a daily
memorandum of other things. The rainy season and the dry season
began now to appear regular to
me, and I learned to divide them so
as to provide for them
accordingly; but I bought all my
experience before I had it, and
this I am going to relate was one of
the most discouraging
experiments that I made. I have mentioned that I had saved
the few ears of barley and rice,
which I had so surprisingly found
spring up, as I thought, of
themselves, and I believe there were
about thirty stalks of rice,
and about twenty of barley; and now
I thought it a proper time to
sow it, after the rains, the sun
being in its southern position,
going from me. Accordingly, I dug up
a piece of ground as well as
I could with my wooden spade, and
dividing it into two parts, I
sowed my grain; but as I was sowing,
it casually occurred to my
thoughts that I would not sow it all
at first, because I did not
know when was the proper time for
it, so I sowed about two-thirds
of the seed, leaving about a handful
of each. It was a great
comfort to me afterwards that I did
so, for not one grain of what I
sowed this time came to anything:
for the dry months following, the
earth having had no rain after the
seed was sown, it had no
moisture to assist its growth, and
never came up at all till the
wet season had come again, and then
it grew as if it had been but
newly sown. Finding my first seed
did not grow, which I easily
imagined was by the drought, I
sought for a moister piece of ground
to make another trial in, and I dug
up a piece of ground near my
new bower, and sowed the rest of my
seed in February, a little
before the vernal equinox; and this
having the rainy months of
March and April to water it, sprung
up very pleasantly, and yielded
a very good crop; but having part of
the seed left only, and not
daring to sow all that I had, I had
but a small quantity at last,
my whole crop not amounting to above
half a peck of each kind. But
by this experiment I was made master
of my business, and knew
exactly when the proper season was
to sow, and that I might expect
two seed-times and two harvests
every year. While this corn was growing I made a
little discovery, which was of
use to me afterwards. As soon as the
rains were over, and the
weather began to settle, which was
about the month of November, I
made a visit up the country to my
bower, where, though I had not
been some months, yet I found all
things just as I left them. The
circle or double hedge that I had
made was not only firm and
entire, but the stakes which I had
cut out of some trees that grew
thereabouts were all shot out and
grown with long branches, as much
as a willow-tree usually shoots the
first year after lopping its
head. I could not tell what tree to
call it that these stakes were
cut from. I was surprised, and yet
very well pleased, to see the
young trees grow; and I pruned them,
and led them up to grow as
much alike as I could; and it is
scarce credible how beautiful a
figure they grew into in three
years; so that though the hedge made
a circle of about twenty-five yards
in diameter, yet the trees, for
such I might now call them, soon
covered it, and it was a complete
shade, sufficient to lodge under all
the dry season. This made me
resolve to cut some more stakes, and
make me a hedge like this, in
a semi-circle round my wall (I mean
that of my first dwelling),
which I did; and placing the trees
or stakes in a double row, at
about eight yards distance from my
first fence, they grew
presently, and were at first a fine
cover to my habitation, and
afterwards served for a defence
also, as I shall observe in its
order. I found now that the seasons of the
year might generally be
divided, not into summer and winter,
as in Europe, but into the
rainy seasons and the dry seasons,
which were generally thus:- The
half of February, the whole of
March, and the half of April -
rainy, the sun being then on or near
the equinox. The half of April, the whole of May,
June, and July, and the half
of August - dry, the sun being then
to the north of the line. The half of August, the whole of
September, and the half of October
- rainy, the sun being then come
back. The half of October, the whole of
November, December, and January,
and the half of February - dry, the
sun being then to the south of
the line. The rainy seasons sometimes held
longer or shorter as the winds
happened to blow, but this was the
general observation I made.
After I had found by experience the
ill consequences of being
abroad in the rain, I took care to
furnish myself with provisions
beforehand, that I might not be
obliged to go out, and I sat within
doors as much as possible during the
wet months. This time I found
much employment, and very suitable
also to the time, for I found
great occasion for many things which
I had no way to furnish myself
with but by hard labour and constant
application; particularly I
tried many ways to make myself a
basket, but all the twigs I could
get for the purpose proved so
brittle that they would do nothing.
It proved of excellent advantage to
me now, that when I was a boy,
I used to take great delight in
standing at a basket-maker's, in
the town where my father lived, to
see them make their wicker-ware;
and being, as boys usually are, very
officious to help, and a great
observer of the manner in which they
worked those things, and
sometimes lending a hand, I had by
these means full knowledge of
the methods of it, and I wanted
nothing but the materials, when it
came into my mind that the twigs of
that tree from whence I cut my
stakes that grew might possibly be
as tough as the sallows,
willows, and osiers in England, and
I resolved to try.
Accordingly, the next day I went to
my country house, as I called
it, and cutting some of the smaller
twigs, I found them to my
purpose as much as I could desire;
whereupon I came the next time
prepared with a hatchet to cut down
a quantity, which I soon found,
for there was great plenty of them.
These I set up to dry within
my circle or hedge, and when they
were fit for use I carried them
to my cave; and here, during the
next season, I employed myself in
making, as well as I could, a great
many baskets, both to carry
earth or to carry or lay up
anything, as I had occasion; and
though
I did not finish them very
handsomely, yet I made them
sufficiently
serviceable for my purpose; thus,
afterwards, I took care never to
be without them; and as my
wicker-ware decayed, I made more,
especially strong, deep baskets to
place my corn in, instead of
sacks, when I should come to have
any quantity of it. Having mastered this difficulty, and
employed a world of time about
it, I bestirred myself to see, if
possible, how to supply two
wants. I had no vessels to hold
anything that was liquid, except
two runlets, which were almost full
of rum, and some glass bottles
- some of the common size, and
others which were case bottles,
square, for the holding of water,
spirits, &c. I had not so much
as a pot to boil anything, except a
great kettle, which I saved out
of the ship, and which was too big
for such as I desired it - viz.
to make broth, and stew a bit of
meat by itself. The second thing
I fain would have had was a
tobacco-pipe, but it was impossible
to
me to make one; however, I found a
contrivance for that, too, at
last. I employed myself in planting
my second rows of stakes or
piles, and in this wicker-working
all the summer or dry season,
when another business took me up
more time than it could be
imagined I could spare. |
