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Robinson Crusoe

Daniel Defoe

Section 18 of 41 - Table of Contents
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 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.
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