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 learnt 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 upon the fire again with some water in it, to boil me some meat, which I 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 so good as I would have had it.
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 to that perfection of art with one pair of hands. To supply this want, I was at a great loss; for of all 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 would neither bear the weight of an 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 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 an hollow place in it, as the Indians in Brasil 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, when I proposed to myself to grind, or rather pound, my corn or meal to make my bread.
My next difficulty was to make a sieve or searce, to dress my meal, and 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, so much as but to think on; for to be sure I had nothing like the necessary things to make it with; I mean fine thin canvass, 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 I how to weave 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, but proper enough for the work; and thus I made shift for some years; how I did afterwards, I shall shew 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 burnt 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 the hearth, which I had paved with some square tiles of my own making and burning also; but I should not call them square.
When the fire-wood was burnt 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 a little time a mere pastry-cook into the bargain; for I made myself several cakes of the rice, and puddings; indeed I made no pies, neither had I any thing 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 thresh it on, or instrument to thresh 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 I now 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 was on shore there, fancying that seeing the main land, and an inhabited country, I might find some way or other to convey myself farther, and perhaps at last find some means of escape.
But all this while I made no allowance for the dangers of such a condition, 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 into their power, I should run an hazard more than a thousand to one of being killed, and perhaps of being eaten; for I had heard that the people of the Caribean coasts were cannibals, or men-eaters; and I knew by the latitude that I could not be far off from that shore: that, suppose 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 of, and I did cast up in my thoughts afterwards, yet took none of my apprehensions at first; and my head ran mightily upon the thoughts of getting over to that shore.
Now I wished for my boy Xury, and the long-boat, with the 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 on 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 upwards, against the high ridge of a beachy rough sand, but no water about her as before.
If I had had hands to have refitted her, and have launched her into the water, the boat would have done well enough, and I might have gone back into the Brasils with her easy enough; but I might have easily 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 wood, 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 easily 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