The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner (1801)

In the low grounds, I found various sorts of hares and foxes, as I took them to be, but much different from those in England. Several of these I killed, but never ate them; neither indeed had I any occasion; for abounding with goats, pigeons, turtle, and grapes, I could defy Leadenhall market to furnish me a better table. In this journey I did not travel above two miles a-day, because I took several turns and windings, to see what discoveries I could make, returning weary enough to the place where I designed to rest all night, which was either in a tree, or in a place which I surrounded with stakes, that no wild creature might suddenly surprise me. When I came to the sea shore, I was amazed to see the splendour of it. Its strand was covered with shells of the most beautiful fish, and constantly abounding with innumerable turtles, and fowls of many kinds, which I was ignorant of, except those called penguins. I might have shot as many as I pleased, but was sparing of my ammunition, rather choosing to kill a she-goat, which I did with much difficulty, on account of the flatness of the country.

Now though this journey produced me the most pleasing satisfaction, yet my habitation was so much to my liking, that I did not repine at my being seated on the worst part of the island. I continued my journey, travelling about twelve miles further towards the east, where I set a great pile on the shore for a mark, concluding that my next journey should bring me to the other side of the island, east from my castle, and so round till I came to my post again. As I had a constant view of the country, I thought I could not miss my way; but scarce had I travelled three miles, when I descended into a very large valley, so surrounded with hills covered with wood, that I having no guide but the sun, nor even this, unless I knew will the position of the sun at the time of day; and to add to my misfortune, the weather proving very hazy, I was obliged to return to my post by the sea-side, and so backwards the same way I came. In this journey my dog surprised a kid and would have killed it, had I not prevented him. As I had often been thinking of getting a kid or two, and so raising a breed of tame goats to supply me after my ammunition was spent, I took this opportunity of beginning: and having made a collar for this little creature, with a string made of rope-yarn, I brought it to my bower, and there inclosed and left him; and, having spent a month in this journey, at length I returned to my habitation.

Nobody can doubt of my satisfaction, when I returned to my little castle, and reposed myself in my hammock. After my journey I rested myself a week, which time I employed in, making a cage for my pretty Poll. I now began to consider the poor kid I had left in the bower, and I immediately went to fetch it home. When I came there I found the young creature almost starved; I gave it some food, and tied it as before: but there was no occasion, for it followed me like a dog; and, as I constantly fed it, it became so loving, gentle, and fond, that it commenced one of my domestics, and would never leave me.

The rainy season of the autumnal equinox being now come, I kept the 30th of September in the most solemn manner, as usual, it being the third year of my abode in the island. I spent the whole day in acknowledging God's mercies, in giving him thanks for making this solitary life as agreeable, and less sinful, than that of human society; and for the communications of his grace to my soul, in supporting, comforting, and encouraging me to depend, upon his Providence, and hope for his eternal presence in the world to come.

Indeed, I often did consider how much more happy I was in this fate of life, than in that accursed manner of living formerly used; and sometimes when hunting, or viewing the country, the anguish of my soul would break out upon me, and my very heart would sink within me, to think of the woods, the mountains, the desarts I was in; and how I was a prisoner locked up within the eternal bars and bolts of the ocean, in an uninhabited wilderness, without hopes, and without redemption: In this condition I would often wring my hands, and weep like a child: And even sometimes, in the middle of my work, this fit would take me; and then I would sit down and sigh, looking on the ground for an hour or two together, till such time as my grief got vent in a flood of tears.

One morning as I was sadly employed in this manner, I opened my Bible, when I immediately fixed my eyes upon these words, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee! Surely, thought I, these words are directed to me, or else why should they appear just at a moment when I am bemoaning my forlorn condition? and if God does not forsake, what matters it, since he can me more happy in this state of life, than if I enjoyed the greatest splendour in the world? But while I was going to return God thanks for my present state, something seemed to shock my mind, as if it had thus said: Unworthy wretch; can you pretend to be thankful for a condition, from which you would pray to be delivered? Therefore I stopt: – and tho' I could not say, I thanked the Divine Majesty for being there, yet I gave God thanks for placing in my view my former course of life, and granting me a true knowledge of repentance. And whenever I opened or read the Bible, I blessed kind Providence, that directed my good friend in England to send it among my goods without any order, and for assisting me to save it from the power of the raging ocean.

And now beginning my third year, my several daily employments were these: First, My duty to Heaven, and diligently reading the Holy Scriptures, which I did twice or thrice every day: Secondly, Seeking provision with my gun, which commonly took me up, when it did not rain, three hours every morning: Thirdly, The ordering, curing, preserving, and cooking what I killed, or catched for my supply which took me up great part of the day: for, in the middle of the day, the sun being in its height, it was so hot, that I could not stir out; so that I had only but four hours in the evening to work in: and then the want of tools, of assistance, and skill, wasted a great deal of time to little purpose. I was no less than two and forty days making a board fit for a long shelf, which two sawyers with their tools and saw-pit, would have cut off the same tree in half a day. It was a large tree, as my board was to be broad. I was three days in cutting it down and two more in lopping off the boughs, and reducing it to a piece of timber. This I hacked and hewed off each side, till it became light to move; then I turned it, made one side of is smooth and flat as a board from end to end, then turned it downward, cutting the other side, till I brouht the plank to be about three inches thick, and smooth on both sides. Any body may judge my great labour and fatigue in such a piece of work; but this I went through with patience, as also many other things that my circumstances made necessary for me to do.

The harvest months, November and December, were now at hand, in which I had the pleasing prospect of a very good crop. But here I met with a new problem; for the goats and hares, having tasted of the outshoot of the blade, kept it to short that it had not strengthen to shoot up into a stalk. To prevent this, I enclosed it with a hedge, and by day shot some of its devourers; and my dog which I had tied to the field-gate, keeping barking all night; so frightened those creatures, that I got entirely rid of them.

But no sooner did I get rid of these, than other enemies appeared, to wit, whole flocks of several sorts of birds, who only waited till my back was turned, to ruin me: so much did this provoke me, that I let fly, and killed three of the malefactors; and afterwards served them as they do notorious thieves in England, hung them up in chains as a terror to others. And, indeed, to good an effect had this that they not only forsook the corn, but all that part of the island, so long as these criminals hung there.

My corn having ripened apace, the latter end of December, which was my second harvest, I reaped it with a scythe, made of one of my broad swords. I had no fatigue in cutting down my first crop it was so slender. The ears I carried home in a basket, rubbing it with my hands, instead of threshing it: and when the harvest was over, found my half peck of seed produced near two bushels of rice, and two bushels and a half of barley. And now I plainly foresaw, that by God's goodness, I should be furnished with bread; but yet I was concerned, because I knew not how to grind or make meal of my corn, nor bread, neither knew how to bake it. I would not however, taste any of the crop, but resolved to preserve it against next season, and, in the mean while, use my best endeavours to provide myself with other food.

But where were my labours to end? The want of a plough to turn up the earth, or shovel to dig it, I conquered by making me a wooden spade. The want of a harrow I supplied myself, with dragging over the corn a great bough of a tree. When it was growing I was forced to fence it; when ripe to mow it, carry it home, thrash it, part it from the chaff, and save it. And, after all, I wanted a mill to grind it, sieve to dress it, yest and salt to make it into bread, and an oven to bake it. This set my brains to work to find some expedient for every one of these necessaries against the next harvest.

And now having more seed, my first care was to prepare me more land. I pitched upon two large flat pieces of ground near my castle, for that purpose, in which sowed my seed, and fenced it with a good hedge. This took me up three months: by which time the wet season coming on, and the rain keeping me within doors, I found several occasions to employ myself; and, while at work, used to divert myself in talking to my parrot, learning him to know and speak his own name Poll the first welcome word I ever heard spoke in the island. I had been a long time in contriving how to make earthen vessels, which I wanted extremely; and when I considered the heat of the climate, I did not doubt but if I could find any such clay, I might botch up a pot, strong enough, when dried in the sun, to bear handling, and to hold any thing that was dry, as corn, meal, and other things.

To be short, the clay I found; but it would occasion the most serious person to smile, to see what aukward ways I took, and what ugly misshapen things I made; how many either fell out or cracked by the violent heat of the sun, and fell in pieces when they were removed; so that I think it was two months time before I could perfect any thing: and even then but two clumsy things in imitation of earthen jars. These, however, I very gently placed in wicker baskets, made on purpose for them, and between the pot and the baskets, stuffed it full of rice and barley straw, and these I presume would hold my dried corn, and perhaps the meal when the corn was bruised. As for the smaller thing, I made them with better success, such as little round pots, flat dishes, pitchers, and pipkins, the fun baking them very hard.

Yet still I wanted one thing absolutely necessary, and that was an earthen pot, not only to hold my liquid, but also to bear the fire, which none of these could do. It once happened that as I was putting out my fire, I found therein a broken piece of one of my vessels burnt as hard as a rock, and red as a tile. This made me think of burning some pots; and having no notion of a kiln, or of glazing them with leaf, I fixed three large pipkins, and two or three pots in a pile one upon another. The fire I piled round the outside, and dry wood on the top, till I saw the pots in the inside red hot, and found out that, they were net crackt at all: and when I perceived them perfectly red, I let one of them stand in the fire about five or six hours, till the clay melted by the extremity of the heat, and would have run to glass, had I suffered it; upon which I slacked my fire by degrees, till the redness abated; and watching them till the morning, I found I had three very good pipkins, and two earthen pots, as well burnt and fit for my turn as I could desire.

No joy could be greater than mine at this discovery. For after this, I may say, I wanted for no fort of earthen ware. I filled one of my pipkins with water to boil me some meat, which it did admirably well, and with a piece of kid I made me some good broth, as well as my circumstances would afford me at that time.

The next concern I had was to get me a stone-morter to beat some corn in, instead of a mill to grind it. Here indeed I was at a great loss, as not being fit for a stone-cutter; and many days I spent to find out a great stone big enough to cut hollow and make fit for a morter, and strong enough to bear the weight of a pestil, and that would break the corn without filling it with sand. But all the stones of the island being of a mouldering nature, rendered my search fruitless; and then I resolved to look out for a great block of hard wood, which having found, I formed it with my ax and hammer, and then, with infinite labour, made a hollow in it, just as the Indians of Brazil make their canoes. When I had finished this, I made a great pestil of iron wood, and then laid them up against my succeeding harvest.

My next business was to make me a sieve, to sift my meal and part it from the bran and husk. Having no fine thin canvas to search the meal through, I could not tell what to do. What linen I had was reduced to rags: I had goat's hair, enough, but neither tools to work it, nor did I know how to spin it: At length I remembered I had some neckcloths of calico or muslin of the sailors, which I had brought out of the ship, and with these I made three small sieves proper enough for the work.

I come now to consider the baking part. The want of an oven I supplied by making some earthen pans very broad but not deep. When I had a mind to bake, I made a great fire upon the hearth, the tiles of which I had made myself; and when the wood was burnt into live coals, I spread them over it, till it became very hot; then sweeping them away, I set down my loaves, and whelming down the earthen pots upon them, drew the ashes and coals all around the outsides of the pots to continue the heat; and in this manner I baked my barley loaves, as well as if I had been a complete pastry-cook, and also made of the rice several cakes and puddings.

It is no wonder that these things took me up the best part of a year, since what intermediate time I had was bestowed in managing my new harvest and husbandry; for in the proper season I reaped my corn, carried it home, and laid it up in the ear in my large baskets, til I had time to rub, instead of thrashing it. And now, indeed, my corn increased so much, that it produced me twenty bushels of barley, and as much rice, that I not only began to use it freely, but was thinking how to enlarge my barns, and resolved to sow as much at a time as would be sufficient for me for a whole year.

All this while, the prospect of land, which I had seen from the other side of the island, ran in my mind. I still meditated a deliverance from this place, though the fear of greater misfortunes might have deterred me from it. – For, allowing that I had attained that place, I run the hazard of being killed and eaten by the devouring cannibals: and if they were not so, yet I might be slain, as other Europeans had been, who fell into their hands. Notwithstanding all this, my thoughts ran continually upon that shore. I now wished for my boy Xury, and the long boat, with the shoulder of mutton sail: I went to the ship's boat that had been cast a great way on the shore in the late storm. She was removed but a little; but her bottom being turned up by the impetuosity and fury of the waves and wind, I fell to work with all the strength I had, with levers and rollers I had cut from the wood, to turn her, and repair the damages she had sustained. This work took me up three or four weeks, when finding my little strength all in vain, I fell to undermining it by digging away the sand, and so to make it fall down, setting pieces of wood to thrust and guide it in the fall. But after this was done, I was still unable to stir it up, or to get under it, much less to move it forward towards the water, and so I was forced to give it over.

This disapointment, however did not frighten me. I began to think whether it was not possible for me to make a canoe or perigua, such as the Indians make of the trunk of a tree, But here I lay under particular inconveniencies; want of tools to make it, and want of hands to move it in the water when it was made. However, to work I went upon it, stopping all the inquiries I could make, with this very simple answer I made to myself, Let's first make it, I'll warrant I'll find some way or other to get it along when it is done.

I first cut down a cedar tree, which 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 space, and then parted into branches. Twenty days was I a hacking and hewing this tree at the bottom, fourteen more in cutting off the branches and limbs, and a whole month in shaping it like the bottom of the boat. As for the inside, I was three weeks with a mallet and chissel, clearing it in such a manner, as that it was big enough to carry twenty-six men, much bigger than any canoe I ever saw in my life, and confequentiy sufficient to transport me and all my effects to that wished-for shore I so ardently desired.

Nothing remained now, but, indeed, the greatest difficulty to get it into the water, it lying about one hundred yards from it. To remedy the first inconvenience, which was a rising hill between the boat and the creek, with wonderful pains and labour I dug into the bowels of the earth, and made a declivity. But when this was done, all the strength I had was as insufficient to remove it, as it was when I attempted to remove the boat. I then proceeded to measure the difference of ground, resolving to make a canal, in order to bring the water to the canoe, since I could not bring the canoe to the water. But as this seemed to be impracticable to myself alone, under the space of eleven or twelve years, it brought me into some sort of consideration: so that I concluded this also to be impossible, and the attempt altogether vain. I now saw, and not before, what stupidity it is to begin a work before we reckon its costs, or judge rightly our own abilities to go through with its performance.

In the height of this work my fourth year expired, from the time I was cast on this island, At this time I did not forget my anniversary; but kept it with rather greater devotion than before. For now my hopes being frustrated, I looked upon this world as a thing had nothing to do with; and very well might I say as Father Abraham said unto Dives, Between thee and me there is a gulph fixed. And indeed I was separated from its wickedness too, having neither the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, nor the pride of life; I had nothing to covet, being lord, king and emperor over the whole country I had in possession, without dispute and without control: I had loadings of corn, plenty of turtles, timber in abundance, and grapes above measure. What was all the rest to me? the money I had lay by me as despicable dross, which I would freely have given for a gross of tobacco pipes, or a hard mill to grind my corn: in a word the-nature and experience of these things dictated to me this just reflection: That the good things of this world are no farther good to us, than they are for our use; and that whatever we may heap up to give to others, we can but enjoy as much as we use, and no more.

These thoughts rendered my mind more easy than usual. Every time I sat down to meat, I did it with thankfulness, admiring the providential hand of God, who in this wilderness had spread a table to me. And now I considered what I enjoyed, rather than what I wanted, compared my present condition with what I at first expected it should be; how I should have done, if I had got nothing out of the ship, that I must have perished before I had caught fish or turtles; or lived, had I found them, like a mere savage, by eating them raw, and pulling them in pieces with my claws, like a beast. I next compared my station to that which I deserved: how undutiful I had been to my parents; how destitute of the fear of God; bow void of every thing that was good; and how ungrateful for those abundant mercies I had received from Heaven, being fed as it were, by a miracle, even as great as Elijah's being fed by ravens; and cast on a place where there is no venomous creatures to poison or devour me; in short making God's tender mercies matter of great consolation, I relinquished all sadness, and gave way to contentment.

As long as my ink continued, which with water I made last as long as I could, I used to minute down the days of the month on which any remarkable event happened. – And,

First, I observed, that the same day I forsook my parents and friends, and ran away to Hull, in order to go to sea, the same day afterwards in the next year, I was taken and made a slave by the Sallee rovers.

That the very day I escaped out of the wreck of the ship in Yarmouth roads, a year after on the same day, I made my escape from Sallee in my patron' fishing boat.

And on the 30th of September, being the day of the year I was born on, on that day twenty-six years after, was I miraculously saved, and cast ashore on this island.

The next thing that wasted after my ink, was the biscuit which I had brought out of the ship, and though I allowed myself but one cake a day, for above a twelvemonth, yet I was quite out of bread for near a year, before I got any corn of my own.

In the next place, my clothes began to decay, and my linen had been gone long before. However, I had preserved about three dozen of the sailors chequered shirts, which proved a great refreshment to me, when the violent beams of the sun would not suffer me to bear any of the seamen's heavy watch coats, which made me turn taylor, and, after a miserable botching manner, convert them to jackets. To preserve my head, I made me a cap of goat-skins, with the hair outwards to keep out the rain; which indeed served me so well, that afterwards I made me a waistcoat and opened-kneed breeches of the fame: And then I contrived a sort of an umbrella, covering it with skins, which not only kept out the heat of the sun, but rain also. Thus being easy, and settled in my mind, my chief happiness was to converse with God, in most heavenly and comfortable ejaculations.

For five years after this I cannot say any extraordinary thing occured to me. My chief employment was to cure my raisins, and plant my barley and rice, of both which I had a year's provision beforehand. But though I was disapointed in my first canoe, I made it, at intermediate times, my business to make a second, of much inferior size; and it was two-years before I had finished it. But as I perceived it would no wife answer my design of failing to the other shore, my thoughts were consigned to take a tour round the island, to see what further discoveries I could make. To this intent, after having moved her to the water, and tried how she would sail, I fitted up a little raft to my boat, and made a sail of the ships sail that by me. I then made lockers or boxes at the end of it, to put in necessaries, provision, and ammunition, which would preserve them dry, either from rain or the spray of the sea; and in the inside of the boat, I cut me a long hollow place to lay my gun in, and to keep it dry made a flag to hang over it. My umbrella I fixed in a step in the stern, like a mast, to keep the heat of the sun off me. And now resolving to see the circumference of my little kingdom, I victualled my ship for the voyage, putting in two dozen of my barley-bread loaves, an earthen pot-full of parched rice, a little bottle of rum, half a goat, powder and shot, and two watch coats. It was the 6th of November, in the 6th year of my reign, or captivity, that I set out in this voyage; which was much longer than I expected, being obliged to put further out, by reason of the rocks that lay a great way in the sea. And indeed so much did these rocks surprise me, that I was for putting back, fearing that if I ventured farther it would be out of my power to return in this uncertainty I came to an anchor just off shore, to which I waded with my gun on my shoulder, and then climbing up a hill, which overlooked that point, I saw the full extent of it, and so resolved to run all hazards.