The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner, Volume 1

by Daniel Defoe

baked these two very dry and hard, I lifted themvery 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 asbetween the pot and the basket there was a little room to spare, Istuffed it full of the rice and barley-straw; and these two pots beingto stand always dry, I thought would hold my dry corn, and perhaps themeal, when the corn was bruised.

  Though I miscarried so much in my design for large pots, yet I madeseveral smaller things with better success; such as little round pots,flat dishes, pitchers, and pipkins, and any thing my hand turned to; andthe heat of the sun baked them very hard.

  But all this would not answer my end, which was to get an earthen pot tohold liquids, and bear the fire, which none of these could do. Ithappened some time after, making a pretty large fire for cooking mymeat, when I went to put it out after I had done with it, I found abroken piece of one of my earthen-ware vessels in the fire, burnt ashard 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, ifthey would burn broken.

  This set me to study how to order my fire, so as to make it burn somepots. I had no notion of a kiln, such as the potters burn in, or ofglazing them with lead, though I had some lead to do it with; but Iplaced three large pipkins and two or three pots in a pile, one uponanother, and placed my fire-wood all round it, with a great heap ofembers 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 quitethrough, and observed that they did not crack at all: when I saw themclear red, I let them stand in that heat about five or six hours, till Ifound one of them, though it did not crack, did melt or run; for thesand 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 firegradually, till the pots began to abate of the red colour; and watchingthem all night, that I might not let the fire abate too fast, in themorning I had three very good, I will not say handsome, pipkins, and twoother earthen pots, as hard burnt as could be desired; and one of themperfectly glazed with the running of the sand.

  After this experiment, I need not say that I wanted no sort ofearthen-ware for my use; but I must needs say, as to the shapes of them,they were very indifferent, as any one may suppose, as I had no way ofmaking them but as the children make dirt pies, or as a woman would makepies that never learned to raise paste.

  No joy at a thing of so mean a nature was ever equal to mine, when Ifound I had made an earthen pot that would bear the fire; and I hadhardly patience to stay till they were cold, before I set one on thefire again, with some water in it, to boil me some meat, which it didadmirably well; and with a piece of a kid I made some very good broth;though I wanted oatmeal, and several other ingredients requisite to makeit so good as I would have had it been.

  My next concern was to get a stone mortar to stamp or beat some corn in;for as to the mill, there was no thought of arriving to that perfectionof art with one pair of hands. To supply this want I was at a greatloss; for, of all trades in the world, I was as perfectly unqualifiedfor a stonecutter, as for any whatever; neither had I any tools to goabout it with. I spent many a day to find out a great stone big enoughto cut hollow, and make fit for a mortar; but could find none at all,except what was in the solid rock, and which I had no way to dig or cutout: nor, indeed, were the rocks in the island of sufficient hardness,as they were all of a sandy crumbling stone, which would neither bearthe weight of a heavy pestle, nor would break the corn without fillingit with sand: so, after a great deal of time lost in searching for astone, I gave it over, and resolved to look out a great block of hardwood, which I found indeed much easier; and getting one as big as I hadstrength to stir, I rounded it, and formed it on the outside with my axeand hatchet; and then, with the help of fire, and infinite labour, madea hollow place in it, as the Indians in Brazil make their canoes. Afterthis, I made a great heavy pestle, or beater, of the wood callediron-wood; and this I prepared and laid by against I had my next crop ofcorn, when I proposed to myself to grind, or rather pound, my corn intomeal, to make my 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 seeit possible I could have any bread. This was a most difficult thing,even but to think on; for I had nothing like the necessary thing to makeit; I mean fine thin canvass or stuff, to searce the meal through. HereI 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 goats'-hair, butneither knew how to weave it nor spin it; and had I known how, here wereno tools to work it with: all the remedy I found for this was, at lastrecollecting I had, among the seamen's clothes which were saved out ofthe ship, some neckcloths of calico or muslin, with some pieces of theseI made three small sieves, proper enough for the work; and thus I madeshift 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 shouldmake bread when I came to have corn: for, first, I had no yeast: as tothat part there was no supplying the want, so I did not concern myselfmuch about it; but for an oven I was indeed puzzled. At length I foundout an expedient for that also, which was this; I made some earthenvessels, very broad, but not deep, that is to say, about two feetdiameter, and not above nine inches deep: these I burned in the fire, asI had done the other, and laid them by; and when I wanted to bake, Imade a great fire upon my hearth, which I had paved with some squaretiles, of my own making and burning also; but I should not callthem square.

  When the fire-wood was burned into embers, or live coals, I drew themforward upon the hearth, so as to cover it all over, and there let themlie till the hearth was very hot; then sweeping away all the embers, Iset down my loaf, or loaves, and covering them with the earthen pot,drew the embers all round the outside of the pot, to keep in and add tothe heat; and thus, as well as in the best oven in the world, I baked mybarley-loaves, and became, in a little time, a good pastry-cook into thebargain; for I made myself several cakes and puddings of the rice; butmade no pies, as I had nothing to put into them except the flesh offowls or goats.

  It need not be wondered at, if all these things took me up most part ofthe third year of my abode here; for, it is to be observed, in theintervals of these things, I had my new harvest and husbandry to manage: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 rubit out; for I had no floor to thrash it on, or instrument to thrashit with.

  And now, indeed, my stock of corn increasing, I really wanted to buildmy barns bigger: I wanted a place to lay it up in; for the increase ofthe corn now yielded me so much, that I had of the barley about twentybushels, and of rice as much, or more, insomuch that now I resolved tobegin to use it freely; for my bread had been quite gone a great while:I resolved also to see what quantity would be sufficient for me a wholeyear, and to sow but once a year.

  Upon the whole, I found that the forty bushels of barley and rice weremuch more than I could consume in a year; so I resolved to sow just thesame quantity every year that I sowed the last, in hopes that such aquantity would fully provide me with bread, &c.

  All the while these things were doing, you may be sure my thoughts ranmany times upon the prospect of land which I had seen from the otherside of the island; and I was not without some secret wishes that I wason shore there; fancying, that seeing the main land, and an inhabitedcountry, I might find some way or other to convey myself farther, andperhaps at last find some means of escape.

  But all this while I made no allowance for the dangers of such acondition, and that I might fall into the hands of savages, and perhapssuch as I might have reason to think far worse than the lions and tigersof Africa; that if I once came in their power, I should run a hazard ofmore 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-e
aters; and I knew, by the latitude, that I could not be far offfrom that shore. Then supposing they were not cannibals, yet that theymight kill me, as they had many Europeans who had fallen into theirhands, even when they have been ten or twenty together; much more I, whowas but one, and could makee little or no defence; all these things, Isay, which I ought to have considered well of, and did cast up in mythoughts afterwards, took up none of my apprehensions at first; yet myhead ran mightily upon the thought of getting over to the shore.

  Now I wished for my boy Xury, and the long-boat with theshoulder-of-mutton sail, with which I sailed above a thousand miles onthe coast of Africa; but this was in vain: then I thought I would go andlook at our ship's boat, which, as I have said, was blown up upon theshore a great way, in the storm, when we were first cast away. She laynearly where she did at first, but not quite; having turned, by theforce of the waves and the winds, almost bottom upward, against a highridge of beachy rough sand; but no