by Daniel Defoe
water about her, as before. If I hadhad hands to have refitted her, and to have launched her into the water,the boat would have done very well, and I might have gone back into theBrazils with her easily enough; but I might have foreseen, that I couldno more turn her and set her upright upon her bottom, than I couldremove the island; however, I went to the woods, and cut levers androllers, and brought them to the boat, resolving to try what I could do;suggesting to myself, that if I could but turn her down, and repair thedamage she had received, she would be a very good boat, and I mightventure to sea in her.
I spared no pains, indeed, in this piece of fruitless toil, and spent, Ithink, three or four weeks about it: at last, finding it impossible toheave her up with my little strength, I fell to digging away the sand,to undermine her, and so as to make her fall down, setting pieces ofwood to thrust and guide her right in the fall.
But when I had done this, I was unable to stir her up again, or to getunder her, much less to move her forward towards the water; so I wasforced to give it over: and yet, though I gave over the hopes of theboat, my desire to venture over the main increased, rather thandiminished, as the means for it seemed impossible.
At length, I began to think whether it was not possible to make myself acanoe, or periagua, such as the natives of those climates make, evenwithout tools, or, as I might say, without hands, of the trunk of agreat tree. This I not only thought possible, but easy, and pleasedmyself extremely with the idea of making it, and with my having muchmore convenience for it than any of the Negroes or Indians; but not atall considering the particular inconveniences which I lay under morethan the Indians did, viz. the want of hands to move it into the waterwhen it was made, a difficulty much harder for me to surmount than allthe consequences of want of tools could be to them: for what could itavail me, if, after I had chosen my tree, and with much trouble cut itdown, and might be able with my tools to hew and dub the outside intothe proper shape of a boat, and burn or cut out the inside to make ithollow, so as to make a boat of it; if, after all this, I must leave itjust where I found it, and was not able to launch it into the water?
One would imagine, if I had had the least reflection upon my mind of mycircumstances while I was making this boat, I should have immediatelythought how I was to get it into the sea: but my thoughts were so intentupon my voyage in it, that I never once considered how I should get itoff the land; and it was really, in its own nature, more easy for me toguide it over forty-five miles of sea, than the forty-five fathoms ofland, 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 able to undertake it; not but that thedifficulty of launching my boat came often into my head; but I put astop to my own inquiries into it, by this foolish answer: Let me firstmake it; I warrant I will find some way or other to get it along whenit is done.
This was a most preposterous method; but the eagerness of my fancyprevailed, and to work I went. I felled a cedar tree, and I questionmuch whether Solomon ever had such a one for the building of the Templeat Jerusalem; it was five feet ten inches diameter at the lower partnext the stump, and four feet eleven inches diameter at the end oftwenty-two feet, where it lessened, and then parted into branches. Itwas not without infinite labour that I felled this tree; I was twentydays hacking and hewing at the bottom, and fourteen more getting thebranches and limbs, and the vast spreading head of it, cut off: afterthis, it cost me a month to shape it and dub it to a proportion, and tosomething like the bottom of a boat, that it might swim upright as itought to do. It cost me near three months more to clear the inside, andwork 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 tohave carried six and twenty men, and consequently big enough to havecarried 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 there remained nothing but to get it into thewater; which, had I accomplished, I make no question but I should havebegun the maddest voyage, and the most unlikely to be performed, thatever was undertaken.
But all my devices to get it into the water failed me; though they costme inexpressible labour too. It lay about one hundred yards from thewater, and not more; but the first inconvenience was, it was up hilltowards the creek. Well, to take away this discouragement, I resolved todig into the surface of the earth, and so make a declivity: this Ibegun, and it cost me a prodigious deal of pains; (but who grudge painsthat have their deliverance in view?) when this was worked through, andthis difficulty managed, it was still much the same, for I could no morestir the canoe than I could the other boat. Then I measured the distanceof ground, and resolved to cut a dock or canal, to bring the water up tothe canoe, seeing I could not bring the canoe down to the water. Well, Ibegan this work; and when I began to enter upon it, and calculate howdeep it was to be dug, how broad, how the stuff was to be thrown out, Ifound by the number of hands I had, having none but my own, that it musthave been ten or twelve years before I could have gone through with it;for the shore lay so high, that at the upper end it must have been atleast twenty feet deep; this attempt, though with great reluctancy, Iwas at length obliged to give over also.
This grieved me heartily; and now I saw, though too late, the folly ofbeginning a work before we count the cost, and before we judge rightlyof our own strength to go through with it.
In the middle of this work, I finished my fourth year in this place, andkept my anniversary with the same devotion, and with as much comfort asbefore; for, by a constant study and serious application to the word ofGod, and by the assistance of his grace, I gained a different knowledgefrom what I had before; I entertained different notions of things; Ilooked now upon the world as a thing remote, which I had nothing to dowith, no expectation from, and, indeed, no desires about: in a word, Ihad nothing to do with it, nor was ever likely to have; I thought itlooked, as we may perhaps look upon it hereafter, viz. as, a place I hadlived in, but was come out of it; and well might I say, as fatherAbraham to Dives, "Between me and thee is a great gulf fixed."
In the first place, I was here removed from all the wickedness of theworld; I had neither the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, nor thepride of life. I had nothing to covet, for I had all that I was nowcapable of enjoying: I was lord of the whole manor; or, if I pleased, Imight call myself king or emperor over the whole country which I hadpossession of; there were no rivals; I had no competitor, none todispute sovereignty or command with me: I might have raisedship-loadings of corn, but I had no use for it; so I let as little growas I thought enough for my occasion. I had tortoise or turtle enough,but now and then one was as much as I could put to any use: I had timberenough to have built a fleet of ships; and I had grapes enough to havemade wine, or to have cured into raisins, to have loaded that fleet whenit had been built.
But all I could make use of was all that was valuable: I had enough toeat and supply my wants, and what was the rest to me? If I killed moreflesh than I could eat, the dog must eat it, or vermin; if I sowed morecorn than I could eat, it must be spoiled; the trees that I cut downwere lying to rot on the ground; I could make no more use of them thanfor fuel, and that I had no other occasion for but to dress my food.
In a word, the nature and experience of things dictated to me, upon justreflection, that all the good things of this world, are of no farthergood to us than for our use; and that whatever we may heap up to giveothers, we enjoy only as much as we can use, and no more. The mostcovetous griping miser in the world would have been cured of the vice ofcovetousness, if he had been in my case; for I possessed infinitely morethan I knew what to do with. I had no room for desire, except it was forthings which I had not, and they were comparatively b
ut trifles, thoughindeed of great use to me. I had, as I hinted before, a parcel of money,as well gold as silver, about thirty-six pounds sterling. Alas! therethe nasty, sorry, useless stuff lay: I had no manner of business forit; and I often thought within myself, that I would have given a handfulof it for a gross of tobacco-pipes, or for a hand-mill to grind my corn;nay, I would have given it all for sixpenny-worth of turnip and carrotseed from England, or for a handful of peas and beans, and a bottle ofink. As it was, I had not the least advantage by it, or benefit from it;but there it lay in a drawer, and grew mouldy with the damp of the cavein the wet seasons; and if I had had the drawer full of diamonds, it hadbeen the same case,--they had been of no manner of value to me becauseof no use.
I had now brought my state of life to be much more comfortable in itselfthan it was at first, and much easier to my mind, as well as to my body.I frequently sat down to meat with thankfulness, and admired the hand ofGod's providence, which had
