The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808)
Page 83
thestory, the colony was undone; so that letting them know that they shouldnot have any mercy, they fell to work with their canoes, and destroyedthem, every one that the storm had not destroyed before; at the sight ofwhich the savages raised a hideous cry in the woods, which our peopleheard plain enough; after which they ran about the island likedistracted men; so that, in a word, our men did not really know at firstwhat to do with them.
Nor did the Spaniards, with all their prudence, consider that while theymade those people thus desperate, they ought to have kept good guard atthe same time upon their plantations; for though it is true they haddriven away their cattle, and the Indians did not find their mainretreat, I mean my old castle at the hill, nor the cave in the valley;yet they found out my plantation at the bower, and pulled it all topieces, and all the fences and planting about it; trod all the cornunder foot; tore up the vines and grapes, being just then almost ripe,and did our men an inestimable damage, though to themselves not onefarthing's-worth of service.
Though our men were able to fight them upon all occasions, yet they werein no condition to pursue them, or hunt them up and down; for as theywere too nimble of foot for our men when they found them single, so ourmen durst not go about single for fear of being surrounded with theirnumbers: the best was, they had no weapons; for though they had bowsthey had no arrows left, nor any materials to make any, nor had they anyedged tool or weapon among them. The extremity and distress they werereduced to was great, and indeed deplorable, but at the same time ourmen were also brought to very hard circumstances by them; for thoughtheir retreats were preserved, yet their provision was destroyed, andtheir harvest spoiled; and what to do or which way to turn themselves,they knew not; the only refuge they had now was the stock of cattle theyhad in the valley by the cave, and some little corn which grew there.The three Englishmen, William Atkins and his comrades, were now reducedto two, one of them being killed by an arrow, which struck him on theside of his head, just under the temples, so that he never spoke more;and it was very remarkable, that this was the same barbarous fellow whocut the poor savage slave with his hatchet, and who afterwards intendedto have murdered the Spaniards.
I look upon their case to have been worse at this time than mine was atany time after I first discovered the grains of barley and rice, and gotinto the method of planting and raising my corn, and my tame cattle; fornow they had, as I may say, an hundred wolves upon the island, whichwould devour every thing they could come at, yet could be very hardlycome at themselves.
The first thing they concluded when they saw what their circumstanceswere, was, that they would, if possible, drive them up to the fartherpart of the island, south-east, that if any more savages came on shore,they might not find one another; then that they would daily hunt andharass them, and kill as many of them as they could come at, till theyhad reduced the number; and if they could at last tame them, and bringthem to any thing, they would give them corn, and teach them how toplant, and live upon their daily Labour.
In order to this they followed them, and so terrified them with theirguns, that in a few days, if any of them fired a gun at an Indian, if hedid not hit him, yet he would fall down for fear; and so dreadfullyfrighted they were, that they kept out of sight farther and farther,till at last our men following them, and every day almost killing andwounding some of them, they kept up in the woods and hollow places somuch, that it reduced them to the utmost misery for want of food; andmany were afterwards found dead in the woods, without any hurt, butmerely starved to death.
When our men found this, it made their hearts relent, and pity movedthem; especially the Spaniard governor, who was the most gentleman-like,generous-minded man that ever I met with in my life; and he proposed, ifpossible, to take one of them alive, and bring him to understand whatthey meant, so far as to be able to act as interpreter, and to go amongthem, and see if they might be brought to some conditions that might bedepended upon, to save their lives, and do us no spoil.
It was some time before any of them could be taken; but being weak, andhalf-starved, one of them was at last surprised, and made a prisoner: hewas sullen at first, and would neither eat nor drink; but findinghimself kindly used, and victuals given him, and no violence offeredhim, he at last grew tractable, and came to himself.
They brought old Friday to him, who talked often with him, and told himhow kind the others would be to them all: that they would not only savetheir lives, but would give them a part of the island to live in,provided they would give satisfaction; that they should keep in theirown bounds, and not come beyond them, to injure or prejudice others; andthat they should have corn given them, to plant and make it grow fortheir bread, and some bread given them for their present subsistence;and old Friday bade the fellow go and talk with the rest of hiscountrymen, and hear what they said to it, assuring them that if theydid not agree immediately they should all be destroyed.
The poor wretches, thoroughly humbled, and reduced in number to aboutthirty-seven, closed with the proposal at the first offer, and begged tohave some food given them; upon which twelve Spaniards and twoEnglishmen, well armed, and three Indian slaves, and old Friday, marchedto the place where they were; the three Indian slaves carried them alarge quantity of bread, and some rice boiled up to cakes, and dried inthe sun, and three live goats; and they were ordered to go to the sideof an hill, where they sat down, ate the provisions very thankfully, andwere the most faithful fellows to their words that could be thought of;for except when they came to beg victuals and directions they never cameout of their bounds; and there they lived when I came to the island, andI went to see them.
They had taught them both to plant corn, make bread, breed tame goats,and milk them; they wanted nothing but wives, and they soon would havebeen a nation: they were confined to a neck of land surrounded with highrocks behind them, and lying plain towards the sea before them, on thesouth-east corner of the island; they had land enough, and it was verygood and fruitful; for they had a piece of land about a mile and a halfbroad, and three or four miles in length.
Our men taught them to make wooden spades, such as I made for myself;and gave among them twelve hatchets, and three or four knives; and therethey lived, the most subjected innocent creatures that were everheard of.
After this the colony enjoyed a perfect tranquillity with respect to thesavages, till I came to revisit them, which was in about two years. Notbut that now and then some canoes of savages came on shore for theirtriumphal, unnatural feasts; but as they were of several nations, and,perhaps, had never heard of those that came before, or the reason of it,they did not make any search or inquiry after their countrymen; and ifthey had, it would have been very hard for them to have found them out.
Thus, I think, I have given a full account of all that happened to themto my return, at least that was worth notice. The Indians, or savages,were wonderfully civilized by them, and they frequently went among them;but forbid, on pain of death, any of the Indians coming to them,because they would not have their settlement betrayed again.
One thing was very remarkable, viz. that they taught the savages to makewicker-work, or baskets; but they soon outdid their masters; for theymade abundance of most ingenious things in wicker-work; particularly allsorts of baskets, sieves, bird-cages, cupboards, &c. as also chairs tosit on, stools, beds, couches, and abundance of other things, being veryingenious at such work when they were once put in the way of it.
My coming was a particular relief to these people, because we furnishedthem with knives, scissars, spades, shovels, pickaxes, and all things ofthat kind which they could want.
With the help of these tools they were so very handy, that they came atlast to build up their huts, or houses, very handsomely; raddling, orworking it up like basket-work all the way round, which was a veryextraordinary piece of ingenuity, and looked very odd; but was anexceeding good fence, as well against heat, as against all sorts ofvermin; and our men were so taken with it, that they got the wildsavages to come and do the like for them; so that when I came
to see thetwo Englishmen's colonies, they looked, at a distance, as if they livedall like bees in a hive; and as for Will Atkins, who was now become avery industrious, necessary, and sober fellow, he had made himself sucha tent of basket work as I believe was never seen. It was one hundredand twenty paces round on the outside, as I measured by my steps; thewalls were as close worked as a basket, in pannels or squares,thirty-two in number, and very strong, standing about seven feet high:in the middle was another not above twenty-two paces round, but builtstronger, being eight-square in its form, and in the eight corners stoodeight very strong posts, round the top of which he laid strong pieces,joined together with wooden pins, from which he raised a pyramid beforethe roof of eight rafters, very handsome I assure you, and joinedtogether very well, though he had no nails, and only a few iron spikes,which he had made himself too, out of the old iron that I had leftthere; and indeed this fellow shewed abundance of ingenuity in severalthings which he had no knowledge of; he