CHAPTER VII--AGRICULTURAL EXPERIENCE
I had now been in this unhappy island above ten months. All possibilityof deliverance from this condition seemed to be entirely taken from me;and I firmly believe that no human shape had ever set foot upon thatplace. Having now secured my habitation, as I thought, fully to my mind,I had a great desire to make a more perfect discovery of the island, andto see what other productions I might find, which I yet knew nothing of.
It was on the 15th of July that I began to take a more particular surveyof the island itself. I went up the creek first, where, as I hinted, Ibrought my rafts on shore. I found after I came about two miles up, thatthe tide did not flow any higher, and that it was no more than a littlebrook of running water, very fresh and good; but this being the dryseason, there was hardly any water in some parts of it--at least notenough to run in any stream, so as it could be perceived. On the banksof this brook I found many pleasant savannahs or meadows, plain, smooth,and covered with grass; and on the rising parts of them, next to thehigher grounds, where the water, as might be supposed, never overflowed,I found a great deal of tobacco, green, and growing to a great and verystrong stalk. There were divers other plants, which I had no notion ofor understanding about, that might, perhaps, have virtues of their own,which I could not find out. I searched for the cassava root, which theIndians, in all that climate, make their bread of, but I could find none.I saw large plants of aloes, but did not understand them. I saw severalsugar-canes, but wild, and, for want of cultivation, imperfect. Icontented myself with these discoveries for this time, and came back,musing with myself what course I might take to know the virtue andgoodness of any of the fruits or plants which I should discover, butcould bring it to no conclusion; for, in short, I had made so littleobservation while I was in the Brazils, that I knew little of the plantsin the field; at least, very little that might serve to any purpose nowin my distress.
The next day, the sixteenth, I went up the same way again; and aftergoing something further than I had gone the day before, I found the brookand the savannahs cease, and the country become more woody than before.In this part I found different fruits, and particularly I found melonsupon the ground, in great abundance, and grapes upon the trees. Thevines had spread, indeed, over the trees, and the clusters of grapes werejust now in their prime, very ripe and rich. This was a surprisingdiscovery, and I was exceeding glad of them; but I was warned by myexperience to eat sparingly of them; remembering that when I was ashorein Barbary, the eating of grapes killed several of our Englishmen, whowere slaves there, by throwing them into fluxes and fevers. But I foundan excellent use for these grapes; and that was, to cure or dry them inthe sun, and keep them as dried grapes or raisins are kept, which Ithought would be, as indeed they were, wholesome and agreeable to eatwhen no grapes could be had.
I spent all that evening there, and went not back to my habitation;which, by the way, was the first night, as I might say, I had lain fromhome. In the night, I took my first contrivance, and got up in a tree,where I slept well; and the next morning proceeded upon my discovery;travelling nearly four miles, as I might judge by the length of thevalley, keeping still due north, with a ridge of hills on the south andnorth side of me. At the end of this march I came to an opening wherethe country seemed to descend to the west; and a little spring of freshwater, which issued out of the side of the hill by me, ran the other way,that is, due east; and the country appeared so fresh, so green, soflourishing, everything being in a constant verdure or flourish of springthat it looked like a planted garden. I descended a little on the sideof that delicious vale, surveying it with a secret kind of pleasure,though mixed with my other afflicting thoughts, to think that this wasall my own; that I was king and lord of all this country indefensibly,and had a right of possession; and if I could convey it, I might have itin inheritance as completely as any lord of a manor in England. I sawhere abundance of cocoa trees, orange, and lemon, and citron trees; butall wild, and very few bearing any fruit, at least not then. However,the green limes that I gathered were not only pleasant to eat, but verywholesome; and I mixed their juice afterwards with water, which made itvery wholesome, and very cool and refreshing. I found now I had businessenough to gather and carry home; and I resolved to lay up a store as wellof grapes as limes and lemons, to furnish myself for the wet season,which I knew was approaching. In order to do this, I gathered a greatheap of grapes in one place, a lesser heap in another place, and a greatparcel of limes and lemons in another place; and taking a few of eachwith me, I travelled homewards; resolving to come again, and bring a bagor sack, or what I could make, to carry the rest home. Accordingly,having spent three days in this journey, I came home (so I must now callmy tent and my cave); but before I got thither the grapes were spoiled;the richness of the fruit and the weight of the juice having broken themand bruised them, they were good for little or nothing; as to the limes,they were good, but I could bring but a few.
The next day, being the nineteenth, I went back, having made me two smallbags to bring home my harvest; but I was surprised, when coming to myheap of grapes, which were so rich and fine when I gathered them, to findthem all spread about, trod to pieces, and dragged about, some here, somethere, and abundance eaten and devoured. By this I concluded there weresome wild creatures thereabouts, which had done this; but what they wereI knew not. However, as I found there was no laying them up on heaps,and no carrying them away in a sack, but that one way they would bedestroyed, and the other way they would be crushed with their own weight,I took another course; for I gathered a large quantity of the grapes, andhung upon the out-branches of the trees, that they might cure and dry inthe sun; and as for the limes and lemons, I carried as many back as Icould well stand under.
When I came home from this journey, I contemplated with great pleasurethe fruitfulness of that valley, and the pleasantness of the situation;the security from storms on that side of the water, and the wood: andconcluded that I had pitched upon a place to fix my abode which was byfar the worst part of the country. Upon the whole, I began to considerof removing my habitation, and looking out for a place equally safe aswhere now I was situate, if possible, in that pleasant, fruitful part ofthe island.
This thought ran long in my head, and I was exceeding fond of it for sometime, the pleasantness of the place tempting me; but when I came to anearer view of it, I considered that I was now by the seaside, where itwas at least possible that something might happen to my advantage, and,by the same ill fate that brought me hither might bring some otherunhappy wretches to the same place; and though it was scarce probablethat any such thing should ever happen, yet to enclose myself among thehills and woods in the centre of the island was to anticipate my bondage,and to render such an affair not only improbable, but impossible; andthat therefore I ought not by any means to remove. However, I was soenamoured of this place, that I spent much of my time there for the wholeof the remaining part of the month of July; and though upon secondthoughts, I resolved not to remove, yet I built me a little kind of abower, and surrounded it at a distance with a strong fence, being adouble hedge, as high as I could reach, well staked and filled betweenwith brushwood; and here I lay very secure, sometimes two or three nightstogether; always going over it with a ladder; so that I fancied now I hadmy country house and my sea-coast house; and this work took me up to thebeginning of August.
I had but newly finished my fence, and began to enjoy my labour, when therains came on, and made me stick close to my first habitation; for thoughI had made me a tent like the other, with a piece of a sail, and spreadit very well, yet I had not the shelter of a hill to keep me from storms,nor a cave behind me to retreat into when the rains were extraordinary.
About the beginning of August, as I said, I had finished my bower, andbegan to enjoy myself. The 3rd of August, I found the grapes I had hungup perfectly dried, and, indeed, were excellent good raisins of the sun;so I began to take them down from the trees, and it was very happy that Idid so, for the ra
ins which followed would have spoiled them, and I hadlost the best part of my winter food; for I had above two hundred largebunches of them. No sooner had I taken them all down, and carried themost of them home to my cave, than it began to rain; and from hence,which was the 14th of August, it rained, more or less, every day till themiddle of October; and sometimes so violently, that I could not stir outof my cave for several days.
In this season I was much surprised with the increase of my family; I hadbeen concerned for the loss of one of my cats, who ran away from me, or,as I thought, had been dead, and I heard no more tidings of her till, tomy astonishment, she came home about the end of August with threekittens. This was the more strange to me because, though I had killed awild cat, as I called it, with my gun, yet I thought it was quite adifferent kind from our European cats; but the young cats were the samekind of house-breed as the old one; and both my cats being females, Ithought it very strange. But from these three cats I afterwards came tobe so pestered with cats that I was forced to kill them like vermin orwild beasts, and to drive them from my house as much as possible.
From the 14th of August to the 26th, incessant rain, so that I could notstir, and was now very careful not to be much wet. In this confinement,I began to be straitened for food: but venturing out twice, I one daykilled a goat; and the last day, which was the 26th, found a very largetortoise, which was a treat to me, and my food was regulated thus: I atea bunch of raisins for my breakfast; a piece of the goat's flesh, or ofthe turtle, for my dinner, broiled--for, to my great misfortune, I had novessel to boil or stew anything; and two or three of the turtle's eggsfor my supper.
During this confinement in my cover by the rain, I worked daily two orthree hours at enlarging my cave, and by degrees worked it on towards oneside, till I came to the outside of the hill, and made a door or way out,which came beyond my fence or wall; and so I came in and out this way.But I was not perfectly easy at lying so open; for, as I had managedmyself before, I was in a perfect enclosure; whereas now I thought I layexposed, and open for anything to come in upon me; and yet I could notperceive that there was any living thing to fear, the biggest creaturethat I had yet seen upon the island being a goat.
_Sept._ 30.--I was now come to the unhappy anniversary of my landing. Icast up the notches on my post, and found I had been on shore threehundred and sixty-five days. I kept this day as a solemn fast, settingit apart for religious exercise, prostrating myself on the ground withthe most serious humiliation, confessing my sins to God, acknowledgingHis righteous judgments upon me, and praying to Him to have mercy on methrough Jesus Christ; and not having tasted the least refreshment fortwelve hours, even till the going down of the sun, I then ate abiscuit-cake and a bunch of grapes, and went to bed, finishing the day asI began it. I had all this time observed no Sabbath day; for as at firstI had no sense of religion upon my mind, I had, after some time, omittedto distinguish the weeks, by making a longer notch than ordinary for theSabbath day, and so did not really know what any of the days were; butnow, having cast up the days as above, I found I had been there a year;so I divided it into weeks, and set apart every seventh day for aSabbath; though I found at the end of my account I had lost a day or twoin my reckoning. A little after this, my ink began to fail me, and so Icontented myself to use it more sparingly, and to write down only themost remarkable events of my life, without continuing a daily memorandumof other things.
The rainy season and the dry season began now to appear regular to me,and I learned to divide them so as to provide for them accordingly; but Ibought all my experience before I had it, and this I am going to relatewas one of the most discouraging experiments that I made.
I have mentioned that I had saved the few ears of barley and rice, whichI had so surprisingly found spring up, as I thought, of themselves, and Ibelieve there were about thirty stalks of rice, and about twenty ofbarley; and now I thought it a proper time to sow it, after the rains,the sun being in its southern position, going from me. Accordingly, Idug up a piece of ground as well as I could with my wooden spade, anddividing it into two parts, I sowed my grain; but as I was sowing, itcasually occurred to my thoughts that I would not sow it all at first,because I did not know when was the proper time for it, so I sowed abouttwo-thirds of the seed, leaving about a handful of each. It was a greatcomfort to me afterwards that I did so, for not one grain of what I sowedthis time came to anything: for the dry months following, the earthhaving had no rain after the seed was sown, it had no moisture to assistits growth, and never came up at all till the wet season had come again,and then it grew as if it had been but newly sown. Finding my first seeddid not grow, which I easily imagined was by the drought, I sought for amoister piece of ground to make another trial in, and I dug up a piece ofground near my new bower, and sowed the rest of my seed in February, alittle before the vernal equinox; and this having the rainy months ofMarch and April to water it, sprung up very pleasantly, and yielded avery good crop; but having part of the seed left only, and not daring tosow all that I had, I had but a small quantity at last, my whole crop notamounting to above half a peck of each kind. But by this experiment Iwas made master of my business, and knew exactly when the proper seasonwas to sow, and that I might expect two seed-times and two harvests everyyear.
While this corn was growing I made a little discovery, which was of useto me afterwards. As soon as the rains were over, and the weather beganto settle, which was about the month of November, I made a visit up thecountry to my bower, where, though I had not been some months, yet Ifound all things just as I left them. The circle or double hedge that Ihad made was not only firm and entire, but the stakes which I had cut outof some trees that grew thereabouts were all shot out and grown with longbranches, as much as a willow-tree usually shoots the first year afterlopping its head. I could not tell what tree to call it that thesestakes were cut from. I was surprised, and yet very well pleased, to seethe young trees grow; and I pruned them, and led them up to grow as muchalike as I could; and it is scarce credible how beautiful a figure theygrew into in three years; so that though the hedge made a circle of abouttwenty-five yards in diameter, yet the trees, for such I might now callthem, soon covered it, and it was a complete shade, sufficient to lodgeunder all the dry season. This made me resolve to cut some more stakes,and make me a hedge like this, in a semi-circle round my wall (I meanthat of my first dwelling), which I did; and placing the trees or stakesin a double row, at about eight yards distance from my first fence, theygrew presently, and were at first a fine cover to my habitation, andafterwards served for a defence also, as I shall observe in its order.
I found now that the seasons of the year might generally be divided, notinto summer and winter, as in Europe, but into the rainy seasons and thedry seasons, which were generally thus:--The half of February, the wholeof March, and the half of April--rainy, the sun being then on or near theequinox.
The half of April, the whole of May, June, and July, and the half ofAugust--dry, the sun being then to the north of the line.
The half of August, the whole of September, and the half ofOctober--rainy, the sun being then come back.
The half of October, the whole of November, December, and January, andthe half of February--dry, the sun being then to the south of the line.
The rainy seasons sometimes held longer or shorter as the winds happenedto blow, but this was the general observation I made. After I had foundby experience the ill consequences of being abroad in the rain, I tookcare to furnish myself with provisions beforehand, that I might not beobliged to go out, and I sat within doors as much as possible during thewet months. This time I found much employment, and very suitable also tothe time, for I found great occasion for many things which I had no wayto furnish myself with but by hard labour and constant application;particularly I tried many ways to make myself a basket, but all the twigsI could get for the purpose proved so brittle that they would do nothing.It proved of excellent advantage to me now, that when I was a boy, I usedto take great d
elight in standing at a basket-maker's, in the town wheremy father lived, to see them make their wicker-ware; and being, as boysusually are, very officious to help, and a great observer of the mannerin which they worked those things, and sometimes lending a hand, I had bythese means full knowledge of the methods of it, and I wanted nothing butthe materials, when it came into my mind that the twigs of that tree fromwhence I cut my stakes that grew might possibly be as tough as thesallows, willows, and osiers in England, and I resolved to try.Accordingly, the next day I went to my country house, as I called it, andcutting some of the smaller twigs, I found them to my purpose as much asI could desire; whereupon I came the next time prepared with a hatchet tocut down a quantity, which I soon found, for there was great plenty ofthem. These I set up to dry within my circle or hedge, and when theywere fit for use I carried them to my cave; and here, during the nextseason, I employed myself in making, as well as I could, a great manybaskets, both to carry earth or to carry or lay up anything, as I hadoccasion; and though I did not finish them very handsomely, yet I madethem sufficiently serviceable for my purpose; thus, afterwards, I tookcare never to be without them; and as my wicker-ware decayed, I mademore, especially strong, deep baskets to place my corn in, instead ofsacks, when I should come to have any quantity of it.
Having mastered this difficulty, and employed a world of time about it, Ibestirred myself to see, if possible, how to supply two wants. I had novessels to hold anything that was liquid, except two runlets, which werealmost full of rum, and some glass bottles--some of the common size, andothers which were case bottles, square, for the holding of water,spirits, &c. I had not so much as a pot to boil anything, except a greatkettle, which I saved out of the ship, and which was too big for such asI desired it--viz. to make broth, and stew a bit of meat by itself. Thesecond thing I fain would have had was a tobacco-pipe, but it wasimpossible to me to make one; however, I found a contrivance for that,too, at last. I employed myself in planting my second rows of stakes orpiles, and in this wicker-working all the summer or dry season, whenanother business took me up more time than it could be imagined I couldspare.