116 CRUSOE’S ACTUAL CONDITION.

Then it occurred to me again how well I was furnished for my
subsistence, and what would have been my case if it had not
happened, which was an hundred thousand to one, that the ship
floated from the place where she first struck, and was driven so
near to the shore that I had time to get all those things out of
her. What would have been my case if I had been to have lived
in the condition in which I at first came on shore, without
necessaries of life, or necessaries to supply and procure them?
Particularly, said I aloud (though to myself), what should I have
done without a gun, without ammunition; without any tools to
make anything, or to work with; without clothes, bedding, a tent,
or any manner of covering; and that now I had all these to a
sufficient quantity, and was in a fair way to provide myself in such
a manner, as to live without my gun when my ammunition was
spent; so that I had a tolerable view of subsisting without any
want as long as I lived: for I considered from the beginning how
I would provide for the accidents that might happen, and for the
time that was to come, even not only after my ammunition should
be spent, but even after my health or strength should decay.

I confess I had not entertained any notion of my ammunition
being destroyed at one blast—I mean my powder being blown up
by lightning—and this made the thoughts of it so surprising to
me when it lightened and thundered, as I observed just now.

And now being to enter into a melancholy relation of a scene of
silent life, such perhaps as was never heard of in the world before,
I shall take it from its beginning, and continue it in its order. It
was, by my account, the 30th of September when, in the manner
as above said, I first set foot upon this horrid island, when the sun
being, to us, in its autumnal equinox, was almost just over my
head; for I reckoned myself, by observation, to be in the latitude
of 9 degrees 22 minutes north of the line. ;

After I had been there about ten or twelve days it came into
my thoughts that I should lose my reckoning of time for want of
books and pen and ink, and should even forget the Sabbath
days from the working days; but, to prevent this, I cut it with my
knife upon a large post, in capital letters, and making it into a
great cross, I set it up on the shore where I first landed—namely,