180 SOME INGENIOUS EXPEDIENTS.

into the ground, for I made them much bigger than I need to
have done.

When this wall was finished, and the outside double fenced with
a turf wall raised up close to it, I persuaded myself that if any
people were to come on shore there, they would not perceive any-
thing like a habitation. And it was very well I did so, as may
be observed hereafter upon a very remarkable occasion.

During this time I made my rounds in the woods for game every
day when the rain admitted me, and made frequent discoveries in
these walks of something or other to my advantage. Particularly
JT found a kind of wild pigeons, which built not as wood-pigeons, in
a tree, but rather as house-pigeons, in the holes of the rocks; and
taking some young ones, I endeavoured to breed them up tame,
and did so; but when they grew older they flew all away, which
perhaps was at first for want of feeding them, for I had nothing
to give them. However, I frequently found their nests, and got
their young ones, which were very good meat.

And now, in the managing my household affairs, I found myself
wanting in many things, which I thought at first it was impossible
for me to make, as indeed as to some of them it was. For instance,
T could never make a cask to be hooped. I had a small runlet or
two, as I observed before, but I could never arrive to the capacity
of making one by them, though I spent many weeks about it. I
could neither put in the heads, nor joint the staves so true to one
another as to make them hold water. So I gave that also over.

In the next place, I was at a great loss for candle; so that as
soon as ever it was dark, which was generally by seven o'clock, I
was obliged to go to bed. I remembered the lump of bees-wax
with which I made candles in my African adventure, but I had
none of that now. The only remedy I had was, that when I had
killed a goat, I saved the tallow; and with a little dish made of
clay, which I baked in the sun, to which I added a wick of some
vakum, I made me a lamp, and this gave me light, though not a
clear, steady light, like a candle. In the middle of all my labours
it happened that, rummaging my things, I found a little bag,
which, as I hinted before, had been filled with corn for the feeding
of poultry, not for this voyage, but before, as I suppose, when