GATHERING THE VINTAGE. 155

now I had my country house and my sea-coast house. And this
work took me up to the beginning of August. J

I had but newly finished my fence and begun to enjoy my
labour, when the rains came on, and made me stick close to my
first habitation. For though I had made me a tent like the other,
with a piece of a sail, and spread it 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 and begun to enjoy myself. The 3rd of August I found
the grapes I had hung up were 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 I did so, for the rains
which followed would have spoiled them, and I had lost the best
part of my winter food, for I had above two hundred large bunches
of them. No sooner had I taken them all down, and carried most
of them home to my cave but it began to rain, and from hence,
which was the 14th of August, it rained more or less every day
till the middle of October; and sometimes go violently that I could
not stir out of my cave for several days.

In this season I was much surprised with the increase of my
family. I had been concerned for the loss of one of my cats,
which ran away from me, or as I thought had been dead, and I
heard no more tale or tidings of her till, to my astonishment, she
came home about,the end of August with three kittens! This
was the more strange to me because, though I had killed a wild
cat, as I called it, with my gun, yet I thought it was a quite
different kind from our European cats; yet the young cats were
the same kind of house breed like the old one; and both my cats
being females, I thought it very strange. But from these three
cats I afterwards came to be so pestered with cats that I was
forced to kill them like vermin or wild 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 not stir, 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 day killed a goat, and the last day, which was the