122 BEGINNING A JOURNAL.

tools, and some with no more tools than an adze and a hatchet.
which perhaps were never made that way before, and that with in-
finite labour. For example, if I wanted a board, I had no other
way but to cut down a tree, sect it on an edge before me, and hew
it flat on either side with my axe, till I had brought it to be thin
as a plank, and then dubb it smooth with my adze. It is true, by
this method I could make but one board out of a whole tree, but
this I had no remedy for but patience, any more than I had for the
prodigious deal of time and labour which it took me up to make a
plank or board. But my time or labour was little worth, and so
it was as well employed one way as another.

However, I made me a table and a chair, as I observed above,
in the first place, and this I dil out of the short pieces of boards
that I brought on my raft from the ship. But when I had
wrought ont some boards, as above, I made large shelves of the
breadth of a foct and a half one over another, all along one side of
my cave, to lay all my tools, nails, and iron-work, and, in a word,
to separate everything at large in their places, that I might come
easily at them. I knocked pieces into the wall of the rock to hang
my guns and all things that would hang up.

So that had my cave been to be seen, it looked like a general
magazine of all necessary things; and I had everything so ready at
my hand that it was a great pleasure to me to see all my goods in
such order, and especially to find my stock of all necessaries so
great.

And now it was when I began to keep a journal of every day’s
employment—for indeed at first I was in too much hurry, and not
only hurry as to labour, but in too much discomposure of mind—
and my journal would have been full of many dull things. For ex-
ample, I must have said thus:—‘ September 30. After I got to shore
and had escaped drowning, instead of being thankful to God for my
deliverance—having first vomited with the great quantity of salt
water which was gotten into my stomach, and recovering myself a
little—I ran about the shore, wringing my hands and beating my
head and face, exclaiming at my misery, and crying out I was un-
done, undone! till, tired and faint, I was forced to lie down on the
ground to repose, but durst not sleep for fear of being devoured.”