130 SOME INGENIOUS EXPEDIENTS.

into the ground, for I made them much bigger than I need te
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 gaine every
day when the rain admitted me, and made frequent discoveries in
these walks of something or other to my advantage. Particularly
I founda 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,
I 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
oakum, 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