168 FOR EVERY HOUR ITS WORK.

   
    

WUS, and in this disposition of mind, I began
~\my third year, And though T have not given
s.the reader the trouble of so particular account
~of my works this year as the first, yet in
\ general it may be observed that I was very
seldom idle, but having regularly divided my
/ SRS time according to the several daily employments
that were before ie—such as, first, my duty to God and the reading
the Scriptures, which I constantly set apart some time for thrice
every day; secondly, the going abroad with my gun for food,
which generally took me up three hours in every morning when it
did not rain; thirdly, the ordering, curing, preserving, and cook-
ing what I had killed or caught for my supply,—these took up
great part of the day. Also it is to be considered that the middle
of the day, when the sun was in the zenith, the violence of the
heat was too great to stir out, so that about four hours in the
evening was all the time I could be supposed to work in; with
this exception, that sometimes I changed my hours of hunting and
working, and went to work in the morning and abroad with my
gun in the afternoon.

To this short time allowed for labour I desire may be added
the exceeding laboriousness of my work—the many hours which,
for want of tools, want of help, and want of skill, everything I did
tuok up out of my time. For example, I was full two-and-forty
days making me a board for a long shelf which I wanted in my
cave; whereas two sawyers, with their tools and a saw-pit, would
have cut six of them out of the same tree in half a day.

My case was this: It was to be a large tree which was to be
cut down, because my board was to be a broad one. This tree I
was three days a cutting down, and two more cutting off the
boughs, and reducing it to a log or piece of timber. With inex