176 WHAT NECESSITY DOES,

several other ingredients requisite to make it so good as I would
have had it been.

My next concern was, to get me a stone mortar to stamp or beat
some corn in; for as to the mill, there was no thought of arriving
to that perfection of art with one pair of hands. To supply this
want I was at a great loss; for of all trades in the world, I was
as perfectly unqualified for a stone-cutter as for any whatever ,
neither had I any tools to go about it with. I spent many a day
to find out a great stone big enough to cut hollow, and make fit
for a mortar, and could find none at all, except what was in the
solid rock, and which I had no way to dig or cut out: nor, in-
deed, were the rocks in the island of hardness sufficient, but were
all of a sandy, crumbling stone, which neither would bear the
weight of a heavy pestle, or would break the corn without filling
it with sand. So after a great deal of time lost in searching for
a stone, I gave it over, and resolved to look out for a great block
of hard wood, which I found indeed much easier; and getting one
as big as I had strength to stir, I rounded it, and formed it in
the outside with my axe and hatchet, and then, with the help of
fire and infinite labour, made a hollow place in it, as the Indians
in Brazil make their canoes. After this I made a great heavy
pestle or beater of the wood called the iron-wood, and this I pre-
pared and laid by against I had my next crop of corn, when I
proposed to myself to grind, or rather pound, my corn into meal
to make my bread.

My next difficulty was to make a sieve, or search, to dress my
meal, and to part it from the bran and the husk, without which I
did not see it possible I could have any bread. This was a most
difficult thing so much as but to think on; for to be sure I had
nothing like the necessary thing to make it—I mean fine thin
canvas, or stuff to search the meal through. And here I was at
a full stop for many months; nor did I really know what to do.
Linen I had none left, but what was mere rags. I had goats’ hair,
but neither knew I how to weave it or spin it; and had I known
how, here were no tools to work it with. All the remedy that I
found for this was, that at last I did remember I had among the
seamen’s clothes which were saved out of the ship some neckcloths