THE BOAT THAT WOULD NOT GO TO SEA. 18)

take it; not but that the difficulty of launching my boat came ofton
into my head, but I put a stop to my own inquiries into it, by
this foolish answer which I gave myself, “ Let’s first make it; Il
warrant I’ll find some way or other to get it along when ’tis done.”

This was a most preposterous method; but the eagerness of my
fancy prevailed, and to work I went. I felle
question much whether Solomon ever had such a one for the build-
ing of the Temple at Jerusalem! It was five feet ten inches
diameter at the lower part next the stump, and four feet eleven
inches diameter at the end of twenty-two feet, after which it
lessened for a while, and then parted into branches. It was not
without infinite labour that I felled this tree. I was twenty days
hacking and hewing at it at the bottom. I was fourteen more
vetting the branches and limbs and the vast spreading head of it
cut off, which I hacked and hewed through with axe and hatchet,
and inexpressible labour. After this it cost me a month to shape
it and dub it to a proportion, and to something like the bottom of
a boat, that it might swim upright as it ought to do. It cost me
near three months more to clear the inside, and work it so as to
make an exact boat of it. This I did indeed without fire, by mere
mallet and chisel, and by the dint of hard labour, till I had brought
it to be a very handsome periagua, and big enough to have carried
six-and-twenty men, and consequently big enough to have carried
me and all my cargo.

When I had gone through this work I was Saari delighted
‘ with it. he boat was really much bigger than I ever saw a canoe
or periagua, that was made of one tree, in my life. Many a weary
stroke it had cost, you may be sure, and there remained nothing
but to get it into the water; and had I gotten it into the water, I
make no question but I should have begun the maddest voyage,
and the most unlikely to be performed, that ever was undertaken.

But all my devices to get it into the water failed me, though
they cost me infinite labour too. It lay about one hundred yards
from the water, and not more; but the first inconvenience was, it
was up-hill towards the creek. Well, to take away this discourage-
ment, I resolved to dig into the surface of the earth, and so make
a declivity. This I began, and it cost me a prodigious deal of