190 CRUSOE’S SMALL BOAT.

same posture and place, just as before. The chief things I was
employed in, besides my yearly labour of planting my barley and
rice and curing my raisins, of both which I always kept up just
enough to have sufficient stock of one year’s provisions beforehand ;
I say, besides this yearly labour and my daily labour of going out
with my gun, I had one labour to make me a canoe, which at last
I finished; so that, by the digging a canal to it of six feet wide
and four feet deep, I brought it into the creek, almost half a mile.
As for the first, which was so vastly big, as I made it without
considering beforehand, as I ought to do, how I should be able
to launch it, so never being able to bring it to the water, or bring
the water to it, I was obliged to let it lie where it was, as a me-
morandum to teach me to be wiser next time. Indeed, the next
time, though I could not get a tree proper for it, and in a place
where I could not get the water to it, at any less distance than as
I have said, near half a mile; yet, as I saw that it was practicable
at last, I never gave it over; and though I was near two years
about it, yet I never grudged my labour, in hopes of having a buat
to go off to sea at last.

However, though my little periagua was finished, yet the size
of it was not at all answerable to the design which I had in view
when I made the first—I mean, of venturing over to the terra firma,
where it was above forty miles broad. Accordingly, the smallness
of my boat assisted to put an end to that design, and now I thought
no more of it. But as I had a boat, my next design was to make
a tour round the island; for as I had been on the other side in
one place, crossing, as I have already described it, over the land,
so the discoveries I made in that little journey made me very eager
to see other parts of the coast; and now I had a boat, I thought
of nothing but sailing round the island.

For this purpose, that I might do everything with discretion
and consideration, I fitted up a little mast to my boat, and made
a sail to it out of some of the pieces of the ship’s sail, which lay
in store, and of which I had a great stock by me.

Having fitted my mast and sail, and tried the boat, I found she
would sail very well. Then I made little lockers, or boxes, at
either end of my boat, to put provisions, necessaries, and ammuni-