102 ROBINSON CRUSOE.

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 labor, 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 took up out of my time ; for example, I was full two and
forty days in making 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 in cutting down, and two more cutting off the
boughs, and reducing it to a log, or piece of timber. With in-
expressible hacking and hewing, I reduced both the sides of it
into chips till it began to be light enough to move ; then I
turned it, and made one side of it smooth and flat as a board
from end to end; then turning that side downward, cut the
other side till I brought the plank to be about three inches
thick, and smooth on both sides. Any one may judge the
labor of my hands in such a piece of work ; but labor and
patience carried me through that, and many other things; I
only observe this in particular, to show the reason why so much
of my time went away with so little work, viz.: that what might
be a little to be done with help and tools, was a vast labor and
required a prodigious time to do alone, and by hand. But not-
withstanding this, with patience and labor I got through every-
“ thing that my circumstances made necessary to me to do, as
will appear by what follows.

I was now, in the months of November and December,
expecting my crop of barley and rice. The ground I had
manured and dug up for them was not great ; for, as I observed,
my seed of each was not above the quantity of half a peck, for
T had lost one whole crop by sowing in the dry season: but
now my crop promised very well, when on a sudden I found I
was in danger of losing it all again by enemies of several sorts,
which it was scarcely possible to keep from it; as, first the
goats, and wild creatures which I called hares, who, tasting the
sweetness of the blade, lay in it night and day, as soon as it
came up, and ate it so close, that it could get no time to shoot
up into stalk.

This I saw no remedy for, but by making an enclosure about