118 LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF

yards when this thought occurred to me; so I presently stopped
short, and, for the beginning, I resolved to enclose a piece of
about one hundred and fifty yards in length, and one hundred
yards in breadth, which, as it would maintain as many as I should
have in any reasonable time, so, as my stock increased, I could
add more ground to my enclosure.

This was acting with some prudence, and I went to work with
courage. I was about three months hedging in the first piece ;
and, till I had done it, I tethered the three kids in the best part
of it, and used them to feed as near me as possible, to make them
familiar ; and very often I would go and carry them some ears of
barley, or a handful of rice, and feed them out of my hand; so
that after my enclosure was finished and I let them loose, they
would follow me up and down, bleating after me for a handful
of corn.

This answered my end, and in about a year and a half I had
a flock of about twelve goats, kids and all; and in two years
more I had three-and-forty, besides several that I took and
killed for my food. After that, I enclosed five several pieces
of ground to feed them in, with little pens to drive them into,
to take them as I wanted, and gates out of one piece of ground
into another.

But this was not all; for now I not only had goat’s flesh to
feed on when I pleased, but milk too—a thing which, indeed, in
the beginning, I did not so much as think of, and which, when it
came into my thoughts, was really an agreeable surprise, for now
I set up my dairy, and had sometimes a gallon or two of milk
in aday. And as Nature, who gives supplies of food to every
creature, dictates even naturally how to make use of it, so I, that
had never milked a cow, much less a goat, or seen butter or cheese
made only when I was a boy, after a great many essays and mis-
carriages, made both butter and cheese at last, also salt (though
I found it partly made to my hand by the heat of the sun upon
some of the rocks of the sea), and never wanted it afterwards.
How mercifully can our Creator treat His creatures, even in those
conditions in which they seemed to be overwhelmed in destruc-
tion! How can He sweeten the bitterest providences, and give
us cause to praise Him for dungeons and prisons! What a table
was here spread for me in the wilderness, where I saw nothing
at first but to perish for hunger !