Table

of Contents

About the Author

Title Page
Copyright Page
Introduction
Preface

I Go to Sea
I Am Captured by Pirates
I Escape from the Sallee Rover
I Become a Brazilian Planter
I Go on Board in an Evil Hour
I Furnish Myself with Many Things
I Build My Fortress
The Journal
I Sow My Grain
I Travel Quite Across the Island
I Am Very Seldom Idle
I Make Myself a Canoe
I Improve Myself in the Mechanic Exercises
I Find the Print of a Man’s Naked Foot
I See the Shore Spread with Bones
I Seldom Go from My Cell
I See the Wreck of a Ship
I Hear the First Sound of a Man’s Voice
I Call Him Friday
We Make Another Canoe
We March Out Against the Cannibals
We Plan a Voyage to the Colonies of America
We Quell a Mutiny
We Seize the Ship
I Find My Wealth All About Me
We Cross the Mountains
I Revisit My Island

Afterword
Selected Bibliography
Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) lived a life full of business successes and reverses, financial
gains and losses, and political victories and defeats. Sent by his father to study for the
ministry, Defoe entered the business world instead. In 1685, Defoe took part in the Duke
of Monmouth’s ill-fated rebellion against King James II; and in 1688, he joined a
volunteer regiment that acted as William III’s escort into London. By 1692, Defoe’s
business affairs had foundered and creditors filed suit against him, but he talked his way
out of debtors’ prison. His poem The True-Born Englishman (1701) met with resounding
success. In 1702, after he attacked the Tories in a pamphlet, the enraged government
imprisoned him for two years; upon his release, he became a secret agent for the
government. Between 1718 and 1723 he published Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders, and
A Journal of the Plague Year.
Paul Theroux is the award-winning author of such novels as Picture Palace (winner of
the Whitbread Prize for fiction) , The Mosquito Coast, My Secret History, Saint Jack, and
Kowloon Tong. He has also published numerous best-selling travel books, including The
Great Railway Bazaar, The Kingdom by the Sea, and The Pillars of Hercules.
Robert Mayer is Professor of British Literature and Director of the Screen Studies
Program at Oklahoma State University. He is the author of History and the Early English
Novel: Matters of Fact from Bacon to Defoe and the editor of Eighteenth-Century Fiction
on Screen. His recent work includes the essay ‘‘Robinson Crusoe in Hollywood’’ and an
ongoing study of authorship and reading that focuses on Sir Walter Scott.
 SIGNET CLASSICS
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Introduction copyright © Paul Theroux, 1998
Afterword copyright © Robert Mayer, 2008
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 Introduction
Robinson Crusoe, an adventure story of the ultimate castaway, is so established in most
people’s minds that even those who have not read it know some details of the story:
Shipwreck. Desert island. Goatskin jacket and funny hat. Hairy umbrella. Talking parrot.
Shocking footprint. Man Friday. Cannibals. Rescue. It is all so familiar as an apparently
simple, wonderful tale of survival that it is easily read as a great yarn.
Crusoe is too human and accident prone to be truly heroic—this may be another reason
for his enduring appeal. But the island setting is also a compelling feature of his story, for
the island as a microcosm of the world has been used imaginatively in English in works as
diverse as Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Golding’s Lord of the Flies. Crusoe is more
stubborn than brave, and his first-person narrative, the more believable for being defiantly
unliterary, can be appreciated as the account of a man’s twenty-eight-year ordeal of
loneliness, hunger, and physical threat; a man who ingeniously succeeds against the odds.
But it is all so assured and so filled with plausible episodes and peculiar wisdom, it helps
to be reminded that it was the first English novel and was written by a man nearly sixty,
who resembled his fictional creation in his need to scheme in order to survive. Defoe was
a master of improvisation, and he had to be, for his life was a chronicle of ups and downs
—which is a fair description of this novel.
Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) was, in the words of one critic, ‘‘a shrewd, shifty, ingenious
man, much mistrusted and frequently imprisoned.’’ He was imprisoned for debt as well as
for his satirical writing, and his reverses included bankruptcy and the failure of get-rich-
quick schemes, of which raising civet cats (their glands were used for perfume) for quick
cash was just one. He was a journalist, publisher, poet, businessman, and sometime secret
agent, whose first novel—the first in the English language—was a huge hit, running into
many editions and being quickly pirated and imitated.
One of the reasons for the success of this piece of fiction was that it was taken for fact.
It is utterly, vulgarly modern in that sense. In the preface, Defoe, wearing the mask of
editor, wrote, ‘‘The editor believes the thing to be a just history of fact; neither is there any
appearance of fiction in it.’’ Defoe (who took the view that fiction could be a low and
subversive trick that encouraged mendacity) had hit upon an idea that persists to this day
—that if a book is said to be true, it is somehow a more important and authentic piece. ‘‘A
true story, based on actual events,’’ runs the assertion in the made-for -TV movie. ‘‘It
really happened!’’ the person says, who urges you to read such a book. That was also what
Defoe wanted people to say in 1719 when Robinson Crusoe was first published; and they
did say it and believed it.
The story is sensational—even today a story about such a castaway would be front-page
news. But with time and rereading this adventure deepens in meaning, and the longer you
live, the more impressive an achievement Robinson Crusoe becomes, turning from
amazing tale to a subtle study in innovation, a metaphor for human survival, and
ultimately one of our own mythical tales, almost Biblical in its morality: Robinson is as
vivid and unambiguous a character as Job or Jonah, two people he specifically mentions.
 And surely it is significant that the very first English novel is a desert island story, just
one man in the middle of nowhere, with almost nothing, who survives to create a whole
world. In this sense the novel is like an allegory of the history of humankind. The
narrative emerges from chaos, with no society or props to speak of. A whole metaphor of
creation is described in this book, which is as surprising in its action as in its intelligence.
Its contradictions are the contradictions in the lives of many people; it embodies many of
our discontents and dilemmas. No women figure in its drama; there is no passion, and
though there is affection, there is hardly any love. But in its understated way the novel
discusses just about everything else—materialism, isolation, arrogance, travel, friendship,
imperialism, rebellious children, the relativity of wealth, the conundrum of power, the
ironies of solitude, learning by doing; it is about faith, atonement, and the passage of time.
It is also as practical as a pair of shoes. No sooner is the ordeal over than Crusoe is back,
founding a colony and counting his money; and in the same way, the Crusoe idea
continued, producing sequels and parodies, giving words to the language—‘‘Crusoe’’ is a
byword for castaway, as ‘‘Friday’’ is a synonym for helper.
Robinson begins life as a disobedient and hubristic, if accident-prone boy. He is given
any amount of advice by his sententious father, the German immigrant to England, Herr
Kreutznaer, who anglicized his name to Crusoe. The name change is a nice touch in a
book full of detail, which is the more plausible for its being strange and even somewhat
unnecessary. But as it happens, Defoe also changed his name, Frenchifying it, for his
father’s name was plain Mr. Foe. Daniel Defoe was anything but average, but he chose to
write about a pretty ordinary, though arrogant, young man who (ignoring his father’s
Teutonic and pedestrian sermon on the safety of staying home) leaves home and finds
himself involved in extraordinary events, beginning just days after his departure, when on
his first voyage, his ship sinks. He is not deterred, and not even put off by a fairly
prescient man who looks him in the eye and says that wherever he goes he ‘‘will meet
with nothing but disasters and disappointments.’’
Soon after, battling sea monsters, Crusoe is saved by his servant Xury; instead of
rewarding him for his efforts, he sells Xury into slavery, and it is only when he is a
harassed planter in Brazil that he regrets selling Xury, for he realizes that he could use a
slave to help him in his work. He thinks of Xury again in this way on the island. That
crudely human logic is one of the most plausible aspects of the novel; and it frequently
gives rise to Crusoe’s refrain that he can’t seem to do anything right. He even claims in
this early stage that as a tobacco farmer in rural Brazil he is living ‘‘like a man cast away
upon some desolate island, that had no body there but himself.’’
A few pages later, in one of Defoe’s calculated ironies, Crusoe is shipwrecked on a
slaving expedition, and begins to understand the reality behind his desert-island hyperbole,
as he becomes a real castaway on an island of real desolation. There is no question that
Defoe intended a morality tale, but as a prolific writer (four hundred works bear his
name), he was well-enough acquainted with the public taste to know that for his story to
be believed it needed persuasive detail. Crusoe is not high-minded. He is a rebellious son
who is attracted to the risky and the morally doubtful. He is inexperienced, not a Londoner
but a young provincial, a Yorkshireman. That he is from a reasonably well-off family
makes him seem out of touch and a bit innocent; he keeps reminding us how average he is
in being incompetent (‘‘I had never handled a tool in my life’’), and accident prone (‘‘I
that was born to be my own destroyer’’), and he is not at all religious until he finds a Bible
among the tools and seeds and paraphernalia he rescues from the smashed ship.
He survives by growing and maturing; but he does more than survive—he ends by
ruling the island, by becoming if not wise, then sensible; by acquiring power and using it
with understanding. He progresses from being an almost-victim to an almost-dictator. One
of the most satisfying aspects of the novel is that in order to prevail over the natural
obstacles of his island, Crusoe has to learn the rudiments of civilization. For this to happen
he must become acquainted with the paradox that his desert island is both a prison and a
kingdom—he uses those very words. Early on, he describes himself as a prisoner and
describes his anguish. Later he speaks of ‘‘the sixth year of my reign, or my captivity,
which you please.’’ After some time passes and his confidence grows, his hut is a
‘‘castle,’’ and with the appearance (and conversion from cannibalism) of Friday, he thinks
of himself as a ruler. At last, with his rescue of the Spaniards and Friday’s father he says,
‘‘My island was now peopled and I thought myself very rich in subjects; and it was a
merry reflection which I frequently made, How like a king I looked.’’ And he thinks of
himself as an absolute ruler and even a despot, but a benevolent one.
Whenever the subject of Robinson Crusoe comes up, the name Alexander Selkirk is
mentioned. Selkirk (1676-1721), a Scotsman from the village of Largo in Fifeshire, was a
contemporary of Defoe. He was a seaman and notorious for his pugnacity—well-known
for his having thrown his father down a flight of stairs. During a voyage on a privateer in
the Pacific, he quarreled with his captain and demanded to be put ashore on the remote
(and deserted) island of Juan Fernandez, off the coast of Chile. There he remained for five
years, 1704-09. He became a popular hero on his rescue and return to Britain. Details of
his life as a castaway were published: his living off the land, his thatched-roof huts, his
goatskin wardrobe. He said that he hankered for the tranquillity of his simple life on the
island. The celebrated essayist Richard Steele interviewed Selkirk and used him as a living
illustration of the maxim ‘‘that he is happiest who confines his wants to natural
necessities.’’
There is no evidence that Defoe ever met Selkirk, but as a journalist he obviously knew
the story and Selkirk was undoubtedly the inspiration for Robinson Crusoe. But though
Selkirk was apostrophized as a simple-lifer, he was in effect no more than a survivor in
extraordinary circumstances. The differences between Crusoe and Selkirk are more
significant than the similarities. Selkirk’s story is a fairly simple tale of survival on a
barren island, while Crusoe’s is at once a story of atonement and colonization; it is about
becoming civilized—at least in eighteenth -century terms, when forcible conversion and
slave trading were regarded as elements of civilization.
Selkirk was a pirate who remained a pirate. Crusoe, also an unruly son, is supremely
disobedient; his experience on the island (at the mouth of the Orinoco) is both his
punishment and his reward, as his island prison is transformed into his kingdom. Crusoe
epitomizes perspective. The issue of survival is secondary to the whole debate circling
around the matter of point of view, which is summed up in his stating that on the island, ‘‘I
entertained different notions of things.’’ Ambition and arrogance and greed got him into
this fix; rationalism gets him out of it. When he sees the futility of riches on the island, the
meaninglessness of money, the vanity of hoarding, and reaches the conclusion ‘‘That the
good things of this world are no farther good to us, that they are for our Use,’’ he is on the
way to salvation.
The odd thing is that Selkirk is usually represented as a kind of marvel and of course he
isn’t. He is just the singular fellow who returned to tell his tale of solitary survival. Crusoe
insists that the reader see him as an unexceptional but a vivid warning, a living example of
the ills of man, beset by hubris and discontent. ‘‘I have been in all my circumstances a
memento to those who are touched with the general plague of mankind… .’’
Crusoe is only solitary for part of his ordeal. The dramatic, and poignant, appearance of
the footprint and the serious meditation that follows is one of the episodes that lifts this
novel to another level of meaning. It also shows Defoe as someone who could speak in the
plainest and most convincing way about tools and seeds and grape growing, while at the
same time being capable of the most profound rumination about the invasion of solitude
and society and the definitions of space and time. Crusoe had lamented his solitude earlier,
but no sooner has he conquered it and prevailed over his isolation than he has to reckon on
the complexities of human company. The footprint is the beginning of this test of his
understanding and the end of his Eden. What follows is like an allegory of the Ascent of
Man, for he has to cope with cannibalism, aggression, warfare, and the competitive
instinct. By overcoming these obstacles, Crusoe grows stronger. And yet, though he is a
hero in a literary sense, he is not heroic in his deeds. His most persuasive quality is his
humanity; he is the congenital bumbler who is challenged by circumstances to become
competent. And one might add that though the Bible strengthens him, he does not become
visibly religious until Friday appears, and then he is sanctimonious.
If Robinson Crusoe were a story about holding out against the odds, then everything
would hinge on Crusoe’s rescue. But this is not the case. By mastering himself, Crusoe
masters the island and makes a world of it. He progresses in an almost evolutionary sense
from a lowly creature precariously clinging to life at the edge of the island, to being the
dominant species on it; he moves from castaway to colonizer. At the end, Crusoe is both,
as he says, a king and a ‘‘Generalissimo.’’ Defoe’s point is that Crusoe does not need to be
rescued, and it is emphasized by the fact that no sooner has he been scooped up and told
his story, than he returns to the island and prospers. It is a success story—of fall and rise;
it is also a narrative of purification, with the most downright details as well as something
approaching the spiritual. Not surprisingly, this novel has been in print and popular for
almost three hundred years.
—Paul Theroux
 Preface
IF EVER the story of any private man’s adventures in the world were worth making
public, and were acceptable when published, the editor of this account thinks this will be
so.
The wonders of this man’s life exceed all that (he thinks) is to be found extant; the life
of one man being scarce capable of a greater variety
The story is told with modesty, with seriousness, and with a religious application of
events to the uses to which wise men always apply them (viz.) to the instruction of others
by this example, and to justify and honour the wisdom of Providence in all the variety of
our circumstances, let them happen how they will.
The editor believes the thing to be a just history of fact; neither is there any appearance
of fiction in it. And however thinks, because all such things are disputed, that the
improvement of it, as well to the diversion, as to the instruction of the reader, will be the
same; and as such, he thinks, without further compliment to the world, he does them a
great service in the publication.
 I Go to Sea
I WAS BORN in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good family, though not of that
country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen who settled first at Hull. He got a good
estate by merchandise and, leaving off his trade, lived afterward at York, from whence he
had married my mother, whose relations were named Robinson, a very good family in that
country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but by the usual corruption of
words in England we are now called, nay, we call ourselves, and write our name
‘‘Crusoe,’’ and so my companions always called me.
I had two elder brothers, one of which was lieutenant-colonel to an English regiment of
foot in Flanders, formerly commanded by the famous Colonel Lockhart, and was killed at
the battle near Dunkirk against the Spaniards; what became of my second brother I never
knew, any more than my father or mother did know what was become of me.
Being the third son of the family, and not bred to any trade, my head began to be filled
very early with rambling thoughts. My father, who was very ancient, had given me a
competent share of learning, as far as house education and a country free school generally
goes, and designed me for the law; but I would be satisfied with nothing but going to sea;
and my inclination to this led me so strongly against the will, nay, the commands, of my
father, and against all the entreaties and persuasions of my mother and other friends that
there seemed to be something fatal in that propension of nature tending directly to the life
of misery which was to befall me.
My father, a wise and grave man, gave me serious and excellent counsel against what
he foresaw was my design. He called me one morning into his chamber, where he was
confined by the gout, and expostulated very warmly with me upon this subject. He asked
me what reasons more than a mere wandering inclination I had for leaving my father’s
house and my native country, where I might be well introduced, and had a prospect of
raising my fortune by application and industry, with a life of ease and pleasure. He told me
it was for men of desperate fortunes on one hand, or of aspiring, superior fortunes on the
other, who went abroad upon adventures, to rise by enterprise, and make themselves
famous in undertakings of a nature out of the common road; that these things were all
either too far above me, or too far below me; that mine was the middle state, or what
might be called the upper station of low life, which he had found by long experience was
the best state in the world, the most suited to human happiness, not exposed to the
miseries and hardships, the labour and sufferings of the mechanic part of mankind, and not
embarrassed with the pride, luxury, ambition, and envy of the upper part of mankind. He
told me I might judge of the happiness of this state by this one thing, viz., that this was the
state of life which all other people envied; that kings have frequently lamented the
miserable consequences of being born to great things, and wished they had been placed in
the middle of the two extremes, between the mean and the great; that the wise man gave
his testimony to this as the just standard of true felicity, when he prayed to have neither
poverty nor riches.
He bade me observe it, and I should always find that the calamities of life were shared
among the upper and lower part of mankind; but that the middle station had the fewest
disasters, and was not exposed to so many vicissitudes as the higher or lower part of
mankind; nay, they were not subjected to so many distempers and uneasinesses either of
body or mind, as those were who, by vicious living, luxury, and extravagances on one
hand, or by hard labour, want of necessaries, and mean or insufficient diet on the other
hand, bring distempers upon themselves by the natural consequences of their way of
living; that the middle station of life was calculated for all kind of virtues, and all kind of
enjoyments; that peace and plenty were the handmaids of a middle fortune; that
temperance, moderation, quietness, health, society, all agreeable diversions, and all
desirable pleasures, were the blessings attending the middle station of life; that this way
men went silently and smoothly through the world, and comfortably out of it, not
embarrassed with the labours of the hands or of the head, not sold to the life of slavery for
daily bread, or harassed with perplexed circumstances, which rob the soul of peace and the
body of rest; not enraged with the passion of envy, or secret burning lust of ambition for
great things; but in easy circumstances sliding gently through the world, and sensibly
tasting the sweets of living, without the bitter, feeling that they are happy, and learning by
every day’s experience to know it more sensibly.
After this, he pressed me earnestly, and in the most affectionate manner, not to play the
young man, nor to precipitate myself into miseries which nature and the station of life I
was born in seemed to have provided against; that I was under no necessity of seeking my
bread; that he would do well for me, and endeavour to enter me fairly into the station of
life which he had been just recommending to me; and that if I was not very easy and
happy in the world, it must be my mere fate or fault that must hinder it, and that he should
have nothing to answer for, having thus discharged his duty in warning me against
measures which he knew would be to my hurt. In a word, that as he would do very kind
things for me if I would stay and settle at home, as he directed, so he would not have so
much hand in my misfortunes as to give me any encouragement to go away. And to close
all, he told me, I had my elder brother for an example, to whom he had used the same
earnest persuasions to keep him from going into the Low Country wars, but could not
prevail, his young desires prompting him to run into the army, where he was killed; and
though he said he would not cease to pray for me, yet he would venture to say to me that if
I did take this foolish step, God would not bless me, and I would have leisure hereafter to
reflect upon having neglected his counsel, when there might be none to assist in my
recovery.
I observed in this last part of his discourse, which was truly prophetic, though I suppose
my father did not know it to be so himself; I say, I observed the tears run down his face
very plentifully, especially when he spoke of my brother who was killed; and that when he
spoke of my having leisure to repent, and none to assist me, he was so moved that he
broke off the discourse, and told me his heart was so full he could say no more to me.
I was sincerely affected with this discourse, as indeed who could be otherwise? and I
resolved not to think of going abroad any more, but to settle at home according to my
father’s desire. But alas! a few days wore it all off; and in short, to prevent any of my
father’s further importunities, in a few weeks after, I resolved to run quite away from him.
However, I did not act so hastily neither as my first heat of resolution prompted, but I took
my mother, at a time when I thought her a little pleasanter than ordinary, and told her that
my thoughts were so entirely bent upon seeing the world that I should never settle to
anything with resolution enough to go through with it, and my father had better give me
his consent than force me to go without it; that I was now eighteen years old, which was
too late to go apprentice to a trade, or clerk to an attorney; that I was sure, if I did, I should
never serve out my time, and I should certainly run away from my master before my time
was out, and go to sea; and if she would speak to my father to let me go one voyage
abroad, if I came home again and did not like it, I would go no more, and I would promise
by a double diligence to recover that time I had lost.
This put my mother into a great passion. She told me she knew it would be to no
purpose to speak to my father upon any such subject; that he knew too well what was my
interest, to give his consent to anything so much for my hurt, and that she wondered how I
could think of any such thing, after such a discourse as I had had with my father, and such
kind and tender expressions as she knew my father had used to me; and that, in short, if I
would ruin myself, there was no help for me; but I might depend I should never have their
consent to it; that for her part she would not have so much hand in my destruction; and I
should never have it to say, that my mother was willing when my father was not.
Though my mother refused to move it to my father, yet, as I have heard afterwards, she
reported all the discourse to him, and that my father, after showing a great concern at it,
said to her with a sigh, ‘‘That boy might be happy if he would stay at home, but if he goes
abroad, he will be the most miserable wretch that was ever born; I can give no consent to
it.’’
It was not till almost a year after this that I broke loose, though in the meantime I
continued obstinately deaf to all proposals of settling to business, and frequently
expostulating with my father and mother about their being so positively determined
against what they knew my inclinations prompted me to. But being one day at Hull, where
I went casually, and without any purpose of making an elopement that time; but I say,
being there, and one of my companions being going by sea to London in his father’s ship,
and prompting me to go with them, with the common allurement of seafaring men, viz.,
that it should cost me nothing for my passage, I consulted neither father or mother any
more, nor so much as sent them word of it; but leaving them to hear of it as they might,
without asking God’s blessing, or my father’s, without any consideration of circumstances
or consequences, and in an ill hour, God knows, on the first of September, 1651, I went on
board a ship bound for London. Never any young adventurer’s misfortunes, I believe,
began sooner or continued longer than mine. The ship was no sooner gotten out of the
Humber but the wind began to blow, and the sea to rise in a most frightful manner; and as
I had never been at sea before, I was most inexpressibly sick in body and terrified in mind.
I began now seriously to reflect upon what I had done, and how justly I was overtaken by
the judgment of Heaven for my wicked leaving my father’s house and abandoning my
duty; all the good counsel of my parents, my father’s tears, and my mother’s entreaties
came now fresh into my mind, and my conscience, which was not yet come to the pitch of
hardness to which it has been since, reproached me with the contempt of advice and the
breach of my duty to God and my father.
 All this while the storm increased, and the sea, which I had never been upon before,
went very high, though nothing like what I have seen many times since; no, nor like what I
saw a few days after. But it was enough to affect me then, who was but a young sailor and
had never known anything of the matter. I expected every wave would have swallowed us
up, and that every time the ship fell down, as I thought, in the trough or hollow of the sea,
we should never rise more; and in this agony of mind I made many vows and resolutions,
that if it would please God here to spare my life this one voyage, if ever I got once my foot
upon dry land again, I would go directly home to my father, and never set it into a ship
again while I lived; that I would take his advice, and never run myself into such miseries
as these any more. Now I saw plainly the goodness of his observations about the middle
station of life, how easy, how comfortably he had lived all his days, and never had been
exposed to tempests at sea or troubles on shore; and I resolved that I would, like a true
repenting prodigal, go home to my father.
These wise and sober thoughts continued all the while the storm continued, and indeed
some time after; but the next day the wind was abated and the sea calmer, and I began to
be a little inured to it. However, I was very grave for all that day, being also a little seasick
still; but towards night the weather cleared up, the wind was quite over, and a charming
fine evening followed; the sun went down perfectly clear, and rose so the next morning;
and having little or no wind, and a smooth sea, the sun shining upon it, the sight was, as I
thought, the most delightful that ever I saw.
I had slept well in the night, and was now no more seasick, but very cheerful, looking
with wonder upon the sea that was so rough and terrible the day before, and could be so
calm and so pleasant in so little time after. And now lest my good resolutions should
continue, my companion, who had indeed enticed me away, comes to me. ‘‘Well, Bob,’’
says he, clapping me upon the shoulder, ‘‘how do you do after it? I warrant you were
frighted, wa’n’t you, last night, when it blew but a capful of wind?’’ ‘‘A capful, d’you call
it?’’ said I, ‘‘ ’twas a terrible storm.’’ ‘‘A storm, you fool, you,’’ replies he; ‘‘do you call
that a storm? why, it was nothing at all; give us but a good ship and sea room, and we
think nothing of such a squall of wind as that; but you’re but a fresh-water sailor, Bob;
come, let us make a bowl of punch, and we’ll forget all that; d’ye see what charming
weather ’tis now?’’ To make short this sad part of my story, we went the old way of all
sailors; the punch was made, and I was made drunk with it, and in that one night’s
wickedness I drowned all my repentance, all my reflections upon my past conduct, and all
my resolutions for the future. In a word, as the sea was returned to its smoothness of
surface and settled calmness by the abatement of that storm, so the hurry of my thoughts
being over, my fears and apprehensions of being swallowed up by the sea being forgotten,
and the current of my former desires returned, I entirely forgot the vows and promises that
I made in my distress. I found indeed some intervals of reflection, and the serious thoughts
did, as it were, endeavour to return again sometimes; but I shook them off, and roused
myself from them as it were from a distemper, and applying myself to drinking and
company, soon mastered the return of those fits (for so I called them), and I had in five or
six days got as complete a victory over conscience as any young fellow that resolved not
to be troubled with it could desire. But I was to have another trial for it still; and
Providence, as in such cases generally it does, resolved to leave me entirely without
excuse. For if I would not take this for a deliverance, the next was to be such a one as the
worst and most hardened wretch among us would confess both the danger and the mercy.
The sixth day of our being at sea we came into Yarmouth Roads; the wind having been
contrary, and the weather calm, we had made but little way since the storm. Here we were
obliged to come to anchor, and here we lay, the wind continuing contrary, viz., at
southwest, for seven or eight days, during which time a great many ships from Newcastle
came into the same roads, as the common harbour where the ships might wait for a wind
for the river.
We had not, however, rid here so long, but should have tided it up the river, but that the
wind blew too fresh; and after we had lain four or five days, blew very hard. However, the
roads being reckoned as good as a harbour, the anchorage good, and our ground tackle
very strong, our men were unconcerned, and not in the least apprehensive of danger, but
spent the time in rest and mirth, after the manner of the sea; but the eighth day in the
morning, the wind increased, and we had all hands at work to strike our topmasts and
make everything snug and close, that the ship might ride as easy as possible. By noon the
sea went very high indeed, and our ship rid forecastle in, shipped several seas, and we
thought once or twice our anchor had come home; upon which our master ordered out the
sheet anchor; so that we rode with two anchors ahead, and the cables veered out to the
bitter end.
By this time it blew a terrible storm indeed, and now I began to see terror and
amazement in the faces even of the seamen themselves. The master, though vigilant in the
business of preserving the ship, yet as he went in and out of his cabin by me, I could hear
him softly to himself say several times, ‘‘Lord, be merciful to us, we shall be all lost, we
shall be all undone’’; and the like. During these first hurries, I was stupid, lying still in my
cabin, which was in the steerage, and cannot describe my temper. I could ill reassume the
first penitence which I had so apparently trampled upon, and hardened myself against. I
thought the bitterness of death had been past, and that this would be nothing too, like the
first. But when the master himself came by me, as I said just now, and said we should be
all lost, I was dreadfully frighted. I got up out of my cabin and looked out; but such a
dismal sight I never saw. The sea went mountains high, and broke upon us every three or
four minutes. When I could look about, I could see nothing but distress round us: Two
ships that rid near us, we found, had cut their masts by the board, being deep loaden; and
our men cried out that a ship which rid about a mile ahead of us was foundered. Two more
ships, being driven from their anchors, were run out of the roads to sea at all adventures,
and that with not a mast standing. The light ships fared the best, as not so much labouring
in the sea; but two or three of them drove and came close by us, running away with only
their spritsail out before the wind.
Towards evening the mate and boatswain begged the master of our ship to let them cut
away the foremast which he was very unwilling to do. But the boatswain protesting to him
that if he did not the ship would founder, he consented; and when they had cut away the
foremast, the mainmast stood so loose and shook the ship so much, they were obliged to
cut her away also, and make a clear deck.
Anyone may judge what a condition I must be in at all this, who was but a young sailor,
and who had been in such a fright before at but a little. But if I can express at this distance
the thoughts I had about me at that time, I was in tenfold more horror of mind upon
account of my former convictions, and the having returned from them to the resolutions I
had wickedly taken at first, than I was at death itself; and these, added to the terror of the
storm, put me in such a condition that I can by no words describe it. But the worst was not
come yet; the storm continued with such fury that the seamen themselves acknowledged
they had never known a worse. We had a good ship, but she was deep loaden, and
wallowed in the sea, that the seamen every now and then cried out she would founder. It
was my advantage in one respect that I did not know what they meant by ‘‘founder’’ till I
inquired. However, the storm was so violent that I saw what is not often seen, the master,
the boatswain, and some others more sensible than the rest, at their prayers and expecting
every moment when the ship would go to the bottom. In the middle of the night, and under
all the rest of our distresses, one of the men that had been down on purpose to see cried
out we had sprung a leak; another said there was four foot water in the hold. Then all
hands were called to the pump. At that very word my heart, as I thought, died within me,
and I fell backwards upon the side of my bed where I sat, into the cabin. However, the
men roused me, and told me that I, that was able to do nothing before, was as well able to
pump as another; at which I stirred up and went to the pump and worked very heartily.
While this was doing, the master, seeing some light colliers, who, not able to ride out the
storm, were obliged to slip and run away to sea, and would come near us, ordered to fire a
gun as a signal of distress. I, who knew nothing what that meant, was so surprised, that I
thought the ship had broke, or some dreadful thing happened. In a word, I was so surprised
that I fell down in a swoon. As this was a time when everybody had his own life to think
of, nobody minded me, or what was become of me; but another man stepped up to the
pump, and thrusting me aside with his foot, let me lie, thinking I had been dead; and it was
a great while before I came to myself.
We worked on, but the water increasing in the hold, it was apparent that the ship would
founder, and though the storm began to abate a little, yet as it was not possible she could
swim till we might run into a port, so the master continued firing guns for help; and a light
ship who had rid it out just ahead of us ventured a boat out to help us. It was with the
utmost hazard the boat came near us, but it was impossible for us to get on board, or for
the boat to lie near the ship side, till at last the men rowing very heartily and venturing
their lives to save ours, our men cast them a rope over the stern with a buoy to it and then
veered it out a great length, which they after great labour and hazard took hold of, and we
hauled them close under our stern and got all into their boat. It was to no purpose for them
or us after we were in the boat to think of reaching to their own ship, so all agreed to let
her drive and only to pull her in towards shore as much as we could, and our master
promised them that if the boat was staved upon shore, he would make it good to their
master; so, partly rowing and partly driving, our boat went away to the northward, sloping
towards the shore almost as far as Winterton Ness.
We were not much more than a quarter of an hour out of our ship but we saw her sink,
and then I understood for the first time what was meant by a ship foundering in the sea; I
must acknowledge I had hardly eyes to look up when the seamen told me she was sinking;
for from that moment they rather put me into the boat than that I might be said to go in,
my heart was as it were dead within me, partly with fright, partly with horror of mind and
the thoughts of what was yet before me.
While we were in this condition, the men yet labouring at the oar to bring the boat near
the shore, we could see (when, our boat mounting the waves, we were able to see the
shore) a great many people running along the strand to assist us when we should come
near; but we made but slow way towards the shore, nor were we able to reach the shore,
till being past the lighthouse at Winterton, the shore falls off to the westward towards
Cromer, and so the land broke off a little the violence of the wind. Here we got in and,
though not without much difficulty, got all safe on shore and walked afterwards on foot to
Yarmouth, where, as unfortunate men, we were used with great humanity, as well by the
magistrates of the town, who assigned us good quarters, as by particular merchants and
owners of ships, and had money given us sufficient to carry us either to London or back to
Hull, as we thought fit.
Had I now had the sense to have gone back to Hull, and have gone home, I had been
happy, and my father, an emblem of our blessed Saviour’s parable, had even killed the
fatted calf for me; for hearing the ship I went away in was cast away in Yarmouth Roads,
it was a great while before he had any assurance that I was not drowned.
But my ill fate pushed me on now with an obstinacy that nothing could resist; and
though I had several times loud calls from my reason and my more composed judgment to
go home, yet I had no power to do it. I know not what to call this, nor will I urge that it is
a secret overruling decree that hurries us on to be the instruments of our own destruction,
even though it be before us, and that we push upon it with our eyes open. Certainly
nothing but some such decreed unavoidable misery attending, and which it was impossible
for me to escape, could have pushed me forward against the calm reasonings and
persuasions of my most retired thoughts and against two such visible instructions as I had
met with in my first attempt.
My comrade, who had helped to harden me before and who was the master’s son, was
now less forward than I; the first time he spoke to me after we were at Yarmouth, which
was not till two or three days, for we were separated in the town to several quarters; I say,
the first time he saw me, it appeared his tone was altered, and looking very melancholy
and shaking his head, asking me how I did, and telling his father who I was, and how I had
come this voyage only for a trial in order to go farther abroad; his father turning to me
with a very grave and concerned tone, ‘‘Young man,’’ says he, ‘‘you ought never to go to
sea any more; you ought to take this for a plain and visible token that you are not to be a
seafaring man.’’ ‘‘Why, sir,’’ said I, ‘‘will you go to sea no more?’’ ‘‘That is another case,’’
said he, ‘‘it is my calling and therefore my duty; but as you made this voyage for a trial,
you see what a taste Heaven has given you of what you are to expect if you persist;
perhaps this is all befallen us on your account, like Jonah in the ship of Tarshish. Pray,’’
continues he, ‘‘what are you? and on what account did you go to sea?’’ Upon that I told
him some of my story; at the end of which he burst out with a strange kind of passion,
‘‘What had I done,’’ says he, ‘‘that such an unhappy wretch should come into my ship? I
would not set my foot in the same ship with thee again for a thousand pounds.’’ This
indeed was, as I said, an excursion of his spirits, which were yet agitated by the sense of
his loss, and was farther than he could have authority to go. However, he afterwards talked
very gravely to me, exhorted me to go back to my father and not tempt Providence to my
ruin; told me I might see a visible hand of Heaven against me; ‘‘And, young man,’’ said
he, ‘‘depend upon it, if you do not go back, wherever you go, you will meet with nothing
but disasters and disappointments, till your father’s words are fulfilled upon you.’’
 I Am Captured by Pirates
WE PARTED soon after; for I made him little answer, and I saw him no more; which way
he went I know not. As for me, having some money in my pocket, I travelled to London
by land; and there, as well as on the road, had many struggles with myself what course of
life I should take, and whether I should go home or go to sea.
As to going home, shame opposed the best motions that offered to my thoughts; and it
immediately occurred to me how I should be laughed at among the neighbours, and should
be ashamed to see, not my father and mother only, but even everybody else; from whence
I have since often observed how incongruous and irrational the common temper of
mankind is, especially of youth, to that reason which ought to guide them in such cases,
viz., that they are not ashamed to sin, and yet are ashamed to repent; nor ashamed of the
action for which they ought justly to be esteemed fools, but are ashamed of the returning,
which only can make them be esteemed wise men.
In this state of life, however, I remained some time, uncertain what measures to take
and what course of life to lead. An irresistible reluctance continued to going home; and as
I stayed awhile, the remembrance of the distress I had been in wore off; and as that abated,
the little motion I had in my desires to a return wore off with it, till at last I quite laid aside
the thoughts of it and looked out for a voyage.
That evil influence which carried me first away from my father’s house, that hurried me
into the wild and indigested notion of raising my fortune, and that impressed those
conceits so forcibly upon me as to make me deaf to all good advice and to the entreaties
and even command of my father; I say, the same influence, whatever it was, presented the
most unfortunate of all enterprises to my view; and I went on board a vessel bound to the
coast of Africa, or, as our sailors vulgarly call it, a voyage to Guinea.
It was my great misfortune that in all these adventures I did not ship myself as a sailor;
whereby, though I might indeed have worked a little harder than ordinary, yet at the same
time I had learned the duty and office of a foremast man; and in time might have qualified
myself for a mate or lieutenant, if not for a master. But as it was always my fate to choose
for the worse, so I did here; for having money in my pocket and good clothes upon my
back, I would always go on board in the habit of a gentleman; and so I neither had any
business in the ship, or learned to do any.
It was my lot first of all to fall into pretty good company in London, which does not
always happen to such loose and unguided young fellows as I then was; the devil
generally not omitting to lay some snare for them very early. But it was not so with me; I
first fell acquainted with the master of a ship who had been on the coast of Guinea; and
who, having had very good success there, was resolved to go again; and who, taking a
fancy to my conversation, which was not at all disagreeable at that time, hearing me say I
had a mind to see the world, told me, if I would go the voyage with him, I should be at no
expense; I should be his messmate and his companion, and if I could carry anything with
me, I should have all the advantage of it that the trade would admit; and perhaps I might
meet with some encouragement.
 I embraced the offer, and, entering into a strict friendship with this captain, who was an
honest and plain-dealing man, I went the voyage with him and carried a small adventure
with me, which, by the disinterested honesty of my friend the captain, I increased very
considerably; for I carried about #40 in such toys and trifles as the captain directed me to
buy. This #40 I had mustered together by the assistance of some of my relations whom I
corresponded with, and who, I believe, got my father, or at least my mother, to contribute
so much as that to my first adventure.
This was the only voyage which I may say was successful in all my adventures, and
which I owe to the integrity and honesty of my friend the captain, under whom also I got a
competent knowledge of the mathematics and the rules of navigation, learned how to keep
an account of the ship’s course, take an observation, and in short, to understand some
things that were needful to be understood by a sailor. For, as he took delight to introduce
me, I took delight to learn; and, in a word, this voyage made me both a sailor and a
merchant; for I brought home five pounds nine ounces of gold dust for my adventure,
which yielded me in London at my return almost #300, and this filled me with those
aspiring thoughts which have since so completed my ruin.
Yet even in this voyage I had my misfortunes too; particularly that I was continually
sick, being thrown into a violent calenture1 by the excessive heat of the climate; our
principal trading being upon the coast, from the latitude of 15 degrees north, even to the
line itself.
I was now set up for a Guinea trader; and my friend, to my great misfortune, dying soon
after his arrival, I resolved to go the same voyage again, and I embarked in the same
vessel with one who was his mate in the former voyage and had now got the command of
the ship. This was the unhappiest voyage that ever man made; for though I did not carry
quite #100 of my new-gained wealth, so that I had #200 left, and which I lodged with my
friend’s widow, who was very just to me, yet I fell into terrible misfortunes in this voyage;
and the first was this, viz., our ship making her course towards the Canary Islands, or
rather between those islands and the African shore, was surprised in the grey of the
morning by a Turkish rover of Sallee, who gave chase to us with all the sail she could
make. We crowded also as much canvas as our yards would spread, or our masts carry, to
have got clear; but finding the pirate gained upon us, and would certainly come up with us
in a few hours, weprepared to fight; our ship having twelve guns, and the rogue eighteen.
About three in the afternoon he came up with us, and bringing to, by mistake, just athwart
our quarter, instead of athwart our stern, as he intended, we brought eight of our guns to
bear on that side and poured in a broadside upon him, which made him sheer off again,
after returning our fire and pouring in also his small shot from near two hundred men
which he had on board. However, we had not a man touched, all our men keeping close.
He prepared to attack us again, and we to defend ourselves; but laying us on board the
next time upon our other quarter, he entered sixty men upon our decks, who immediately
fell to cutting and hacking the decks and rigging. We plied them with small shot, half-
pikes, powder chests, and such like, and cleared our deck of them twice. However, to cut
short this melancholy part of our story, our ship being disabled, and three of our men
killed and eight wounded, we were obliged to yield, and were carried all prisoners into
Sallee, a port belonging to the Moors.
The usage I had there was not so dreadful as at first I apprehended, nor was I carried up
the country to the emperor’s court, as the rest of our men were, but was kept by the captain
of the rover, as his proper prize, and made his slave, being young and nimble and fit for
his business. At this surprising change of my circumstances, from a merchant to a
miserable slave, I was perfectly overwhelmed; and now I looked back upon my father’s
prophetic discourse to me, that I should be miserable and have none to relieve me, which I
thought was now so effectually brought to pass that I could not be worse; that now the
hand of Heaven had overtaken me, and I was undone without redemption. But alas! this
was but a taste of the misery I was to go through, as will appear in the sequel of this story.
As my new patron, or master, had taken me home to his house, so I was in hopes that he
would take me with him when he went to sea again, believing that it would some time or
other be his fate to be taken by a Spanish or Portugal man-of-war; and that then I should
be set at liberty. But this hope of mine was soon taken away; for when he went to sea, he
left me on shore to look after his little garden and do the common drudgery of slaves about
his house; and when he came home again from his cruise, he ordered me to lie in the cabin
to look after the ship.
Here I meditated nothing but my escape, and what method I might take to effect it; but
found no way that had the least probability in it. Nothing presented to make the
supposition of it rational; for I had nobody to communicate it to, that would embark with
me, no fellow slave, no Englishman, Irishman, or Scotsman there but myself; so that for
two years, though I often pleased myself with the imagination, yet I never had the least
encouraging prospect of putting it in practice.
After about two years an odd circumstance presented itself, which put the old thought of
making some attempt for my liberty again in my head. My patron lying at home longer
than usual without fitting out his ship, which, as I heard, was for want of money, he used
constantly once or twice a week, sometimes oftener if the weather was fair, to take the
ship’s pinnace and go out into the road a-fishing; and as he always took me and a young
Maresco with him to row the boat, we made him very merry, and I proved very dexterous
in catching fish; insomuch that sometimes he would send me with a Moor, one of his
kinsmen, and the youth, the Maresco, as they called him, to catch a dish of fish for him.
It happened one time that, going a-fishing in a stark calm morning, a fog rose so thick
that, though we were not half a league from the shore, we lost sight of it; and rowing we
knew not whither or which way, we laboured all day and all the next night; and when the
morning came, we found we had pulled off to sea instead of pulling in for the shore; and
that we were at least two leagues from the shore. However, we got well in again, though
with a great deal of labour and some danger; for the wind began to blow pretty fresh in the
morning; but particularly we were all very hungry.
But our patron, warned by this disaster, resolved to take more care of himself for the
future; and having lying by him the longboat of our English ship which he had taken, he
resolved he would not go a-fishing any more without a compass and some provision; so he
ordered the carpenter of his ship, who also was an English slave, to build a little stateroom
or cabin in the middle of the longboat, like that of a barge, with a place to stand behind it
to steer and haul home the main-sheet; and room before for a hand or two to stand and
work the sails. She sailed with that we call a shoulder-of-mutton sail; and the boom jibbed
over the top of the cabin, which lay very snug and low and had in it room for him to lie,
with a slave or two, and a table to eat on, with some small lockers to put in some bottles of
such liquor as he thought fit to drink; particularly his bread, rice, and coffee.
We went frequently out with this boat a-fishing, and as I was most dexterous to catch
fish for him, he never went without me. It happened that he had appointed to go out in this
boat, either for pleasure or for fish, with two or three Moors of some distinction in that
place, and for whom he had provided extraordinarily; and had therefore sent on board the
boat over night a larger store of provisions than ordinary; and had ordered me to get ready
three fusils with powder and shot, which were on board his ship; for that they designed
some sport of fowling as well as fishing.
I got all things ready as he had directed, and waited the next morning with the boat
washed clean, her ancient 2 and pendants out, and everything to accommodate his guests;
when by and by my patron came on board alone and told me his guests had put off going,
upon some business that fell out, and ordered me with the man and boy, as usual, to go out
with the boat and catch them some fish, for that his friends were to sup at his house; and
commanded that as soon as I had got some fish I should bring it home to his house; all
which I prepared to do.
 I Escape from the Sallee Rover
THIS moment my former notions of deliverance darted into my thoughts, for now I found
I was like to have a little ship at my command; and my master being gone, I prepared to
furnish myself, not for a fishing business, but for a voyage; though I knew not, neither did
I so much as consider whither I should steer; for anywhere to get out of that place was my
way.
My first contrivance was to make a pretence to speak to this Moor, to get something for
our subsistence on board; for I told him we must not presume to eat of our patron’s bread;
he said that was true; so he brought a large basket of rusk, or biscuit, of their kind and
three jars with fresh water into the boat; I knew where my patron’s case of bottles stood,
which, it was evident by the make, were taken out of some English prize; and I conveyed
them into the boat while the Moor was on shore, as if they had been there before, for our
master. I conveyed also a great lump of beeswax into the boat, which weighed above half
a hundredweight, with a parcel of twine or thread, a hatchet, a saw, and a hammer, all
which were of great use to us afterwards; especially the wax to make candles. Another
trick I tried upon him, which he innocently came into also. His name was Ismael, whom
they call Muly, or Moley, so I called to him, ‘‘Moley,’’ said I, ‘‘our patron’s guns are on
board the boat; can you not get a little powder and shot? It may be we may kill some
alcamies’’ (a fowl like our curlews) ‘‘for ourselves, for I know he keeps the gunner’s
stores in the ship.’’ ‘‘Yes,’’ says he, ‘‘I’ll bring some’’; and accordingly he brought a great
leather pouch, which held about a pound and a half of powder, or rather more; and another
with shot, that had five or six pound, with some bullets; and put all into the boat. At the
same time I had found some powder of my master’s in the great cabin, with which I filled
one of the large bottles in the case, which was almost empty, pouring what was in it into
another; and thus furnished with everything needful, we sailed out of the port to fish. The
castle, which is at the entrance of the port, knew who we were, and took no notice of us;
and we were not above a mile out of the port before we hauled in our sail and set us down
to fish. The wind blew from the north-northeast, which was contrary to my desire; for had
it blown southerly, I had been sure to have made the coast of Spain, and at least reached to
the bay of Cadiz; but my resolutions were, blow which way it would, I would be gone
from that horrid place where I was, and leave the rest to Fate.
After we had fished some time and caught nothing (for when I had fish on my hook I
would not pull them up, that he might not see them), I said to the Moor, ‘‘This will not do,
our master will not be thus served, we must stand farther off.’’ He, thinking no harm,
agreed, and being in the head of the boat, set the sails; and as I had the helm, I ran the boat
out near a league farther, and then brought her to as if I would fish; when giving the boy
the helm, I stepped forward to where the Moor was, and making as if I stooped for
something behind him, I took him by surprise with my arm under his waist and tossed him
clear overboard into the sea; he rose immediately, for he swam like a cork, and called to
me, begged to be taken in, told me he would go all over the world with me. He swam so
strong after the boat that he would have reached me very quickly, there being but little
wind; upon which I stepped into the cabin, and fetching one of the fowling pieces, I
presented it at him and told him I had done him no hurt, and, if he would be quiet, I would
do him none. ‘‘But,’’ said I, ‘‘you swim well enough to reach the shore, and the sea is
calm; make the best of your way to shore, and I will do you no harm; but if you come near
the boat, I’ll shoot you through the head; for I am resolved to have my liberty.’’ So he
turned himself about and swam for the shore, and I make no doubt but he reached it with
ease, for he was an excellent swimmer.
I could have been content to have taken this Moor with me and have drowned the boy,
but there was no venturing to trust him. When he was gone I turned to the boy, whom they
called Xury, and said to him, ‘‘Xury, if you will be faithful to me, I’ll make you a great
man; but if you will not stroke your face to be true to me,’’ that is, swear by Mahomet and
his father’s beard, ‘‘I must throw you into the sea too.’’ The boy smiled in my face, and
spoke so innocently that I could not mistrust him; and swore to be faithful to me and go all
over the world with me.
While I was in view of the Moor that was swimming, I stood out directly to sea with the
boat, rather stretching to windward, that they might think me gone towards the Straits’
mouth (as indeed anyone that had been in their wits must have been supposed to do); for
who would have supposed we were sailed on to the southward to the truly barbarian coast,
where whole nations of Negroes were sure to surround us with their canoes, and destroy
us; where we could ne’er once go on shore but we should be devoured by savage beasts,
or more merciless savages of human kind?
But as soon as it grew dusk in the evening, I changed my course, and steered directly
south and by east, bending my course a little towards the east, that I might keep in with the
shore; and having a fair, fresh gale of wind and a smooth, quiet sea, I made such sail that I
believe by the next day at three o’clock in the afternoon, when I first made the land, I
could not be less than 150 miles south of Sallee; quite beyond the Emperor of Morocco’s
dominions, or indeed of any other king thereabouts, for we saw no people.
Yet such was the fright I had taken at the Moors and the dreadful apprehensions I had of
falling into their hands, that I would not stop or go on shore or come to an anchor, the
wind continuing fair, till I had sailed in that manner five days. And then the wind shifting
to the southward, I concluded also that if any of our vessels were in chase of me, they also
would now give over; so I ventured to make to the coast and came to an anchor in the
mouth of a little river, I knew not what or where; neither what latitude, what country, what
nation, or what river. I neither saw, or desired to see, any people; the principal thing I
wanted was fresh water. We came into this creek in the evening, resolving to swim on
shore as soon as it was dark, and discover the country; but as soon as it was quite dark, we
heard such dreadful noises of the barking, roaring, and howling of wild creatures, of we
knew not what kinds, that the poor boy was ready to die with fear and begged of me not to
go on shore till day. ‘‘Well, Xury,’’ said I, ‘‘then I won’t; but it may be we may see men by
day, who will be as bad to us as those lions.’’ ‘‘Then we give them the shoot gun,’’ says
Xury, laughing; ‘‘make them run wey.’’ Such English Xury spoke by conversing among us
slaves. However, I was glad to see the boy so cheerful, and I gave him a dram (out of our
patron’s case of bottles) to cheer him up. After all, Xury’s advice was good, and I took it.
We dropped our little anchor and lay still all night; I say still, for we slept none; for in two
or three hours we saw vast great creatures (we knew not what to call them) of many sorts
come down to the seashore and run into the water, wallowing and washing themselves for
the pleasure of cooling themselves; and they made such hideous howlings and yellings
that I never indeed heard the like.
Xury was dreadfully frighted, and indeed so was I too; but we were both more frighted
when we heard one of these mighty creatures come swimming towards our boat. We could
not see him, but we might hear him by his blowing to be a monstrous huge and furious
beast. Xury said it was a lion, and it might be so for aught I know; but poor Xury cried to
me to weigh the anchor and row away. ‘‘No,’’ says I, ‘‘Xury, we can slip our cable with a
buoy to it and go off to sea, they cannot follow us far.’’ I had no sooner said so but I
perceived the creature (whatever it was) within two oars’ length, which something
surprised me; however, I immediately stepped to the cabin door, and taking up my gun,
fired at him; upon which he immediately turned about and swam towards the shore again.
But it is impossible to describe the horrible noises and hideous cries and howlings that
were raised, as well upon the edge of the shore as higher within the country, upon the
noise or report of the gun, a thing I have some reason to believe those creatures had never
heard before. This convinced me that there was no going on shore for us in the night upon
that coast, and how to venture on shore in the day was another question too; for to have
fallen into the hands of any of the savages had been as bad as to have fallen into the hands
of lions and tigers; at least we were equally apprehensive of the danger of it.
Be that as it would, we were obliged to go on shore somewhere or other for water, for
we had not a pint left in the boat; when or where to get it was the point. Xury said if I
would let him go on shore with one of the jars, he would find if there was any water and
bring some to me. I asked him why he would go. Why I should not go and he stay in the
boat? The boy answered with so much affection that made me love him ever after. Says
he, ‘‘If wild mans come, they eat me, you go wey.’’ ‘‘Well, Xury,’’ said I, ‘‘we will both
go, and if the wild mans come, we will kill them; they shall eat neither of us’’; so I gave
Xury a piece of rusk bread to eat and a dram out of our patron’s case of bottles, which I
mentioned before, and we hauled the boat in as near the shore as we thought was proper,
and so waded on shore, carrying nothing but our arms and two jars for water.
I did not care to go out of sight of the boat, fearing the coming of canoes with savages
down the river; but the boy, seeing a low place about a mile up the country, rambled to it,
and by and by I saw him come running towards me; I thought he was pursued by some
savage, or frighted with some wild beast, and I ran forward towards him to help him; but
when I came nearer to him, I saw something hanging over his shoulders, which was a
creature that he had shot, like a hare, but different in colour, and longer legs; however, we
were very glad of it, and it was very good meat; but the great joy that poor Xury came
with was to tell me he had found good water and seen no wild mans.
But we found afterwards that we need not take such pains for water, for a little higher
up the creek where we were, we found the water fresh when the tide was out, which flows
but a little way up; so we filled our jars and feasted on the hare we had killed, and
prepared to go on our way, having seen no footsteps of any human creature in that part of
the country.
As I had been one voyage to this coast before, I knew very well that the islands of the
Canaries, and the Cape Verde Islands also, lay not far off from the coast. But as I had no
instruments to take an observation to know what latitude we were in and did not exactly
know, or at least not remember, what latitude they were in, I knew not where to look for
them, or when to stand off to sea towards them; otherwise I might now easily have found
some of these islands. But my hope was that if I stood along this coast till I came to that
part where the English traded, I should find some of their vessels upon their usual design
of trade, that would relieve and take us in.
By the best of my calculation, that place where I now was must be that country, which
lying between the Emperor of Morocco’s dominions and the Negroes, lies waste and
uninhabited, except by wild beasts; the Negroes having abandoned it and gone farther
south for fear of the Moors, and the Moors not thinking it worth inhabiting by reason of its
barrenness; and indeed both forsaking it because of the prodigious numbers of tigers,
lions, leopards, and other furious creatures which harbour there; so that the Moors use it
for their hunting only, where they go like an army, two or three thousand men at a time;
and indeed for near an hundred miles together upon this coast, we saw nothing but a waste
uninhabited country by day, and heard nothing but howlings and roarings of wild beasts by
night.
Once or twice in the daytime, I thought I saw the Pico of Teneriffe, being the high top
of the mountain Teneriffe in the Canaries; and had a great mind to venture out in hopes of
reaching thither; but having tried twice, I was forced in again by contrary winds, the sea
also going too high for my little vessel; so I resolved to pursue my first design, and keep
along the shore.
Several times I was obliged to land for fresh water, after we had left this place; and once
in particular, being early in the morning, we came to an anchor under a little point of land
which was pretty high, and the tide beginning to flow, we lay still to go farther in; Xury,
whose eyes were more about him than it seems mine were, calls softly to me and tells me
that we had best go farther off the shore. ‘‘For,’’ says he, ‘‘look, yonder lies a dreadful
monster on the side of that hillock, fast asleep.’’ I looked where he pointed, and saw a
dreadful monster indeed, for it was a terrible great lion that lay on the side of the shore,
under the shade of a piece of the hill that hung as it were a little over him. ‘‘Xury,’’ says I,
‘‘you shall go on shore and kill him.’’ Xury looked frighted, and said, ‘‘Me kill! He eat me
at one mouth’’; one mouthful he meant. However, I said no more to the boy, but bade him
be still, and I took our biggest gun, which was almost musket-bore, and loaded it with a
good charge of powder, and with two slugs, and laid it down; then I loaded another gun
with two bullets; and the third (for we had three pieces) I loaded with five smaller bullets.
I took the best aim I could with the first piece to have shot him into the head; but he lay so
with his leg raised a little above his nose, that the slugs hit his leg about the knee, and
broke the bone. He started up growling at first, but, finding his leg broke, fell down again,
and then got up upon three legs, and gave the most hideous roar that ever I heard. I was a
little surprised that I had not hit him on the head; however, I took up the second piece
immediately, and though he began to move off, fired again, and shot him into the head,
and had the pleasure to see him drop and make but little noise, but lay struggling for life.
Then Xury took heart, and would have me let him go on shore. ‘‘Well, go,’’ said I, so the
boy jumped into the water, and taking a little gun in one hand, swam to shore with the
other hand, and coming close to the creature, put the muzzle of the piece to his ear, and
shot him into the head again, which dispatched him quite.
This was game indeed to us, but this was no food; and I was very sorry to lose three
charges of powder and shot upon a creature that was good for nothing to us. However,
Xury said he would have some of him; so he comes on board and asked me to give him
the hatchet. ‘‘For what, Xury?’’ said I. ‘‘Me cut off his head,’’ said he. However, Xury
could not cut off his head, but he cut off a foot and brought it with him, and it was a
monstrous great one.
I bethought myself, however, that perhaps the skin of him might one way or other be of
some value to us; and I resolved to take off his skin if I could. So Xury and I went to work
with him; but Xury was much the better workman at it, for I knew very ill how to do it.
Indeed it took us up both the whole day, but at last we got off the hide of him, and
spreading it on the top of our cabin, the sun effectually dried it in two days’ time, and it
afterwards served me to lie upon.
After this stop, we made on to the southward continually for ten or twelve days, living
very sparing on our provisions, which began to abate very much, and going no oftener in
to the shore than we were obliged to for fresh water; my design in this was to make the
river Gambia or Senegal, that is to say, anywhere about the Cape Verde, where I was in
hopes to meet with some European ship, and if I did not, I knew not what course I had to
take, but to seek out for the islands, or perish there among the Negroes. I knew that all the
ships from Europe which sailed either to the coast of Guinea or to Brazil or to the East
Indies made this cape or those islands; and in a word, I put the whole of my fortune upon
this single point, either that I must meet with some ship or must perish.
When I had pursued this resolution about ten days longer, as I have said, I began to see
that the land was inhabited, and in two or three places, as we sailed by, we saw people
stand upon the shore to look at us; we could also perceive they were quite black and stark
naked. I was once inclined to have gone on shore to them; but Xury was my better
counsellor and said to me, ‘‘No go, no go.’’ However, I hauled in nearer the shore that I
might talk to them, and I found they ran along the shore by me a good way. I observed
they had no weapons in their hands, except one, who had a long slender stick, which Xury
said was a lance, and that they would throw them a great way with good aim; so I kept at a
distance, but talked with them by signs as well as I could, and particularly made signs for
something to eat. They beckoned to me to stop my boat, and they would fetch me some
meat; upon this I lowered the top of my sail and lay by, and two of them ran up into the
country, and in less than half an hour came back and brought with them two pieces of dry
flesh and some corn,3 such as is the produce of their country; but we neither knew what
the one or the other was; however, we were willing to accept it. But how to come at it was
our next dispute; for I was not for venturing on shore to them, and they were as much
afraid of us; but they took a safe way for us all, for they brought it to the shore and laid it
down, and went and stood a great way off till we fetched it on board, and then came close
to us again.
We made signs of thanks to them, for we had nothing to make them amends; but an
opportunity offered that very instant to oblige them wonderfully; for while we were lying
by the shore, came two mighty creatures, one pursuing the other (as we took it) with great
fury from the mountains towards the sea; whether it was the male pursuing the female, or
whether they were in sport or in rage, we could not tell, any more than we could tell
whether it was usual or strange, but I believe it was the latter; because in the first place,
those ravenous creatures seldom appear but in the night; and in the second place, we found
the people terribly frighted, especially the women. The man that had the lance or dart did
not fly from them, but the rest did; however, as the two creatures ran directly into the
water, they did not seem to offer to fall upon any of the Negroes,but plunged themselves
into the sea, and swam about as if they had come for their diversion; at last one of them
began to come nearer our boat than at first I expected; but I lay ready for him, for I had
loaded my gun with all possible expedition, and bade Xury load both the others; as soon as
he came fairly within my reach, I fired and shot him directly into the head; immediately he
sunk down into the water, but rose instantly and plunged up and down as if he was
struggling for life, and so indeed he was; he immediately made to the shore, but between
the wound, which was his mortal hurt, and the strangling of the water, he died just before
he reached the shore.
It is impossible to express the astonishment of these poor creatures at the noise and the
fire of my gun; some of them were even ready to die for fear, and fell down as dead with
the very terror. But when they saw the creature dead and sunk in the water, and that I made
signs to them to come to the shore, they took heart and came to the shore, and began to
search for the creature. I found him by his blood staining the water, and by the help of a
rope which I flung round him and gave the Negroes to haul, they dragged him on shore,
and found that it was a most curious leopard, spotted and fine to an admirable degree, and
the Negroes held up their hands with admiration to think what it was I had killed him with.
The other creature, frighted with the flash of fire and the noise of the gun, swam on
shore, and ran up directly to the mountains from whence they came, nor could I at that
distance know what it was. I found quickly the Negroes were for eating the flesh of this
creature, so I was willing to have them take it as a favour from me, which, when I made
signs to them that they might take him, they were very thankful for. Immediately they fell
to work with him; and though they had no knife, yet with a sharpened piece of wood they
took off his skin as readily and much more readily than we could have done with a knife;
they offered me some of the flesh, which I declined, making as if I would give it to them,
but made signs for the skin, which they gave me very freely, and brought me a great deal
more of their provision, which though I did not understand, yet I accepted; then I made
signs to them for some water and held out one of my jars to them, turning it bottom
upward, to show that it was empty, and that I wanted to have it filled. They called
immediately to some of their friends, and there came two women and brought a great
vessel made of earth, and burnt, as I suppose, in the sun; this they set down for me as
before, and I sent Xury on shore with my jars and filled them all three. The women were
as stark naked as the men.
I was now furnished with roots and corn, such as it was, and water, and leaving my
friendly Negroes, I made forward for about eleven days more without offering to go near
the shore, till I saw the land run out at a great length into the sea, at about the distance of
four or five leagues before me, and the sea being very calm, I kept a large offing to make
this point; at length, doubling the point at about two leagues from the land, I saw plainly
land on the other side, to seaward; then I concluded, as it was most certain indeed, that this
was the Cape Verde and those the islands, called from thence Cape Verde Islands.
However, they were at a great distance, and I could not well tell what I had best to do; for
if I should be taken with a fresh of wind, I might neither reach one or other.
In this dilemma, as I was very pensive, I stepped into the cabin and sat me down, Xury
having the helm, when on a sudden the boy cried out, ‘‘Master, master, a ship with a sail!’’
and the foolish boy was frighted out of his wits, thinking it must needs be some of his
master’s ships sent to pursue us, when I knew we were gotten far enough out of their
reach. I jumped out of the cabin, and immediately saw, not only the ship, but what she
was, viz., that it was a Portuguese ship, and, as I thought, was bound to the coast of
Guinea for Negroes. But when I observed the course she steered, I was soon convinced
they were bound some other way, and did not design to come any nearer to the shore;
upon which I stretched out to sea as much as I could, resolving to speak with them if
possible.
With all the sail I could make, I found I should not be able to come in their way, but that
they would be gone by before I could make any signal to them; but after I had crowded to
the utmost and began to despair, they, it seems, saw me by the help of their perspective-
glasses, and that it was some European boat, which as they supposed must belong to some
ship that was lost; so they shortened sail to let me come up. I was encouraged with this,
and as I had my patron’s ancient on board, I made a waft of it to them for a signal of
distress, and fired a gun, both which they saw, for they told me they saw the smoke,
though they did not hear the gun; upon these signals they very kindly brought to and lay
by for me, and in about three hours’ time I came up with them.
They asked me what I was, in Portuguese and in Spanish and in French, but I
understood none of them; but at last a Scots sailor who was on board called to me, and I
answered him and told him I was an Englishman, that I had made my escape out of
slavery from the Moors at Sallee; then they bade me come on board and very kindly took
me in, and all my goods.
It was an inexpressible joy to me that anyone will believe that I was thus delivered, as I
esteemed it, from such a miserable and almost hopeless condition as I was in, and I
immediately offered all I had to the captain of the ship as a return for my deliverance; but
he generously told me he would take nothing from me, but that all I had should be
delivered safe to me when I came to Brazil. ‘‘For,’’ says he, ‘‘I have saved your life on no
other terms than I would be glad to be saved myself, and it may one time or other be my
lot to be taken up in the same condition; besides,’’ said he, ‘‘when I carry you to Brazil, so
great a way from your own country, if I should take from you what you have, you will be
starved there, and then I only take away that life I have given. No, no, Seignior Inglese,’’
says he [Mr. Englishman] , ‘‘I will carry you thither in charity, and those things will help
you to buy your subsistence there and your passage home again.’’
As he was charitable in his proposal, so he was just in the performance to a tittle, for he
ordered the seamen that none should offer to touch anything I had; then he took everything
into his own possession and gave me back an exact inventory of them, that I might have
them, even so much as my three earthen jars.
As to my boat, it was a very good one, and that he saw, and told me he would buy it of
me for the ship’s use and asked me what I would have for it. I told him he had been so
generous to me in everything that I could not offer to make any price of the boat but left it
entirely to him, upon which he told me he would give me a note of his hand to pay me
eighty pieces of eight for it at Brazil, and when it came there, if anyone offered to give
more, he would make it up; he offered me also sixty pieces of eight more for my boy
Xury, which I was loath to take, not that I was not willing to let the captain have him, but I
was very loath to sell the poor boy’s liberty who had assisted me so faithfully in procuring
my own. However, when I let him know my reason, he owned it to be just and offered me
this medium, that he would give the boy an obligation to set him free in ten years if he
turned Christian; upon this, and Xury saying he was willing to go to him, I let the captain
have him.
 I Become a Brazilian Planter
WE HAD a very good voyage to Brazil and arrived in the Bay de Todos los Santos, or All
Saints’ Bay, in about twenty-two days after. And now I was once more delivered from the
most miserable of all conditions of life, and what to do next with myself I was now to
consider.
The generous treatment the captain gave me I can never enough remember; he would
take nothing of me for my passage, gave me twenty ducats for the leopard’s skin, and forty
for the lion’s skin which I had in my boat, and caused everything I had in the ship to be
punctually delivered to me; and what I was willing to sell he bought, such as the case of
bottles, two of my guns, and a piece of the lump of beeswax, for I had made candles of the
rest; in a word, I made about 220 pieces of eight of all my cargo, and with this stock I
went on shore in Brazil.
I had not been long here, but being recommended to the house of a good honest man
like himself, who had an ingenio, as they call it, that is, a plantation and a sugarhouse, I
lived with him some time and acquainted myself by that means with the manner of their
planting and making of sugar; and seeing how well the planters lived and how they grew
rich suddenly, I resolved, if I could get licence to settle there, I would turn planter among
them, resolving in the meantime to find out some way to get my money which I had left in
London remitted to me. To this purpose, getting a kind of a letter of naturalization, I
purchased as much land that was uncured as my money would reach, and formed a plan
for my plantation and settlement, and such a one as might be suitable to the stock which I
proposed to myself to receive from England.
I had a neighbour, a Portuguese of Lisbon, but born of English parents, whose name
was Wells, and in much such circumstances as I was. I call him neighbour, because his
plantation lay next to mine and we went on very sociably together. My stock was but low,
as well as his; and we rather planted for food than anything else for about two years.
However, we began to increase, and our land began to come into order; so that the third
year we planted some tobacco and made each of us a large piece of ground ready for
planting canes in the year to come; but we both wanted help, and now I found, more than
before, I had done wrong in parting with my boy Xury.
But alas! for me to do wrong that never did right was no great wonder: I had no remedy
but to go on; I was gotten into an employment quite remote to my genius and directly
contrary to the life I delighted in and for which I forsook my father’s house and broke
through all his good advice; nay, I was coming into the very middle station, or upper
degree of low life, which my father advised me to before, and which, if I resolved to go on
with, I might as well have stayed at home and never have fatigued myself in the world as I
had done; and I used often to say to myself, I could have done this as well in England
among my friends as have gone five thousand miles off to do it among strangers and
savages in a wilderness, and at such a distance as never to hear from any part of the world
that had the least knowledge of me.
In this manner I used to look upon my condition with the utmost regret. I had nobody to
converse with but now and then this neighbour; no work to be done, but by the labour of
my hands; and I used to say, I lived just like a man cast away upon some desolate island
that had nobody there but himself. But how just has it been, and how should all men
reflect, that when they compare their present conditions with others that are worse,
Heaven may oblige them to make the exchange and be convinced of their former felicity
by their experience. I say, how just has it been, that the truly solitary life I reflected on in
an island of mere desolation should be my lot, who had so often unjustly compared it with
the life which I then led, in which had I continued, I had in all probability been exceeding
prosperous and rich.
I was in some degree settled in my measures for carrying on the plantation, before my
kind friend, the captain of the ship that took me up at sea, went back; for the ship
remained there in providing his loading, and preparing for his voyage, near three months;
when, telling him what little stock I had left behind me in London, he gave me this
friendly and sincere advice. ‘‘Seignior Inglese,’’ says he, for so he always called me, ‘‘if
you will give me letters, and a procuration here in form to me, with orders to the person
who has your money in London, to send your effects to Lisbon, to such persons as I shall
direct, and in such goods as are proper for this country, I will bring you the produce of
them, God willing, at my return; but since human affairs are all subject to changes and
disasters, I would have you give orders but for one hundred pounds sterling, which you
say is half your stock, and let the hazard be run for the first; so that if it come safe, you
may order the rest the same way; and if it miscarry, you may have the other half to have
recourse to for your supply.’’
This was so wholesome advice and looked so friendly that I could not but be convinced
it was the best course I could take; so I accordingly prepared letters to the gentlewoman
with whom I had left my money and a procuration to the Portuguese captain, as he
desired.
I wrote the English captain’s widow a full account of all my adventures, my slavery,
escape, and how I had met with the Portugal captain at sea, the humanity of his behaviour,
and in what condition I was now in, with all other necessary directions for my supply; and
when this honest captain came to Lisbon, he found means by some of the English
merchants there to send over not the order only, but a full account of my story to a
merchant at London, who represented it effectually to her; whereupon she not only
delivered the money but out of her own pocket sent the Portugal captain a very handsome
present for his humanity and charity to me.
The merchant in London vesting this hundred pounds in English goods, such as the
captain had writ for, sent them directly to him at Lisbon, and he brought them all safe to
me to Brazil; among which, without my direction (for I was too young in my business to
think of them), he had taken care to have all sorts of tools, ironwork, and utensils
necessary for my plantation, and which were of great use to me.
When this cargo arrived, I thought my fortune made, for I was surprised with the joy of
it; and my good steward, the captain, had laid out the five pounds which my friend had
sent him for a present for himself, to purchase and bring me over a servant under bond for
six years’ service, and would not accept of any consideration, except a little tobacco which
I would have him accept, being of my own produce.
Neither was this all; but my goods being all English manufactures, such as cloth, stuff,
baize, and things particularly valuable and desirable in the country, I found means to sell
them to a very great advantage; so that I may say I had more than four times the value of
my first cargo, and was now infinitely beyond my poor neighbour, I mean in the
advancement of my plantation; for the first thing I did, I bought me a Negro slave and an
European servant also; I mean another besides that which the captain brought me from
Lisbon.
But as abused prosperity is oftentimes made the very means of our greatest adversity, so
was it with me. I went on the next year with great success in my plantation. I raised fifty
great rolls of tobacco on my own ground, more than I had disposed of for necessaries
among my neighbours; and these fifty rolls, being each of above a hundredweight, were
well cured and laid by against the return of the fleet from Lisbon. And now increasing in
business and in wealth, my head began to be full of projects and undertakings beyond my
reach; such as are indeed often the ruin of the best heads in business.
Had I continued in the station I was now in, I had room for all the happy things to have
yet befallen me, for which my father so earnestly recommended a quiet, retired life, and of
which he had so sensibly described the middle station of life to be full of; but other things
attended me, and I was still to be the wilful agent of all my own miseries; and particularly
to increase my fault and double the reflections upon myself, which in my future sorrows I
should have leisure to make; all these miscarriages were procured by my apparent
obstinate adhering to my foolish inclination of wandering abroad, and pursuing that
inclination, in contradiction to the clearest views of doing myself good in a fair and plain
pursuit of those prospects and those measures of life which Nature and Providence
concurred to present me with and to make my duty.
As I had once done thus in my breaking away from my parents, so I could not be
content now but I must go and leave the happy view I had of being a rich and thriving man
in my new plantation, only to pursue a rash and immoderate desire of rising faster than the
nature of the thing admitted; and thus I cast myself down again into the deepest gulf of
human misery that ever man fell into, or perhaps could be consistent with life and a state
of health in the world.
To come then by just degrees to the particulars of this part of my story; you may
suppose that, having now lived almost four years in Brazil and beginning to thrive and
prosper very well upon my plantation, I had not only learned the language, but had
contracted acquaintance and friendship among my fellow planters, as well as among the
merchants at Sao Salvador, which was our port; and that in my discourse among them, I
had frequently given them an account of my two voyages to the coast of Guinea, the
manner of trading with the Negroes there, and how easy it was to purchase upon the coast,
for trifles (such as beads, toys, knives, scissors, hatchets, bits of glass, and the like), not
only gold dust, Guinea grains, elephants’ teeth, etc., but Negroes for the service of Brazil,
in great numbers.
 They listened always very attentively to my discourses on these heads, but especially to
that part which related to the buying Negroes, which was a trade at that time not only not
far entered into, but, as far as it was, had been carried on by the assientos, or permission,
of the kings of Spain and Portugal, and engrossed in the public; so that few Negroes were
bought, and those excessive dear.
It happened, being in company with some merchants and planters of my acquaintance
and talking of those things very earnestly, three of them came to me the next morning and
told me they had been musing very much upon what I had discoursed with them of, the
last night, and they came to make a secret proposal to me; and after enjoining me secrecy,
they told me that they had a mind to fit out a ship to go to Guinea; that they had all
plantations as well as I, and were straitened for nothing so much as servants; that as it was
a trade that could not be carried on, because they could not publicly sell the Negroes when
they came home, so they desired to make but one voyage, to bring the Negroes on shore
privately, and divide them among their own plantations; and in a word, the question was
whether I would go their supercargo in the ship to manage the trading part upon the coast
of Guinea. And they offered me that I should have my equal share of the Negroes without
providing any part of the stock.
This was a fair proposal, it must be confessed, had it been made to anyone that had not
had a settlement and plantation of his own to look after which was in a fair way of coming
to be very considerable and with a good stock upon it. But for me that was thus entered
and established and had nothing to do but go on as I had begun for three or four years
more, and to have sent for the other hundred pounds from England, and who in that time,
and with that little addition, could scarce have failed of being worth three or four thousand
pounds sterling, and that increasing too; for me to think of such a voyage was the most
preposterous thing that ever man in such circumstances could be guilty of.
 I Go on Board in an Evil Hour
BUT I that was born to be my own destroyer could no more resist the offer than I could
restrain my first rambling designs, when my father’s good counsel was lost upon me. In a
word, I told them I would go with all my heart, if they would undertake to look after my
plantation in my absence and would dispose of it to such as I should direct, if I miscarried.
This they all engaged to do, and entered into writings, or covenants, to do so; and I made a
formal will, disposing of my plantation and effects, in case of my death, making the
captain of the ship that had saved my life, as before, my universal heir, but obliging him to
dispose of my effects as I had directed in my will, one half of the produce being to himself
and the other to be shipped to England.
In short, I took all possible caution to preserve my effects and to keep up my plantation;
had I used half as much prudence to have looked into my own interest and have made a
judgment of what I ought to have done and not to have done, I had certainly never gone
away from so prosperous an undertaking, leaving all the probable views of a thriving
circumstance and gone upon a voyage to sea, attended with all its common hazards; to say
nothing of the reasons I had to expect particular misfortunes to myself.
But I was hurried on and obeyed blindly the dictates of my fancy rather than my reason;
and accordingly, the ship being fitted out and the cargo furnished, and all things done as
by agreement by my partners in the voyage, I went on board in an evil hour, the 1st of
September, 1659, being the same day eight years that I went from my father and mother at
Hull, in order to act the rebel to their authority and the fool to my own interest.
Our ship was about 120 tons burden, carried six guns and fourteen men, besides the
master, his boy, and myself; we had on board no large cargo of goods, except of such toys
as were fit for our trade with the Negroes, such as beads, bits of glass, shells, and odd
trifles, especially little looking-glasses, knives, scissors, hatchets, and the like.
The same day I went on board we set sail, standing away to the northward upon our
own coast, with design to stretch over for the African coast, when they came about ten or
twelve degrees of northern latitude, which it seems was the manner of their course in those
days. We had very good weather, only excessive hot, all the way upon our own coast till
we came the height of Cape St. Augustino, from whence keeping farther off at sea, we lost
sight of land and steered as if we were bound for the Isle Fernando de Noronha, holding
our course northeast by north and leaving those isles on the east. In this course we passed
the line in about twelve days’ time, and were by our last observation in seven degrees
twenty-two minutes northern latitude, when a violent tornado, or hurricane, took us quite
out of our knowledge; it began from the southeast, came about to the northwest, and then
settled into the northeast, from whence it blew in such a terrible manner that for twelve
days together we could do nothing but drive and, scudding away before it, let it carry us
whither ever fate and the fury of the winds directed; and during these twelve days, I need
not say that I expected every day to be swallowed up, nor indeed did any in the ship
expect to save their lives.
In this distress we had, besides the terror of the storm, one of our men died of the
calenture, and one man and the boy washed overboard. About the twelfth day, the weather
abating a little, the master made an observation as well as he could, and found that he was
in about eleven degrees north latitude, but that he was twenty-two degrees of longitude
difference west from Cape St. Augustino; so that he found he was gotten upon the coast of
Guiana, or the north part of Brazil, beyond the river Amazones, toward that of the river
Orinoco, commonly called the Great River, and began to consult with me what course he
should take, for the ship was leaky and very much disabled and he was going directly back
to the coast of Brazil.
I was positively against that, and looking over the charts of the seacoast of America
with him, we concluded there was no inhabited country for us to have recourse to till we
came within the circle of the Caribbee Islands and therefore resolved to stand away for
Barbados, which by keeping off at sea, to avoid the indraught of the Bay or Gulf of
Mexico, we might easily perform, as we hoped, in about fifteen days’ sail; whereas we
could not possibly make our voyage to the coast of Africa without some assistance both to
our ship and to ourselves.
With this design we changed our course and steered away northwest by west in order to
reach some of our English islands, where I hoped for relief; but our voyage was otherwise
determined, for being in the latitude of twelve degrees eighteen minutes, a second storm
came upon us, which carried us away with the same impetuosity westward and drove us so
out of the very way of all human commerce, that had all our lives been saved as to the sea,
we were rather in danger of being devoured by savages than ever returning to our own
country.
In this distress, the wind still blowing very hard, one of our men early in the morning
cried out, ‘‘Land!’’; and we had no sooner run out of the cabin to look out in hopes of
seeing whereabouts in the world we were but the ship struck upon a sand, and in a
moment, her motion being so stopped, the sea broke over her in such a manner that we
expected we should all have perished immediately; and we were immediately driven into
our close quarters to shelter us from the very foam and spray of the sea.
It is not easy for anyone who has not been in the like condition to describe or conceive
the consternation of men in such circumstances; we knew nothing where we were or upon
what land it was we were driven, whether an island or the main, whether inhabited or not
inhabited; and as the rage of the wind was still great though rather less than at first, we
could not so much as hope to have the ship hold many minutes without breaking in pieces
unless the winds by a kind of miracle should turn immediately about. In a word, we sat
looking one upon another and expecting death every moment, and every man acting
accordingly, as preparing for another world, for there was little or nothing more for us to
do in this; that which was our present comfort, and all the comfort we had, was that,
contrary to our expectation, the ship did not break yet and that the master said the wind
began to abate.
Now though we thought that the wind did a little abate, yet the ship having thus struck
upon the sand, and sticking too fast for us to expect her getting off, we were in a dreadful
condition indeed, and had nothing to do but to think of saving our lives as well as we
could; we had a boat at our stern just before the storm, but she was first staved by dashing
against the ship’s rudder, and in the next place she broke away and either sank or was
driven off to sea, so there was no hope from her; we had another boat on board, but how to
get her off into the sea was a doubtful thing; however, there was no room to debate, for we
fancied the ship would break in pieces every minute, and some told us she was actually
broken already.
In this distress the mate of our vessel lays hold of the boat, and with the help of the rest
of the men, they got her slung over the ship’s side and, getting all into her, let go and
committed ourselves, being eleven in number, to God’s mercy and the wild sea; for though
the storm was abated considerably, yet the sea went dreadful high upon the shore, and
might well be called den wild zee, as the Dutch call the sea in a storm.
And now our case was very dismal indeed; for we all saw plainly that the sea went so
high that the boat could not live and that we should be inevitably drowned. As to making
sail, we had none; nor, if we had, could we have done anything with it; so we worked at
the oar towards the land, though with heavy hearts, like men going to execution; for we all
knew that when the boat came nearer the shore, she would be dashed in a thousand pieces
by the breach of the sea. However, we committed our souls to God in the most earnest
manner, and the wind driving us towards the shore, we hastened our destruction with our
own hands, pulling as well as we could towards land.
What the shore was, whether rock or sand, whether steep or shoal, we knew not; the
only hope that could rationally give us the least shadow of expectation was if we might
happen into some bay or gulf, or the mouth of some river, where by great chance we might
have run our boat in, or got under the lee of the land, and perhaps made smooth water. But
there was nothing of this appeared; but as we made nearer and nearer the shore, the land
looked more frightful than the sea.
After we had rowed, or rather driven, about a league and a half, as we reckoned it, a
raging wave, mountainlike, came rolling astern of us and plainly bade us expect the coup
de grâce. In a word, it took us with such a fury that it overset the boat at once; and
separating us as well from the boat as from one another, gave us not time hardly to say, “O
God!’’ for we were all swallowed up in a moment.
Nothing can describe the confusion of thought which I felt when I sunk into the water;
for though I swam very well, yet I could not deliver myself from the waves so as to draw
breath, till that wave having driven me, or rather carried me, a vast way on towards the
shore and, having spent itself, went back, and left me upon the land almost dry, but half
dead with the water I took in. I had so much presence of mind as well as breath left, that
seeing myself nearer the mainland than I expected, I got upon my feet, and endeavoured to
make on towards the land as fast as I could, before another wave should return and take
me up again. But I soon found it was impossible to avoid it; for I saw the sea come after
me as high as a great hill, and as furious as an enemy, which I had no means or strength to
contend with; my business was to hold my breath and raise myself upon the water, if I
could, and so by swimming to preserve my breathing and pilot myself towards the shore,
if possible; my greatest concern now being that the sea, as it would carry me a great way
towards the shore when it came on, might not carry me back again with it when it gave
back towards the sea.
The wave that came upon me again, buried me at once twenty or thirty feet deep in its
own body; and I could feel myself carried with a mighty force and swiftness towards the
shore a very great way; but I held my breath and assisted myself to swim still forward with
all my might. I was ready to burst with holding my breath, when, as I felt myself rising up,
so, to my immediate relief, I found my head and hands shoot out above the surface of the
water; and though it was not two seconds of time that I could keep myself so, yet it
relieved me greatly, gave me breath and new courage. I was covered again with water a
good while, but not so long but I held it out; and finding the water had spent itself and
began to return, I struck forward against the return of the waves, and felt ground again
with my feet. I stood still a few moments to recover breath, and till the water went from
me, and then took to my heels, and run with what strength I had farther towards the shore.
But neither would this deliver me from the fury of the sea, which came pouring in after me
again, and twice more I was lifted up by the waves, and carried forwards as before, the
shore being very flat.
The last time of these two had well near been fatal to me; for the sea, having hurried me
along as before, landed me, or rather dashed me, against a piece of a rock, and that with
such force as it left me senseless, and indeed helpless, as to my own deliverance; for the
blow, taking my side and breast, beat the breath as it were quite out of my body; and had it
returned again immediately, I must have been strangled in the water; but I recovered a
little before the return of the waves, and seeing I should be covered again with the water, I
resolved to hold fast by a piece of the rock, and so to hold my breath, if possible, till the
wave went back; now as the waves were not so high as at first, being near land, I held my
hold till the wave abated, and then fetched another run, which brought me so near the
shore that the next wave, though it went over me, yet did not so swallow me up as to carry
me away, and the next run I took, I got to the mainland, where, to my great comfort, I
clambered up the cliffs to the shore and sat me down upon the grass, free from danger, and
quite out of the reach of the water.
I was now landed and safe on shore, and began to look up and thank God that my life
was saved in a case wherein there was some minutes before scarce any room to hope. I
believe it is impossible to express to the life what the ecstasies and transports of the soul
are when it is so saved, as I may say, out of the very grave; and I do not wonder now at
that custom, viz., that when a malefactor who has the halter about his neck is tied up and
just going to be turned off, and has a reprieve brought to him: I say, I do not wonder that
they bring a surgeon with it, to let him blood that very moment they tell him of it, that the
surprise may not drive the animal spirits from the heart, and overwhelm him:
For sudden joys, like griefs, confound at first.
I walked about on the shore, lifting up my hands, and my whole being, as I may say,
wrapped up in the contemplation of my deliverance, making a thousand gestures and
motions which I cannot describe, reflecting upon all my comrades that were drowned and
that there should not be one soul saved but myself; for, as for them, I never saw them
afterwards, or any sign of them, except three of their hats, one cap, and two shoes that
were not fellows.
I cast my eyes to the stranded vessel, when, the breach and froth of the sea being so big,
I could hardly see it, it lay so far off, and considered, Lord! how was it possible I could get
on shore!
After I had solaced my mind with the comfortable part of my condition, I began to look
round me to see what kind of place I was in, and what was next to be done, and I soon
found my comforts abate, and that, in a word, I had a dreadful deliverance. For I was wet,
had no clothes to shift me, nor anything either to eat or drink to comfort me, neither did I
see any prospect before me but that of perishing with hunger or being devoured by wild
beasts; and that which was particular afflicting to me was that I had no weapon either to
hunt and kill any creature for my sustenance or to defend myself against any other creature
that might desire to kill me for theirs. In a word, I had nothing about me but a knife, a
tobacco-pipe, and a little tobacco in a box; this was all my provision, and this threw me
into terrible agonies of mind, that for a while I ran about like a madman. Night coming
upon me, I began with a heavy heart to consider what would be my lot if there were any
ravenous beasts in that country, seeing at night they always come abroad for their prey.
All the remedy that offered to my thoughts at that time was to get up into a thick bushy
tree like a fir, but thorny, which grew near me, and where I resolved to sit all night, and
consider the next day what death I should die, for as yet I saw no prospect of life; I walked
about a furlong from the shore, to see if I could find any fresh water to drink, which I did,
to my great joy; and having drunk, and put a little tobacco in my mouth to prevent hunger,
I went to the tree, and getting up into it, endeavoured to place myself so as that if I should
sleep I might not fall; and having cut me a short stick, like a truncheon, for my defence, I
took up my lodging, and having been excessively fatigued, I fell fast asleep, and slept as
comfortably as, I believe, few could have done in my condition, and found myself the
most refreshed with it that I think I ever was on such an occasion.
 I Furnish Myself with Many Things
WHEN I waked it was broad day, the weather clear, and the storm abated, so that the sea
did not rage and swell as before. But that which surprised me most was that the ship was
lifted off in the night from the sand where she lay, by the swelling of the tide, and was
driven up almost as far as the rock which I first mentioned, where I had been so bruised by
the dashing me against it; this being within about a mile from the shore where I was and
the ship seeming to stand upright still, I wished myself on board, that, at least, I might
save some necessary things for my use.
When I came down from my apartment in the tree, I looked about me again, and the
first thing I found was the boat, which lay as the wind and the sea had tossed her up upon
the land, about two miles on my right hand. I walked as far as I could upon the shore to
have got to her, but found a neck or inlet of water between me and the boat, which was
about half a mile broad; so I came back for the present, being more intent upon getting at
the ship, where I hoped to find something for my present subsistence.
A little after noon I found the sea very calm and the tide ebbed so far out that I could
come within a quarter of a mile of the ship; and here I found a fresh renewing of my grief,
for I saw evidently that if we had kept on board, we had been all safe, that is to say, we
had all got safe on shore, and I had not been so miserable as to be left entirely destitute of
all comfort and company, as I now was: this forced tears from my eyes again, but as there
was little relief in that, I resolved, if possible, to get to the ship; so I pulled off my clothes,
for the weather was hot to extremity, and took the water; but when I came to the ship, my
difficulty was still greater to know how to get on board, for as she lay aground, and high
out of the water, there was nothing within my reach to lay hold of; I swam round her
twice, and the second time I spied a small piece of a rope, which I wondered I did not see
at first, hang down by the fore-chains so low as that with great difficulty I got hold of it,
and by the help of that rope got up into the forecastle of the ship. Here I found that the
ship was bulged, and had a great deal of water in her hold, but that she lay so on the side
of a bank of hard sand, or rather earth, that her stern lay lifted up upon the bank and her
head low almost to the water; by this means all her quarter was free, and all that was in
that part was dry; for you may be sure my first work was to search and to see what was
spoiled and what was free; and first I found that all the ship’s provisions were dry and
untouched by the water, and being very well disposed to eat, I went to the bread-room and
filled my pockets with biscuit, and ate it as I went about other things, for I had no time to
lose; I also found some rum in the great cabin, of which I took a large dram, and which I
had indeed need enough of to spirit me for what was before me. Now I wanted nothing but
a boat to furnish myself with many things which I foresaw would be very necessary to me.
It was in vain to sit still and wish for what was not to be had, and this extremity roused
my application. We had several spare yards and two or three large spars of wood and a
spare topmast or two in the ship; I resolved to fall to work with these and flung as many of
them overboard as I could manage for their weight, tying every one with a rope that they
might not drive away; when this was done I went down the ship’s side, and pulling them
to me, I tied four of them fast together at both ends as well as I could, in the form of a raft,
and laying two or three short pieces of plank upon them crossways, I found I could walk
upon it very well, but that it was not able to bear any great weight, the pieces being too
light; so I went to work, and with the carpenter’s saw I cut a spare topmast into three
lengths and added them to my raft, with a great deal of labour and pains; but the hope of
furnishing myself with necessaries encouraged me to go beyond what I should have been
able to have done upon another occasion.
My raft was now strong enough to bear any reasonable weight; my next care was what
to load it with and how to preserve what I laid upon it from the surf of the sea; but I was
not long considering this; I first laid all the planks or boards upon it that I could get, and
having considered well what I most wanted, I first got three of the seamen’s chests, which
I had broken open and emptied, and lowered them down upon my raft; the first of these I
filled with provisions, viz., bread, rice, three Dutch cheeses, five pieces of dried goat’s
flesh, which we lived much upon, and a little remainder of European corn which had been
laid by for some fowls which we brought to sea with us, but the fowls were killed; there
had been some barley and wheat together, but, to my great disappointment, I found
afterwards that the rats had eaten or spoiled it all. As for liquors, I found several cases of
bottles belonging to our skipper, in which were some cordial waters, and in all about five
or six gallons of sack; these I stowed by themselves, there being no need to put them into
the chest, nor no room for them. While I was doing this, I found the tide began to flow,
though very calm, and I had the mortification to see my coat, shirt, and waistcoat, which I
had left on shore upon the sand, swim away; as for my breeches, which were only linen,
and open-kneed, I swam on board in them, and my stockings. However, this put me upon
rummaging for clothes, of which I found enough, but took no more than I wanted for
present use, for I had other things which my eye was more upon, as first, tools to work
with on shore; and it was after long searching that I found out the carpenter’s chest, which
was indeed a very useful prize to me, and much more valuable than a shiploading of gold
would have been at that time; I got it down to my raft, even whole as it was, without
losing time to look into it, for I knew in general what it contained.
My next care was for some ammunition and arms; there were two very good fowling
pieces in the great cabin, and two pistols; these I secured first, with some powder horns,
and a small bag of shot, and two old rusty swords; I knew there were three barrels of
powder in the ship, but knew not where our gunner had stowed them, but with much
search I found them, two of them dry and good, the third had taken water; those two I got
to my raft with the arms. And now I thought myself pretty well freighted, and began to
think how I should get to shore with them, having neither sail, oar, or rudder; and the least
capful of wind would have overset all my navigation.
I had three encouragements: 1. A smooth, calm sea. 2. The tide rising and setting in to
the shore. 3. What little wind there was blew me towards the land; and thus, having found
two or three broken oars belonging to the boat, and besides the tools which were in the
chest, I found two saws, an axe, and a hammer, and with this cargo I put to sea. For a mile
or thereabouts my raft went very well, only that I found it drive a little distant from the
place where I had landed before, by which I perceived that there was some indraught of
the water, and consequently I hoped to find some creek or river there which I might make
use of as a port to get to land with my cargo.
As I imagined, so it was; there appeared before me a little opening of the land, and I
found a strong current of the tide set into it, so I guided my raft as well as I could to keep
in the middle of the stream. But here I had like to have suffered a second shipwreck,
which, if I had, I think verily would have broke my heart; for knowing nothing of the
coast, my raft ran aground at one end of it upon a shoal, and not being aground at the other
end, it wanted but a little that all my cargo had slipped off towards that end that was afloat,
and so fallen into the water. I did my utmost by setting my back against the chests to keep
them in their places, but could not thrust off the raft with all my strength, neither durst I
stir from the posture I was in, but holding up the chests with all my might, stood in that
manner near half an hour, in which time the rising of the water brought me a little more
upon a level; and a little after, the water still rising, my raft floated again, and I thrust her
off with the oar I had, into the channel, and then driving up higher, I at length found
myself in the mouth of a little river, with land on both sides, and a strong current or tide
running up; I looked on both sides for a proper place to get to shore, for I was not willing
to be driven too high up the river, hoping in time to see some ship at sea and therefore
resolved to place myself as near the coast as I could.
At length I spied a little cove on the right shore of the creek, to which with great pain
and difficulty I guided my raft, and at last got so near as that, reaching ground with my
oar, I could thrust her directly in; but here I had like to have dipped all my cargo in the sea
again; for that shore lying pretty steep, that is to say, sloping, there was no place to land,
but where one end of my float, if it run on shore, would lie so high and the other sink
lower as before, that it would endanger my cargo again. All that I could do was to wait till
the tide was at the highest, keeping the raft with my oar like an anchor to hold the side of
it fast to the shore, near a flat piece of ground, which I expected the water would flow
over; and so it did. As soon as I found water enough (for my raft drew about a foot of
water), I thrust her on upon that flat piece of ground and there fastened or moored her by
sticking my two broken oars into the ground, one on one side near one end, and one on the
other side near the other end; and thus I lay till the water ebbed away and left my raft and
all my cargo safe on shore.
My next work was to view the country, and seek a proper place for my habitation, and
where to stow my goods, to secure them from whatever might happen. Where I was I yet
knew not, whether on the continent or on an island; whether inhabited or not inhabited;
whether in danger of wild beasts or not. There was a hill not above a mile from me, which
rose up very steep and high, and which seemed to overtop some other hills which lay as in
a ridge from it northward. I took out one of the fowling pieces, and one of the pistols, and
a horn of powder, and thus armed I traveled for discovery up to the top of that hill, where,
after I had with great labour and difficulty got to the top, I saw my fate to my great
affliction, viz., that I was in an island environed every way with the sea, no land to be
seen, except some rocks which lay a great way off, and two small islands less than this,
which lay about three leagues to the west.
I found also that the island I was in was barren and, as I saw good reason to believe,
uninhabited, except by wild beasts, of whom, however, I saw none, yet I saw abundance of
fowls, but knew not their kinds, neither when I killed them could I tell what was fit for
food, and what not; at my coming back, I shot at a great bird which I saw sitting upon a
tree on the side of a great wood. I believe it was the first gun that had been fired there
since the creation of the world; I had no sooner fired but from all the parts of the wood
there arose an innumerable number of fowls of many sorts, making a confused screaming,
and crying every one according to his usual note; but not one of them of any kind that I
knew. As for the creature I killed, I took it to be a kind of a hawk, its colour and beak
resembling it, but had no talons or claws more than common; its flesh was carrion and fit
for nothing.
Contented with this discovery, I came back to my raft and fell to work to bring my
cargo on shore, which took me up the rest of that day, and what to do with myself at night
I knew not, nor indeed where to rest; for I was afraid to lie down on the ground, not
knowing but some wild beast might devour me, though, as I afterwards found, there was
really no need for those fears.
However, as well as I could, I barricaded myself round with the chests and boards that I
had brought on shore, and made a kind of a hut for that night’s lodging; as for food, I yet
saw not which way to supply myself, except that I had seen two or three creatures like
hares run out of the wood where I shot the fowl.
I now began to consider that I might yet get a great many things out of the ship, which
would be useful to me, and particularly some of the rigging and sails, and such other
things as might come to land, and I resolved to make another voyage on board the vessel,
if possible; and as I knew that the first storm that blew must necessarily break her all in
pieces, I resolved to set all other things apart, till I got everything out of the ship that I
could get; then I called a council, that is to say, in my thoughts, whether I should take back
the raft, but this appeared impracticable; so I resolved to go as before, when the tide was
down, and I did so, only that I stripped before I went from my hut, having nothing on but a
checkered shirt and a pair of linen drawers and a pair of pumps on my feet.
I got on board the ship as before, and prepared a second raft, and having had experience
of the first, I neither made this so unwieldy, nor loaded it so hard, but yet I brought away
several things very useful to me; as first, in the carpenter’s stores I found two or three bags
full of nails and spikes, a great screwjack, a dozen or two of hatchets, and above all, that
most useful thing called a grindstone; all these I secured together, with several things
belonging to the gunner, particularly two or three iron crows and two barrels of musket
bullets, seven muskets, and another fowling piece, with some small quantity of powder
more; a large bag full of small shot, and a great roll of sheet lead. But this last was so
heavy, I could not hoist it up to get it over the ship’s side.
Besides these things, I took all the men’s clothes that I could find, and a spare fore-
topsail, hammock, and some bedding; and with this I loaded my second raft, and brought
them all safe on shore to my very great comfort.
I was under some apprehensions during my absence from the land, that at least my
provisions might be devoured on shore; but when I came back I found no sign of any
visitor, only there sat a creature like a wild cat upon one of the chests, which when I came
towards it, ran away a little distance, and then stood still; she sat very composed and
unconcerned, and looked full in my face, as if she had a mind to be acquainted with me. I
presented my gun at her, but as she did not understand it, she was perfectly unconcerned at
it, nor did she offer to stir away; upon which I tossed her a bit of biscuit, though, by the
way, I was not very free of it, for my store was not great. However, I spared her a bit, I
say, and she went to it, smelled of it, and ate it and looked (as pleased) for more, but I
thanked her, and could spare no more; so she marched off.
Having got my second cargo on shore (though I was fain to open the barrels of powder
and bring them by parcels, for they were too heavy, being large casks), I went to work to
make me a little tent with the sail and some poles which I cut for that purpose; and into
this tent I brought everything that I knew would spoil, either with rain, or sun, and I piled
all the empty chests and casks up in a circle round the tent, to fortify it from any sudden
attempt, either from man or beast.
When I had done this, I blocked up the door of the tent with some boards within, and an
empty chest set up on end without, and spreading one of the beds upon the ground, laying
my two pistols just at my head and my gun at length by me, I went to bed for the first
time, and slept very quietly all night, for I was very weary and heavy, for the night before I
had slept little, and had laboured very hard all day, as well to fetch all those things from
the ship, as to get them on shore.
I had the biggest magazine of all kinds now that ever was laid up, I believe, for one
man; but I was not satisfied still; for while the ship sat upright in that posture, I thought I
ought to get everything out of her that I could; so every day at low water I went on board,
and brought away something or other. But particularly the third time I went, I brought
away as much of the rigging as I could, as also all the small ropes and rope-twine I could
get, with a piece of spare canvas, which was to mend the sails upon occasion, and the
barrel of wet gunpowder. In a word, I brought away all the sails first and last, only that I
was fain to cut them in pieces, and bring as much at a time as I could; for they were no
more useful to be sails, but as mere canvas only.
But that which comforted me more still was that at last of all, after I had made five or
six such voyages as these, and thought I had nothing more to expect from the ship that was
worth my meddling with; I say, after all this, I found a great hogshead of bread, and three
large runlets of rum or spirits, and a box of sugar, and a barrel of fine flour; this was
surprising to me, because I had given over expecting any more provisions, except what
was spoiled by the water. I soon emptied the hogshead of that bread, and wrapped it up
parcel by parcel in pieces of the sails, which I cut out; and in a word, I got all this safe on
shore also.
The next day I made another voyage; and now having plundered the ship of what was
portable and fit to hand out, I began with the cables; and cutting the great cable into pieces
such as I could move, I got two cables and a hawser on shore, with all the ironwork I
could get; and having cut down the spritsail yard, and the mizzen yard, and everything I
could to make a large raft, I loaded it with all those heavy goods, and came away. But my
good luck began now to leave me; for this raft was so unwieldy and so overloaden, that
after I was entered the little cove, where I had landed the rest of my goods, not being able
to guide it so handily as I did the other, it overset, and threw me and all my cargo into the
water. As for myself it was no great harm, for I was near the shore; but as to my cargo, it
was great part of it lost, especially the iron, which I expected would have been of great use
to me. However, when the tide was out, I got most of the pieces of cable ashore, and some
of the iron, though with infinite labour; for I was fain to dip for it into the water, a work
which fatigued me very much. After this I went every day on board, and brought away
what I could get.
I had been now thirteen days on shore, and had been eleven times on board the ship; in
which time I had brought away all that one pair of hands could well be supposed capable
to bring, though I believe verily, had the calm weather held, I should have brought away
the whole ship, piece by piece. But preparing the twelfth time to go on board, I found the
wind began to rise; however, at low water I went on board, and though I thought I had
rummaged the cabin so effectually, as that nothing more could be found, yet I discovered a
locker with drawers in it, in one of which I found two or three razors and one pair of large
scissors, with some ten or a dozen of good knives and forks; in another I found about
thirty-six pounds value in money, some European coin, some Brazil, some pieces of eight,
some gold, some silver.
I smiled to myself at the sight of this money. “O drug!” said I aloud, ‘‘what art thou
good for? Thou art not worth to me, no, not the taking off of the ground; one of those
knives is worth all this heap; I have no manner of use for thee; e’en remain where thou art
and go to the bottom as a creature whose life is not worth saving.’’ However, upon second
thoughts, I took it away, and wrapping all this in a piece of canvas, I began to think of
making another raft; but while I was preparing this, I found the sky overcast, and the wind
began to rise, and in a quarter of an hour it blew a fresh gale from the shore; it presently
occurred to me that it was in vain to pretend to make a raft with the wind off shore, and
that it was my business to be gone before the tide of flood began, otherwise I might not be
able to reach the shore at all. Accordingly I let myself down into the water and swam
across the channel, which lay between the ship and the sands, and even that with difficulty
enough, partly with the weight of the things I had about me, and partly the roughness of
the water, for the wind rose very hastily, and before it was quite high water, it blew a
storm.
But I was gotten home to my little tent, where I lay with all my wealth about me very
secure. It blew very hard all that night, and in the morning, when I looked out, behold, no
more ship was to be seen; I was a little surprised, but recovered myself with this
satisfactory reflection, viz., that I had lost no time, nor abated no diligence to get
everything out of her that could be useful to me, and that indeed there was little left in her
that I was able to bring away if I had had more time.
I now gave over any more thoughts of the ship, or of anything out of her, except what
might drive on shore from her wreck, as indeed divers pieces of her afterwards did; but
those things were of small use to me.
 I Build My Fortress
MY THOUGHTS were now wholly employed about securing myself against either
savages, if any should appear, or wild beasts, if any were in the island; and I had many
thoughts of the method how to do this, and what kind of dwelling to make; whether I
should make me a cave in the earth, or a tent upon the earth. And, in short, I resolved upon
both; the manner and description of which it may not be improper to give an account of.
I soon found the place I was in was not for my settlement, particularly because it was
upon a low moorish ground near the sea, and I believed would not be wholesome, and
more particularly because there was no fresh water near it; so I resolved to find a more
healthy and more convenient spot of ground.
I consulted several things in my situation, which I found would be proper for me: first,
health and fresh water I just now mentioned; secondly, shelter from the heat of the sun;
thirdly, security from ravenous creatures, whether man or beast; fourthly, a view to the sea,
that if God sent any ship in sight, I might not lose any advantage for my deliverance, of
which I was not willing to banish all my expectation yet.
In search of a place proper for this, I found a little plain on the side of a rising hill,
whose front towards this little plain was steep as a house-side, so that nothing could come
down upon me from the top; on the side of this rock there was a hollow place worn a little
way in like the entrance or door of a cave, but there was not really any cave or way into
the rock at all.
On the flat of the green, just before this hollow place, I resolved to pitch my tent. This
plain was not above an hundred yards broad, and about twice as long, and lay like a green
before my door, and at the end of it descended irregularly every way down into the low
grounds by the seaside. It was on the north-northwest side of the hill, so that I was
sheltered from the heat every day, till it came to a west and by south sun, or thereabouts,
which in those countries is near the setting.
Before I set up my tent, I drew a half circle before the hollow place, which took in
about ten yards in its semi-diameter from the rock, and twenty yards in its diameter, from
its beginning and ending.
In this half circle I pitched two rows of strong stakes, driving them into the ground till
they stood very firm like piles, the biggest end being out of the ground about five foot and
a half, and sharpened on the top. The two rows did not stand above six inches from one
another.
Then I took the pieces of cable which I had cut in the ship, and laid them in rows one
upon another, within the circle between these two rows of stakes, up to the top, placing
other stakes in the inside, leaning against them, about two foot and a half high, like a spur
to a post; and this fence was so strong that neither man nor beast could get into it or over
it. This cost me a great deal of time and labour, especially to cut the piles in the woods,
bring them to the place, and drive them into the earth.
The entrance into this place I made to be, not by a door, but by a short ladder to go over
the top, which ladder, when I was in, I lifted over after me, and so I was completely fenced
in, and fortified, as I thought, from all the world, and consequently slept secure in the
night, which otherwise I could not have done, though, as it appeared afterwards, there was
no need of all this caution from the enemies that I apprehended danger from.
Into this fence or fortress, with infinite labour, I carried all my riches, all my provisions,
ammunition, and stores, of which you have the account above; and I made me a large tent,
which, to preserve me from the rains that in one part of the year are very violent there, I
made double, viz., one smaller tent within, and one larger tent above it, and covered the
uppermost with a large tarpaulin which I had saved among the sails.
And now I lay no more for a while in the bed which I had brought on shore, but in a
hammock, which was indeed a very good one and belonged to the mate of the ship.
Into this tent I brought all my provisions, and every thing that would spoil by the wet,
and having thus enclosed all my goods, I made up the entrance, which till now I had left
open, and so passed and repassed, as I said, by a short ladder.
When I had done this, I began to work my way into the rock, and bringing all the earth
and stones that I dug down out through my tent, I laid them up within my fence in the
nature of a terrace, so that it raised the ground within about a foot and a half; and thus I
made a cave just behind my tent, which served me like a cellar to my house.
It cost me much labour, and many days, before all these things were brought to
perfection, and therefore I must go back to some other things which took up some of my
thoughts. At the same time it happened, after I had laid my scheme for the setting up my
tent and making the cave, that a storm of rain falling from a thick dark cloud, a sudden
flash of lightning happened, and after that, a great clap of thunder, as is naturally the effect
of it. I was not so much surprised with the lightning, as I was with a thought which darted
into my mind as swift as the lightning itself: O my powder! My very heart sunk within me,
when I thought, that at one blast all my powder might be destroyed; on which, not my
defence only, but the providing me food, as I thought, entirely depended; I was nothing
near so anxious about my own danger, though had the powder took fire, I had never
known who had hurt me.
Such impression did this make upon me, that after the storm was over, I laid aside all
my works, my building and fortifying, and applied myself to make bags and boxes to
separate the powder, and keep it a little and a little in a parcel, in hope that whatever might
come, it might not all take fire at once, and to keep it so apart that it should not be possible
to make one part fire another. I finished this work in about a fortnight, and I think my
powder, which in all was about 240 pounds’ weight, was divided in not less than a
hundred parcels; as to the barrel that had been wet, I did not apprehend any danger from
that, so I placed it in my new cave, which in my fancy I called my kitchen, and the rest I
hid up and down in holes among the rocks, so that no wet might come to it, marking very
carefully where I laid it.
In the interval of time while this was doing, I went out at least once every day with my
gun, as well to divert myself as to see if I could kill anything fit for food, and as near as I
could to acquaint myself with what the island produced. The first time I went out, I
presently discovered that there were goats in the island, which was a great satisfaction to
me; but then it was attended with this misfortune to me, viz., that they were so shy, so
subtile, and so swift of foot that it was the difficultest thing in the world to come at them.
But I was not discouraged at this, not doubting but I might now and then shoot one, as it
soon happened; for after I had found their haunts a little, I laid wait in this manner for
them: I observed, if they saw me in the valleys, though they were upon the rocks, they
would run away as in a terrible fright; but if they were feeding in the valleys, and I was
upon the rocks, they took no notice of me; from whence I concluded, that by the position
of their optics, their sight was so directed downward that they did not readily see objects
that were above them; so afterwards I took this method, I always climbed the rocks first,
to get above them, and then had frequently a fair mark. The first shot I made among these
creatures, I killed a she-goat which had a little kid by her which she gave suck to, which
grieved me heartily; but when the old one fell, the kid stood stock still by her till I came
and took her up, and not only so, but when I carried the old one with me upon my
shoulders, the kid followed me quite to my enclosure, upon which I laid down the dam
and took the kid in my arms, and carried it over my pale, in hopes to have bred it up tame,
but it would not eat, so I was forced to kill it and eat it myself; these two supplied me with
flesh a great while, for I ate sparingly, and saved my provisions (my bread especially) as
much as possibly I could.
Having now fixed my habitation, I found it absolutely necessary to provide a place to
make a fire in, and fuel to burn; and what I did for that, as also how I enlarged my cave,
and what conveniences I made, I shall give a full account of in its place. But I must first
give some little account of myself and of my thoughts about living, which it may well be
supposed were not a few.
I had a dismal prospect of my condition, for as I was not cast away upon that island
without being driven, as is said, by a violent storm quite out of the course of our intended
voyage and a great way, viz., some hundreds of leagues out of the ordinary course of the
trade of mankind, I had great reason to consider it as a determination of Heaven, that in
this desolate place and in this desolate manner I should end my life; the tears would run
plentifully down my face when I made these reflections, and sometimes I would
expostulate with myself why Providence should thus completely ruin its creatures and
render them so absolutely miserable, so without help abandoned, so entirely depressed,
that it could hardly be rational to be thankful for such a life.
But something always returned swift upon me to check these thoughts and to reprove
me; and particularly one day, walking with my gun in my hand by the seaside, I was very
pensive upon the subject of my present condition, when Reason, as it were, put in,
expostulating with me t’ other way, thus: ‘‘Well, you are in a desolate condition, ’tis true,
but pray remember, where are the rest of you? Did not you come eleven of you into the
boat? Where are the ten? Why were not they saved, and you lost? Why were you singled
out? Is it better to be here or there?’’ And then I pointed to the sea. All evils are to be
considered with the good that is in them, and with what worse attends them.
 Then it occurred to me again how well I was furnished for my subsistence, and what
would have been my case if it had not happened, which was an hundred thousand to one,
that the ship floated from the place where she first struck, and was driven so near to the
shore that I had time to get all these things out of her. What would have been my case if I
had been to have lived in the condition in which I at first came on shore, without
necessaries of life, or necessaries to supply and procure them? ‘‘Particularly,’’ said I aloud
(though to myself), ‘‘what should I have done without a gun, without ammunition, without
any tools to make anything or to work with, without clothes, bedding, a tent, or any
manner of coverings?’’ and that now I had all these to a sufficient quantity, and was in a
fair way to provide myself in such a manner as to live without my gun when my
ammunition was spent; so that I had a tolerable view of subsisting without any want as
long as I lived; for I considered from the beginning how I would provide for the accidents
that might happen, and for the time that was to come, even not only after my ammunition
should be spent, but even after my health or strength should decay.
I confess I had not entertained any notion of my ammunition being destroyed at one
blast, I mean my powder being blown up by lightning, and this made the thoughts of it so
surprising to me when it lightened and thundered, as I observed just now.
And now being to enter into a melancholy relation of a scene of silent life, such perhaps
as was never heard of in the world before, I shall take it from its beginning, and continue it
in its order. It was, by my account, the 30th of September when, in the manner as above
said, I first set foot upon this horrid island, when the sun, being, to us, in its autumnal
equinox, was almost just over my head, for I reckoned myself, by observation, to be in the
latitude of 9 degrees 22 minutes north of the line.
After I had been there about ten or twelve days, it came into my thoughts, that I should
lose my reckoning of time for want of books, and pen and ink, and should even forget the
Sabbath days from the working days; but to prevent this, I cut it with my knife upon a
large post, in capital letters, and making it into a great cross, I set it up on the shore where
I first landed, viz., ‘‘I came on shore here the 30th of September 1659.’’ Upon the sides of
this square post I cut every day a notch with my knife, and every seventh notch was as
long again as the rest, and every first day of the month as long again as that long one; and
thus I kept my calendar, or weekly, monthly, and yearly reckoning of time.
In the next place we are to observe that among the many things which I brought off the
ship in the several voyages which, as above mentioned, I made to it, I got several things of
less value, but not all less useful to me, which I omitted setting down before; as in
particular, pens, ink, and paper, several parcels in the captain’s, mate’s, gunner’s, and
carpenter’s keeping, three or four compasses, some mathematical instruments, dials,
perspectives, charts, and books of navigation, all which I huddled together, whether I
might want them or no; also I found three very good Bibles, which came to me in my
cargo from England, and which I had packed up among my things; some Portuguese
books also, and among them two or three Popish prayer-books, and several other books,
all which I carefully secured. And I must not forget that we had in the ship a dog and two
cats, of whose eminent history I may have occasion to say something in its place; for I
carried both the cats with me, and as for the dog, he jumped out of the ship of himself, and
swam on shore to me the day after I went on shore with my first cargo and was a trusty
servant to me many years; I wanted nothing that he could fetch me, nor any company that
he could make up to me; I only wanted to have him talk to me, but that would not do. As I
observed before, I found pen, ink, and paper, and I husbanded them to the utmost; and I
shall show that while my ink lasted, I kept things very exact; but after that was gone, I
could not, for I could not make any ink by any means that I could devise.
And this put me in mind that I wanted many things, notwithstanding all that I had
amassed together; and of these, this of ink was one, as also spade, pickaxe, and shovel, to
dig or remove the earth; needles, pins, and thread; as for linen, I soon learned to want that
without much difficulty.
This want of tools made every work I did go on heavily, and it was near a whole year
before I had entirely finished my little pale, or surrounded habitation. The piles, or stakes,
which were as heavy as I could well lift, were a long time in cutting and preparing in the
woods, and more by far in bringing home, so that I spent sometimes two days in cutting
and bringing home one of those posts and a third day in driving it into the ground; for
which purpose I got a heavy piece of wood at first, but at last bethought myself of one of
the iron crows, which, however, though I found it, yet it made driving those posts or piles
very laborious and tedious work.
But what need I have been concerned at the tediousness of anything I had to do, seeing I
had time enough to do it in? Nor had I any other employment if that had been over, at least
that I could foresee, except the ranging the island to seek for food, which I did more or
less every day.
I now began to consider seriously my condition, and the circumstance I was reduced to;
and I drew up the state of my affairs in writing, not so much to leave them to any that were
to come after me, for I was like to have but few heirs, as to deliver my thoughts from daily
poring upon them, and afflicting my mind; and as my reason began now to master my
despondency, I began to comfort myself as well as I could, and to set the good against the
evil, that I might have something to distinguish my case from worse; and I stated it very
impartially, like debtor and creditor, the comforts I enjoyed, against the miseries I
suffered, thus:
 Upon the whole, here was an undoubted testimony that there was scarce any condition
in the world so miserable but there was something negative or something positive to be
thankful for in it; and let this stand as a direction from the experience of the most
miserable of all conditions in this world, that we may always find in it something to
comfort ourselves from, and to set in the description of good and evil, on the credit side of
the account.
Having now brought my mind a little to relish my condition and given over looking out
to sea, to see if I could spy a ship; I say, giving over these things, I began to apply myself
to accommodate my way of living and to make things as easy to me as I could.
I have already described my habitation, which was a tent under the side of a rock,
surrounded with a strong pale of posts and cables, but I might now rather call it a wall; for
I raised a kind of wall up against it of turfs, about two foot thick on the outside; and after
some time (I think it was a year and a half) I raised rafters from it, leaning to the rock, and
thatched or covered it with boughs of trees and such things as I could get to keep out the
rain, which I found at some times of the year very violent.
I have already observed how I brought all my goods into this pale, and into the cave
which I had made behind me. But I must observe, too, that at first this was a confused
heap of goods, which as they lay in no order, so they took up all my place; I had no room
to turn myself; so I set myself to enlarge my cave and works farther into the earth, for it
was a loose sandy rock, which yielded easily to the labour I bestowed on it. And so, when
I found I was pretty safe as to beasts of prey, I worked sideways to the right hand into the
rock; and then turning to the right again, worked quite out, and made me a door to come
out on the outside of my pale or fortification.
This gave me not only egress and regress, as it were a back way to my tent and to my
storehouse, but gave me room to stow my goods.
And now I began to apply myself to make such necessary things as I found I most
wanted, particularly a chair and a table; for without these I was not able to enjoy the few
comforts I had in the world; I could not write or eat, or do several things, with so much
pleasure without a table.
So I went to work; and here I must needs observe that as reason is the substance and
original of the mathematics, so by stating and squaring everything by reason, and by
making the most rational judgment of things, every man may be in time master of every
mechanic art. I had never handled a tool in my life, and yet in time, by labour, application,
and contrivance, I found at last that I wanted nothing but I could have made it, especially
if I had had tools; however, I made abundance of things even without tools, and some with
no more tools than an adze and a hatchet, which perhaps were never made that way
before, and that with infinite labour. For example, if I wanted a board, I had no other way
but to cut down a tree, set it on an edge before me, and hew it flat on either side with my
axe, till I had brought it to be thin as a plank, and then dub it smooth with my adze. It is
true, by this method I could make but one board out of a whole tree, but this I had no
remedy for but patience, any more than I had for the prodigious deal of time and labour
which it took me up to make a plank or board. But my time or labour was little worth, and
so it was as well employed one way as another.
However, I made me a table and a chair, as I observed above, in the first place, and this
I did out of the short pieces of boards that I brought on my raft from the ship. But when I
had wrought out some boards, as above, I made large shelves of the breadth of a foot and a
half, one over another, all along one side of my cave, to lay all my tools, nails, and
ironwork, and in a word, to separate everything at large in their places, that I might easily
come at them; I knocked pieces into the wall of the rock to hang my guns and all things
that would hang up.
So that had my cave been to be seen, it looked like a general magazine of all necessary
things; and I had everything so ready at my hand, that it was a great pleasure to me to see
all my goods in such order, and especially to find my stock of all necessaries so great.
And now it was when I began to keep a journal of every day’s employment; for, indeed,
at first I was in too much hurry, and not only hurry as to labour, but in too much
discomposure of mind, and my journal would have been full of many dull things. For
example, I must have said thus:
September the 30th. After I got to shore, and had escaped drowning, instead of being
thankful to God for my deliverance, having first vomited with the great quantity of salt
water which was gotten into my stomach, and recovering myself a little, I ran about the
shore, wringing my hands and beating my head and face, exclaiming at my misery and
crying out I was undone, undone, till, tired and faint, I was forced to lie down on the
ground to repose, but durst not sleep, for fear of being devoured.
Some days after this, and after I had been on board the ship and got all that I could out
of her, yet I could not forbear getting up to the top of a little mountain, and looking out to
sea, in hopes of seeing a ship, then fancy at a vast distance I spied a sail, please myself
with the hopes of it and then, after looking steadily till I was almost blind, lose it quite,
and sit down and weep like a child, and thus increase my misery by my folly.
But having gotten over these things in some measure and having settled my household
stuff and habitation, made me a table and a chair, and all as handsome about me as I could,
I began to keep my journal, of which I shall here give you the copy (though in it will be
told all these particulars over again) as long as it lasted, for, having no more ink, I was
forced to leave it off.
 The Journal
September 30, 1659. I, poor, miserable Robinson Crusoe, being shipwrecked, during a
dreadful storm in the offing, came on shore on this dismal unfortunate island, which I
called ‘‘the Island of Despair,’’ all the rest of the ship’s company being drowned, and
myself almost dead.
All the rest of that day I spent in afflicting myself at the dismal circumstances I was
brought to, viz., I had neither food, house, clothes, weapon, or place to fly to, and in
despair of any relief, saw nothing but death before me, either that I should be devoured by
wild beasts, murdered by savages, or starved to death for want of food. At the approach of
night, I slept in a tree for fear of wild creatures, but slept soundly, though it rained all
night.
October 1. In the morning I saw to my great surprise, the ship had floated with the high
tide and was driven on shore again much nearer the island, which, as it was some comfort
on one hand (for seeing her sit upright and not broken to pieces, I hoped, if the wind
abated, I might get on board, and get some food and necessaries out of her for my relief),
so on the other hand, it renewed my grief at the loss of my comrades, who, I imagined, if
we had all stayed on board, might have saved the ship, or at least that they would not have
been all drowned as they were; and that had the men been saved, we might perhaps have
built us a boat out of the ruins of the ship, to have carried us to some other part of the
world. I spent great part of this day in perplexing myself on these things; but at length
seeing the ship almost dry, I went upon the sand as near as I could, and then swam on
board. This day also continued raining, though with no wind at all.
From the 1st of October to the 24th. All these days entirely spent in many several
voyages to get all I could out of the ship, which I brought on shore every tide of flood
upon rafts. Much rain also in these days, though with some intervals of fair weather. But,
it seems, this was the rainy season.
October 20. I overset my raft, and all the goods I had got upon it; but being in shoal
water, and the things being chiefly heavy, I recovered many of them when the tide was
out.
October 25. It rained all night and all day, with some gusts of wind, during which time
the ship broke in pieces, the wind blowing a little harder than before, and was no more to
be seen, except the wreck of her, and that only at low water. I spent this day in covering
and securing the goods which I had saved, that the rain might not spoil them.
October 26. I walked about the shore almost all day to find out a place to fix my
habitation, greatly concerned to secure myself from an attack in the night, either from wild
beasts or men. Towards night I fixed upon a proper place under a rock, and marked out a
semicircle for my encampment, which I resolved to strengthen with a work, wall, or
fortification, made of double piles, lined within with cable, and without with turf.
From the 26th to the 30th I worked very hard in carrying all my goods to my new
habitation, though some part of the time it rained exceeding hard.
 The 31st in the morning I went out into the island with my gun to seek for some food,
and discover the country, when I killed a she-goat, and her kid followed me home, which I
afterwards killed also, because it would not feed.
November 1. I set up my tent under a rock, and lay there for the first night, making it as
large as I could with stakes driven in to swing my hammock upon.
November 2. I set up all my chests and boards, and the pieces of timber which made my
rafts, and with them formed a fence round me, a little within the place I had marked out
for my fortification.
November 3. I went out with my gun and killed two fowls like ducks, which were very
good food. In the afternoon went to work to make me a table.
November 4. This morning I began to order my times of work, of going out with my
gun, time of sleep, and time of diversion, viz.: Every morning I walked out with my gun
for two or three hours, if it did not rain, then employed myself to work till about eleven
o’clock; then ate what I had to live on, and from twelve to two I lay down to sleep, the
weather being excessive hot, and then in the evening to work again. The working part of
this day and of the next were wholly employed in making my table, for I was yet but a
very sorry workman, though time and necessity made me a complete natural mechanic
soon after, as I believe it would do anyone else.
November 5. This day I went abroad with my gun and my dog, and killed a wild cat, her
skin pretty soft, but her flesh good for nothing. Every creature I killed, I took off the skins
and preserved them. Coming back by the seashore, I saw many sorts of seafowls which I
did not understand; but was surprised, and almost frighted, with two or three seals, which,
while I was gazing at, not well knowing what they were, got into the sea, and escaped me
for that time.
November 6. After my morning walk, I went to work with my table again, and finished
it, though not to my liking; nor was it long before I learned to mend it.
November 7. Now it began to be settled fair weather. The 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, and part of
the 12th (for the 11th was Sunday) I took wholly up to make me a chair, and with much
ado brought it to a tolerable shape, but never to please me, and even in the making I pulled
it to pieces several times. NOTE: I soon neglected my keeping Sundays; for, omitting my
mark for them on my post, I forgot which was which.
November 13. This day it rained, which refreshed me exceedingly, and cooled the earth,
but it was accompanied with terrible thunder and lightning, which frighted me dreadfully,
for fear of my powder. As soon as it was over, I resolved to separate my stock of powder
into as many little parcels as possible, that it might not be in danger.
November 14, 15, 16. These three days I spent in making little square chests or boxes,
which might hold about a pound or two pounds, at most, of powder; and so, putting the
powder in, I stowed it in places as secure and remote from one another as possible. On one
of these three days I killed a large bird that was good to eat, but I know not what to call it.
November 17. This day I began to dig behind my tent into the rock, to make room for
my further convenience. NOTE: Three things I wanted exceedingly for this work, viz., a
pickaxe, a shovel, and a wheelbarrow or basket, so I desisted from my work and began to
consider how to supply that want, and make me some tools. As for a pickaxe, I made use
of the iron crows, which were proper enough, though heavy; but the next thing was a
shovel or spade. This was so absolutely necessary that indeed I could do nothing
effectually without it; but what kind of one to make I knew not.
November 18. The next day in searching the woods, I found a tree of that wood, or like
it, which in Brazil they call the iron tree, for its exceeding hardness; of this, with great
labour, and almost spoiling my axe, I cut a piece, and brought it home too with difficulty
enough, for it was exceeding heavy.
The excessive hardness of the wood, and having no other way, made me a long while
upon this machine, for I worked it effectually, by little and little, into the form of a shovel
or spade, the handle exactly shaped like ours in England, only that the broad part having
no iron shod upon it at bottom, it would not last me so long; however, it served well
enough for the uses which I had occasion to put it to; but never was a shovel, I believe,
made after that fashion, or so long a-making.
I was still deficient, for I wanted a basket or a wheelbarrow; a basket I could not make
by any means, having no such things as twigs that would bend to make wickerware, at
least none yet found out; and as to a wheelbarrow, I fancied I could make all but the
wheel, but that I had no notion of, neither did I know how to go about it; besides, I had no
possible way to make the iron gudgeons for the spindle or axis of the wheel to run in, so I
gave it over; and so for carrying away the earth which I dug out of the cave, I made me a
thing like a hod which the labourers carry mortar in when they serve the bricklayers.
This was not so difficult to me as the making the shovel; and yet this, and the shovel,
and the attempt, which I made in vain, to make a wheelbarrow, took me up no less than
four days; I mean always excepting my morning walk with my gun, which I seldom failed,
and very seldom failed also of bringing home something fit to eat.
November 23. My other work having now stood still, because of my making these tools,
when they were finished I went on, and working every day, as my strength and time
allowed, I spent eighteen days entirely in widening and deepening my cave, that it might
hold my goods commodiously.
NOTE: During all this time, I worked to make this room or cave spacious enough to
accommodate me as a warehouse or magazine, a kitchen, a dining-room, and a cellar; as
for my lodging, I kept to the tent, except that sometimes in the wet season of the year it
rained so hard that I could not keep myself dry, which caused me afterwards to cover all
my place within my pale with long poles in the form of rafters, leaning against the rock,
and load them with flags, and large leaves of trees, like a thatch.
December 10. I began now to think my cave or vault finished, when on a sudden (it
seems I had made it too large) a great quantity of earth fell down from the top and one
side, so much, that, in short, it frighted me, and not without reason too; for if I had been
under it I had never wanted a gravedigger. Upon this disaster I had a great deal of work to
do over again; for I had the loose earth to carry out, and, which was of more importance, I
had the ceiling to prop up, so that I might be sure no more would come down.
December 11. This day I went to work with it accordingly, and got two shores or posts
pitched upright to the top, with two pieces of boards across over each post. This I finished
the next day; and setting more posts up with boards, in about a week more I had the roof
secured; and the posts, standing in rows, served me for partitions to part of my house.
December 17. From this day to the 20th, I placed shelves and knocked up nails on the
posts to hang everything up that could be hung up; and now I began to be in some order
within doors.
December 20. Now I carried everything into the cave, and began to furnish my house,
and set up some pieces of boards like a dresser, to order my victuals upon; but boards
began to be very scarce with me. Also I made me another table.
December 24. Much rain all night and all day; no stirring out.
December 25. Rain all day.
December 26. No rain, and the earth much cooler than before, and pleasanter.
December 27. Killed a young goat, and lamed another, so that I catched it, and led it
home in a string; when I had it home, I bound and splintered up its leg, which was broke.
N.B. I took such care of it that it lived, and the leg grew well, and as strong as ever; but by
nursing it so long it grew tame, and fed upon the little green at my door, and would not go
away. This was the first time that I entertained a thought of breeding up some tame
creatures, that I might have food when my powder and shot was all spent.
December 28, 29, 30. Great heats and no breeze; so that there was no stirring abroad,
except in the evening for food; this time I spent in putting all my things in order within
doors.
January 1. Very hot still, but I went abroad early and late with my gun, and lay still in
the middle of the day; this evening going farther into the valleys, which lay towards the
center of the island, I found there was plenty of goats, though exceeding shy and hard to
come at; however, I resolved to try if I could not bring my dog to hunt them down.
January 2. Accordingly, the next day I went out with my dog, and set him upon the
goats; but I was mistaken, for they all faced about upon the dog, and he knew his danger
too well, for he would not come near them.
January 3. I began my fence or wall; which, being still jealous of my being attacked by
somebody, I resolved to make very thick and strong.
N.B. This wall being described before, I purposely omit what was said in the journal; it
is sufficient to observe, that I was no less time than from the 3rd of January to the 14th of
April, working, finishing, and perfecting this wall, though it was no more than about
twenty-four yards in length, being a half circle from one place in the rock to another place
about eight yards from it, the door of the cave being in the center behind it.
All this time I worked very hard, the rains hindering me many days, nay, sometimes
weeks together; but I thought I should never be perfectly secure till this wall was finished;
and it is scarce credible what inexpressible labour everything was done with, especially
the bringing piles out of the woods, and driving them into the ground; for I made them
much bigger than I needed to have done.
When this wall was finished, and the outside double-fenced with a turf wall raised up
close to it, I persuaded myself that if any people were to come on shore there, they would
not perceive anything like a habitation; and it was very well I did so, as may be observed
hereafter, upon a very remarkable occasion.
I Throw Away the Husks of Corn
During this time, I made my rounds in the woods for game every day when the rain
admitted me, and made frequent discoveries in these walks of something or other to my
advantage; particularly I found a kind of wild pigeons, who built not as wood pigeons in a
tree, but rather as house pigeons, in the holes of the rocks; and taking some young ones, I
endeavoured to breed them up tame, and did so; but when they grew older, they flew all
away, which perhaps was at first for want of feeding them, for I had nothing to give them;
however, I frequently found their nests, and got their young ones, which were very good
meat.
And now in the managing my household affairs, I found myself wanting in many
things, which I thought at first it was impossible for me to make, as indeed as to some of
them it was; for instance, I could never make a cask to be hooped; I had a small runlet or
two, as I observed before, but I could never arrive to the capacity of making one by them,
though I spent many weeks about it; I could neither put in the heads, or join the staves so
true to one another, as to make them hold water; so I gave that also over.
In the next place, I was at a great loss for candle; so that as soon as ever it was dark,
which was generally by seven o’clock, I was obliged to go to bed. I remembered the lump
of beeswax with which I made candles in my African adventure; but I had none of that
now. The only remedy I had was that, when I had killed a goat, I saved the tallow, and
with a little dish made of clay, which I baked in the sun, to which I added a wick of some
oakum, I made me a lamp; and this gave me light, though not a clear, steady light like a
candle. In the middle of all my labours it happened that, rummaging my things, I found a
little bag, which, as I hinted before, had been filled with corn for the feeding of poultry,
not for this voyage, but before, as I suppose, when the ship came from Lisbon; what little
remained of corn had been in the bag was all devoured with the rats, and I saw nothing in
the bag but husks and dust; and being willing to have the bag for some other use (I think it
was to put powder in, when I divided it for fear of the lightning, or some such use), I
shook the husks of corn out of it on one side of my fortification under the rock.
It was a little before the great rains, just now mentioned, that I threw this stuff away,
taking no notice of anything, and not so much as remembering that I had thrown anything
there; when about a month after or thereabouts, I saw some few stalks of something green
shooting out of the ground, which I fancied might be some plant I had not seen; but I was
surprised and perfectly astonished, when after a little longer time I saw about ten or twelve
ears come out, which were perfect green barley of the same kind as our European, nay, as
our English barley.
It is impossible to express the astonishment and confusion of my thoughts on this
occasion; I had hitherto acted upon no religious foundation at all; indeed I had very few
notions of religion in my head, nor had entertained any sense of anything that had befallen
me, otherwise than as a chance, or, as we lightly say, what pleases God; without so much
as inquiring into the end of Providence in these things, or His order in governing events in
the world. But after I saw barley grow there, in a climate which I know was not proper for
corn, and especially that I knew not how it came there, it startled me strangely, and I
began to suggest that God had miraculously caused this grain to grow without any help of
seed sown, and that it was so directed purely for my sustenance on that wild miserable
place.
This touched my heart a little and brought tears out of my eyes, and I began to bless
myself, that such a prodigy of Nature should happen upon my account; and this was the
more strange to me because I saw near it still, all along by the side of the rock, some other
straggling stalks, which proved to be stalks of rice, and which I knew, because I had seen
it grow in Africa when I was ashore there.
I not only thought these the pure productions of Providence for my support, but not
doubting but that there was more in the place, I went all over that part of the island where
I had been before, peering in every corner and under every rock, to see for more of it, but I
could not find any; at last it occurred to my thoughts that I had shook a bag of chickens’
meat4 out in that place, and then the wonder began to cease; and I must confess, my
religious thankfulness to God’s Providence began toabate too upon the discovering that all
this was nothing but what was common; though I ought to have been as thankful for so
strange and unforeseen Providence, as if it had been miraculous; for it was really the work
of Providence as to me, that should order or appoint, that ten or twelve grains of corn
should remain unspoiled (when the rats had destroyed all the rest), as if it had been
dropped from Heaven; as also that I should throw it out in that particular place where, it
being in the shade of a high rock, it sprang up immediately; whereas, if I had thrown it
anywhere else at that time, it had been burnt up and destroyed.
I carefully saved the ears of this corn, you may be sure, in their season, which was
about the end of June; and laying up every corn, I resolved to sow them all again, hoping
in time to have some quantity sufficient to supply me with bread; but it was not till the
fourth year that I could allow myself the least grain of this corn to eat, and even then but
sparingly, as I shall say afterwards in its order; for I lost all that I sowed the first season by
not observing the proper time; for I sowed it just before the dry season, so that it never
came up at all, at least not as it would have done. Of which in its place.
Besides this barley, there was, as above, twenty or thirty stalks of rice, which I
preserved with the same care, and whose use was of the same kind, or to the same
purpose, viz., to make me bread, or rather food; for I found ways to cook it up without
baking, though I did that also after some time. But to return to my journal.
I worked excessive hard these three or four months, to get my wall done; and the 14th
of April I closed it up, contriving to go into it, not by a door, but over the wall by a ladder,
that there might be no sign on the outside of my habitation.
April 16. I finished the ladder, so I went up with the ladder to the top, and then pulled it
up after me, and let it down in the inside. This was a complete enclosure to me; for within
I had room enough, and nothing could come at me from without, unless it could first
mount my wall.
The very next day after this wall was finished, I had almost had all my labour
overthrown at once, and myself killed; the case was thus: As I was busy in the inside of it,
behind my tent, just in the entrance into my cave, I was terribly frighted with a most
dreadful surprising thing indeed; for all on a sudden I found the earth come crumbling
down from the roof of my cave, and from the edge of the hill over my head, and two of the
posts I had set up in the cave cracked in a frightful manner; I was heartily scared, but
thought nothing of what was really the cause, only thinking that the top of my cave was
falling in, as some of it had done before; and for fear I should be buried in it, I ran forward
to my ladder, and not thinking myself safe there neither, I got over my wall for fear of the
pieces of the hill which I expected might roll down upon me. I was no sooner stepped
down upon the firm ground but I plainly saw it was a terrible earthquake, for the ground I
stood on shook three times, at about eight minutes’ distance, with three such shocks as
would have overturned the strongest building that could be supposed to have stood on the
earth; and a great piece of the top of a rock, which stood about half a mile from me next
the sea, fell down with such a terrible noise, as I never heard in all my life. I perceived
also the very sea was put into violent motion by it; and I believe the shocks were stronger
under the water than on the island.
I was so amazed with the thing itself, having never felt the like, or discoursed with
anyone that had, that I was like one dead or stupefied; and the motion of the earth made
my stomach sick, like one that was tossed at sea; but the noise of the falling of the rock
awaked me, as it were, and rousing me from the stupefied condition I was in, filled me
with horror, and I thought of nothing then but the hill falling upon my tent, and all my
household goods, and burying all at once; and this sunk my very soul within me a second
time.
After the third shock was over, and I felt no more for some time, I began to take
courage, and yet I had not heart enough to get over my wall again, for fear of being buried
alive, but sat still upon the ground, greatly cast down and disconsolate, not knowing what
to do. All this while I had not the least serious religious thought, nothing but the common,
‘‘Lord have mercy upon me!’’ and when it was over, that went away too.
It Blows a Most Dreadful Hurricane
While I sat thus, I found the air overcast, and grow cloudy, as if it would rain; soon after
that the wind rose by little and little, so that in less than half an hour it blew a most
dreadful hurricane. The sea was all on a sudden covered over with foam and froth, the
shore was covered with the breach of the water, the trees were torn up by the roots, and a
terrible storm it was; and this held about three hours, and then began to abate, and in two
hours more it was stark calm, and began to rain very hard.
 All this while I sat upon the ground very much terrified and dejected, when on a sudden
it came into my thoughts that, these winds and rain being the consequences of the
earthquake, the earthquake itself was spent and over, and I might venture into my cave
again. With this thought my spirits began to revive, and the rain also helping to persuade
me, I went in and sat down in my tent; but the rain was so violent that my tent was ready
to be beaten down with it, and I was forced to go into my cave, though very much afraid
and uneasy for fear it should fall on my head.
This violent rain forced me to a new work, viz., to cut a hole through my new
fortification, like a sink, to let the water go out, which would else had drowned my cave.
After I had been in my cave some time, and found still no more shocks of the earthquake
follow, I began to be more composed; and now, to support my spirits, which indeed
wanted it very much, I went to my little store and took a small sup of rum, which,
however, I did then and always very sparingly, knowing I could have no more when that
was gone.
It continued raining all that night, and great part of the next day, so that I could not stir
abroad; but my mind being more composed, I began to think of what I had best do,
concluding that if the island was subject to these earthquakes, there would be no living for
me in a cave, but I must consider of building me some little hut in an open place, which I
might surround with a wall, as I had done here, and so make myself secure from wild
beasts or men; but concluded, if I stayed where I was, I should certainly, one time or other,
be buried alive.
With these thoughts I resolved to remove my tent from the place where it stood, which
was just under the hanging precipice of the hill, and which, if it should be shaken again,
would certainly fall upon my tent. And I spent the two next days, being the 19th and 20th
of April, in contriving where and how to remove my habitation.
The fear of being swallowed up alive made me that I never slept in quiet, and yet the
apprehension of lying abroad without any fence was almost equal to it. But still, when I
looked about, and saw how everything was put in order, how pleasantly concealed I was,
and how safe from danger, it made me very loath to remove.
In the meantime it occurred to me that it would require a vast deal of time for me to do
this, and that I must be contented to run the venture where I was, till I had formed a camp
for myself, and had secured it so as to remove to it. So with this resolution I composed
myself for a time, and resolved that I would go to work with all speed to build me a wall
with piles and cables, etc., in a circle, as before, and set my tent up in it when it was
finished, but that I would venture to stay where I was till it was finished and fit to remove
to. This was the 21st.
April 22. The next morning I began to consider of means to put this resolve in
execution, but I was at a great loss about my tools. I had three large axes and abundance of
hatchets (for we carried the hatchets for traffic with the Indians), but with much chopping
and cutting knotty hard wood, they were all full of notches, and dull, and though I had a
grindstone, I could not turn it and grind my tools too; this cost me as much thought as a
statesman would have bestowed upon a grand point of politics, or a judge upon the life
and death of a man. At length I contrived a wheel with a string, to turn it with my foot,
that I might have both my hands at liberty. NOTE: I had never seen any such thing in
England, or at least not to take notice how it was done, though since I have observed it is
very common there; besides that, my grindstone was very large and heavy. This machine
cost me a full week’s work to bring it to perfection.
April 28, 29. These two whole days I took up in grinding my tools, my machine for
turning my grindstone performing very well.
April 30. Having perceived my bread had been low a great while, now I took a survey
of it, and reduced myself to one biscuit cake a day, which made my heart very heavy.
May 1. In the morning, looking towards the seaside, the tide being low, I saw something
lie on the shore bigger than ordinary, and it looked like a cask; when I came to it, I found a
small barrel and two or three pieces of the wreck of the ship, which were driven on shore
by the late hurricane, and looking towards the wreck itself, I thought it seemed to lie
higher out of the water than it used to do; I examined the barrel which was driven on
shore, and soon found it was a barrel of gunpowder, but it had taken water, and the powder
was caked as hard as a stone; however, I rolled it farther on shore for the present, and went
on upon the sands, as near as I could to the wreck of the ship, to look for more.
When I came down to the ship I found it strangely removed. The forecastle, which lay
before buried in sand, was heaved up at least six foot, and the stern, which was broke to
pieces and parted from the rest by the force of the sea soon after I had left rummaging her,
was tossed, as it were, up, and cast on one side, and the sand was thrown so high on that
side next her stern that whereas there was a great place of water before, so that I could not
come within a quarter of a mile of the wreck without swimming, I could now walk quite
up to her when the tide was out; I was surprised with this at first, but soon concluded it
must be done by the earthquake, and as by this violence the ship was more broken open
than formerly, so many things came daily on shore which the sea had loosened, and which
the winds and water rolled by degrees to the land.
This wholly diverted my thoughts from the design of removing my habitation; and I
busied myself mightily that day especially, in searching whether I could make any way
into the ship, but I found nothing was to be expected of that kind, for that all the inside of
the ship was choked up with sand. However, as I had learned not to despair of anything, I
resolved to pull everything to pieces that I could of the ship, concluding that everything I
could get from her would be of some use or other to me.
May 3. I began with my saw, and cut a piece of a beam through, which I thought held
some of the upper part, or quarter-deck, together, and when I had cut it through, I cleared
away the sand as well as I could from the side which lay highest; but the tide coming in, I
was obliged to give over for that time.
May 4. I went a-fishing, but caught not one fish that I durst eat of, till I was weary of
my sport, when, just going to leave off, I caught a young dolphin. I had made me a long
line of some rope yarn, but I had no hooks, yet I frequently caught fish enough, as much as
I cared to eat; all which I dried in the sun and ate them dry.
 May 5. Worked on the wreck, cut another beam asunder, and brought three great fir
planks off from the decks, which I tied together and made swim on shore when the tide of
flood came on.
May 6. Worked on the wreck, got several iron bolts out of her, and other pieces of
ironwork; worked very hard, and came home very much tired, and had thoughts of giving
it over.
May 7. Went to the wreck again, but with an intent not to work, but found the weight of
the wreck had broke itself down, the beams being cut, that several pieces of the ship
seemed to lie loose, and the inside of the hold lay so open that I could see into it, but
almost full of water and sand.
May 8. Went to the wreck, and carried an iron crow to wrench up the deck, which lay
now quite clear of the water or sand; I wrenched open two planks and brought them on
shore also with the tide. I left the iron crow in the wreck for next day.
May 9. Went to the wreck, and with the crow made way into the body of the wreck, and
felt several casks and loosened them with the crow, but could not break them up; I felt also
the roll of English lead and could stir it, but it was too heavy to remove.
May 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. Went every day to the wreck, and got a great deal of pieces of
timber and boards, or plank, and two or three hundredweight of iron.
May 15. I carried two hatchets to try if I could not cut a piece off of the roll of lead, by
placing the edge of one hatchet and driving it with the other; but as it lay about a foot and
a half in the water, I could not make any blow to drive the hatchet.
May 16. It had blowed hard in the night, and the wreck appeared more broken by the
force of the water; but I stayed so long in the woods to get pigeons for food that the tide
prevented me going to the wreck that day.
May 17. I saw some pieces of the wreck blown on shore, at a great distance, near two
miles off me, but resolved to see what they were and found it was a piece of the head, but
too heavy for me to bring away.
May 24. Every day to this day I worked on the wreck, and with hard labour I loosened
some things so much with the crow, that with the first flowing tide several casks floated
out, and two of the seamen’s chests; but the wind blowing from the shore, nothing came to
land that day but pieces of timber and a hogshead which had some Brazil pork in it, but
the salt water and the sand had spoiled it.
I continued this work every day to the 15th of June, except the time necessary to get
food, which I always appointed, during this part of my employment, to be when the tide
was up, that I might be ready when it was ebbed out, and by this time I had gotten timber
and plank and ironwork enough to have builded a good boat, if I had known how; and
also, I got at several times, and in several pieces, near a hundredweight of the sheet lead.
June 16. Going down to the seaside, I found a large tortoise or turtle; this was the first I
had seen, which it seems was only my misfortune, not any defect of the place, or scarcity;
for had I happened to be on the other side of the island, I might have had hundreds of them
every day, as I found afterwards; but perhaps had paid dear enough for them.
June 17. I spent in cooking the turtle; I found in her threescore eggs; and her flesh was
to me at that time the most savoury and pleasant that ever I tasted in my life, having had
no flesh but of goats and fowls since I landed in this horrid place.
I Am Very Ill and Frighted
June 18. Rained all day, and I stayed within. I thought at this time the rain felt cold, and I
was something chilly, which I knew was not usual in that latitude.
June 19. Very ill, and shivering, as if the weather had been cold.
June 20. No rest all night; violent pains in my head, and feverish.
June 21. Very ill, frighted almost to death with the apprehensions of my sad condition,
to be sick and no help. Prayed to God for the first time since the storm off of Hull, but
scarce knew what I said, or why; my thoughts being all confused.
June 22. A little better, but under dreadful apprehensions of sickness.
June 23. Very bad again, cold and shivering, and then a violent headache.
June 24. Much better.
June 25. An ague very violent; the fit held me seven hours, cold fit and hot, with faint
sweats after it.
June 26. Better; and having no victuals to eat, took my gun, but found myself very
weak; however, I killed a she-goat and with much difficulty got it home and broiled some
of it and ate; I would fain have stewed it and made some broth, but had no pot.
June 27. The ague again so violent that I lay abed all day and neither ate nor drank. I
was ready to perish for thirst, but so weak I had not strength to stand up or to get myself
any water to drink. Prayed to God again, but was lightheaded; and when I was not, I was
so ignorant that I knew not what to say; only I lay and cried, ‘‘Lord look upon me! Lord,
pity me! Lord have mercy upon me!’’ I suppose I did nothing else for two or three hours
till, the fit wearing off, I fell asleep, and did not wake till far in the night; when I waked, I
found myself much refreshed, but weak, and exceeding thirsty. However, as I had no water
in my whole habitation, I was forced to lie till morning and went to sleep again. In this
second sleep I had this terrible dream.
I thought that I was sitting on the ground, on the outside of my wall, where I sat when
the storm blew after the earthquake, and that I saw a man descend from a great black
cloud, in a bright flame of fire, and light upon the ground. He was all over as bright as a
flame, so that I could but just bear to look towards him; his countenance was most
inexpressibly dreadful, impossible for words to describe; when he stepped upon the
ground with his feet, I thought the earth trembled, just as it had done before in the
earthquake, and all the air looked, to my apprehension, as if it had been filled with flashes
of fire.
He was no sooner landed upon the earth but he moved forward towards me, with a long
spear or weapon in his hand, to kill me; and when he came to a rising ground, at some
distance, he spoke to me, or I heard a voice so terrible, that it is impossible to express the
terror of it; all that I can say I understood was this: ‘‘Seeing all these things have not
brought thee to repentance, now thou shalt die.’’ At which words, I thought he lifted up the
spear that was in his hand to kill me.
No one that shall ever read this account will expect that I should be able to describe the
horrors of my soul at this terrible vision; I mean, that even while it was a dream, I even
dreamed of those horrors; nor is it any more possible to describe the impression that
remained upon my mind when I awaked and found it was but a dream.
I had, alas! no divine knowledge; what I had received by the good instruction of my
father was then worn out by an uninterrupted series, for eight years, of seafaring
wickedness, and a constant conversation with nothing but such as were like myself,
wicked and profane to the last degree. I do not remember that I had in all that time one
thought that so much as tended either to looking upwards towards God or inwards towards
a reflection upon my own ways. But a certain stupidity of soul, without desire of good, or
conscience of evil, had entirely overwhelmed me, and I was all that the most hardened,
unthinking, wicked creature among our common sailors can be supposed to be, not having
the least sense, either of the fear of God in danger or of thankfulness to God in
deliverances.
In the relating what is already past of my story, this will be the more easily believed,
when I shall add, that through all the variety of miseries that had to this day befallen me, I
never had so much as one thought of it being the hand of God, or that it was a just
punishment for my sin, my rebellious behaviour against my father, or my present sins,
which were great; or so much as a punishment for the general course of my wicked life.
When I was on the desperate expedition on the desert shores of Africa, I never had so
much as one thought of what would become of me; or one wish to God to direct me
whither I should go, or to keep me from the danger which apparently surrounded me, as
well from voracious creatures as cruel savages. But I was merely thoughtless of a God, or
a Providence, acted like a mere brute from the principles of nature, and by the dictates of
common sense only, and indeed hardly that.
When I was delivered and taken up at sea by the Portugal captain, well used, and dealt
justly and honourably with, as well as charitably, I had not the least thankfulness in my
thoughts. When again I was shipwrecked, ruined, and in danger of drowning on this
island, I was as far from remorse or looking on it as a judgment; I only said to myself
often that I was an unfortunate dog and born to be always miserable.
It is true, when I got on shore first here, and found all my ship’s crew drowned and
myself spared, I was surprised with a kind of ecstasy, and some transports of soul which,
had the grace of God assisted, might have come up to true thankfulness; but it ended
where it began, in a mere common flight of joy, or, as I may say, being glad I was alive,
without the least reflection upon the distinguishing goodness of the hand which had
preserved me, and had singled me out to be preserved, when all the rest were destroyed; or
an inquiry why Providence had been thus merciful to me; even just the same common sort
of joy which seamen generally have after they are got safe ashore from a shipwreck,
which they drown all in the next bowl of punch and forget almost as soon as it is over, and
all the rest of my life was like it.
Even when I was afterwards, on due consideration, made sensible of my condition, how
I was cast on this dreadful place, out of the reach of human kind, out of all hope of relief,
or prospect of redemption, as soon as I saw but a prospect of living and that I should not
starve and perish for hunger, all the sense of my affliction wore off, and I began to be very
easy, applied myself to the works proper for my preservation and supply, and was far
enough from being afflicted at my condition, as a judgment from Heaven, or as the hand
of God against me; these were thoughts which very seldom entered into my head.
The growing up of the corn, as is hinted in my journal, had at first some little influence
upon me, and began to affect me with seriousness, as long as I thought it had something
miraculous in it; but as soon as ever that part of the thought was removed, all the
impression which was raised from it wore off also, as I have noted already.
Even the earthquake, though nothing could be more terrible in its nature, or more
immediately directing to the invisible Power which alone directs such things, yet no
sooner was the first fright over but the impression it had made went off also. I had no
more sense of God or His judgments, much less of the present affliction, of my
circumstances being from His hand, than if I had been in the most prosperous condition of
life.
But now, when I began to be sick, and a leisurely view of the miseries of death came to
place itself before me; when my spirits began to sink under the burden of a strong
distemper, and nature was exhausted with the violence of the fever; conscience, that had
slept so long, began to awake, and I began to reproach myself with my past life, in which I
had so evidently, by uncommon wickedness, provoked the justice of God to lay me under
uncommon strokes, and to deal with me in so vindictive a manner.
These reflections oppressed me for the second or third day of my distemper, and in the
violence as well of the fever as of the dreadful reproaches of my conscience extorted some
words from me, like praying to God, though I cannot say they were either a prayer
attended with desires or with hopes; it was rather the voice of mere fright and distress; my
thoughts were confused, the convictions great upon my mind, and the horror of dying in
such a miserable condition raised vapours into my head with the mere apprehensions; and
in these hurries of my soul, I know not what my tongue might express. But it was rather
exclamation, such as, ‘‘Lord! what a miserable creature am I! If I should be sick, I shall
certainly die for want of help, and what will become of me!’’ Then the tears burst out of
my eyes, and I could say no more for a good while.
In this interval, the good advice of my father came to my mind, and presently his
prediction, which I mentioned at the beginning of this story, viz., that if I did take this
foolish step, God would not bless me, and I would have leisure hereafter to reflect upon
having neglected his counsel, when there might be none to assist in my recovery. ‘‘Now,’’
said I aloud, ‘‘my dear father’s words are come to pass. God’s justice has overtaken me,
and I have none to help or hear me. I rejected the voice of Providence, which had
mercifully put me in a posture or station of life, wherein I might have been happy and
easy; but I would neither see it myself, or learn to know the blessing of it from my parents;
I left them to mourn over my folly, and now I am left to mourn under the consequences of
it. I refused their help and assistance, who would have lifted me into the world, and would
have made everything easy to me, and now I have difficulties to struggle with, too great
for even nature itself to support, and no assistance, no help, no comfort, no advice.’’ Then
I cried out, ‘‘Lord be my help, for I am in great distress.’’
This was the first prayer, if I may call it so, that I had made for many years. But I return
to my journal.
June 28. Having been somewhat refreshed with the sleep I had had, and the fit being
entirely off, I got up; and though the fright and terror of my dream was very great, yet I
considered that the fit of the ague would return again the next day, and now was my time
to get something to refresh and support myself when I should be ill; and the first thing I
did, I filled a large square case bottle with water, and set it upon my table, in reach of my
bed; and to take off the chill or aguish disposition of the water, I put about a quarter of a
pint of rum into it and mixed them together; then I got me a piece of the goat’s flesh, and
broiled it on the coals, but could eat very little; I walked about, but was very weak, and
withal, very sad and heavy-hearted in the sense of my miserable condition, dreading the
return of my distemper the next day. At night I made my supper of three of the turtle’s
eggs, which I roasted in the ashes, and ate, as we call it, in the shell; and this was the first
bit of meat I had ever asked God’s blessing to, even as I could remember, in my whole
life.
After I had eaten, I tried to walk, but found myself so weak that I could hardly carry the
gun (for I never went out without that); so I went but a little way, and sat down upon the
ground, looking out upon the sea, which was just before me, and very calm and smooth.
As I sat here, some such thoughts as these occurred to me:
What is this earth and sea, of which I have seen so much? Whence is it produced, and
what am I, and all the other creatures, wild and tame, human and brutal, whence are we?
Sure we are all made by some secret Power who formed the earth and sea, the air and
sky; and who is that?
Then it followed most naturally, it is God that has made it all. Well, but then it came on
strangely; if God has made all these things, He guides and governs them all, and all things
that concern them; for the Power that could make all things must certainly have power to
guide and direct them.
If so, nothing can happen in the great circuit of His works, either without His
knowledge or appointment.
And if nothing happens without His knowledge, He knows that I am here and am in this
dreadful condition; and if nothing happens without His appointment, He has appointed all
this to befall me.
Nothing occurred to my thoughts to contradict any of these conclusions; and therefore it
rested upon me with the greater force that it must needs be, that God had appointed all this
to befall me; that I was brought to this miserable circumstance by His direction, He having
the sole power, not of me only, but of everything that happened in the world. Immediately
it followed:
Why has God done this to me? What have I done to be thus used?
My conscience presently checked me in that inquiry, as if I had blasphemed, and
methought it spoke to me like a voice: ‘‘WRETCH! dost thou ask what thou hast done?
Look back upon a dreadful misspent life and ask thyself what thou hast not done; ask,
Why is it that thou wert not long ago destroyed? Why wert thou not drowned in Yarmouth
Roads? Killed in the fight when the ship was taken by the Sallee man-of-war? Devoured
by the wild beasts on the coast of Africa? Or drowned here, when all the crew perished but
thyself? Dost thou ask, What have I done?’’
I was struck dumb with these reflections, as one astonished, and had not a word to say,
no, not to answer to myself, but rose up pensive and sad, walked back to my retreat, and
went up over my wall, as if I had been going to bed, but my thoughts were sadly disturbed,
and I had no inclination to sleep; so I sat down in my chair and lighted my lamp, for it
began to be dark. Now, as the apprehension of the return of my distemper terrified me
very much, it occurred to my thought that the Brazilians take no physic but their tobacco,
for almost all distempers; and I had a piece of a roll of tobacco in one of the chests, which
was quite cured, and some also that was green, and not quite cured.
I went, directed by Heaven, no doubt, for in this chest I found a cure both for soul and
body. I opened the chest, and found what I looked for, viz., the tobacco; and as the few
books I had saved lay there too, I took out one of the Bibles which I mentioned before,
and which to this time I had not found leisure, or so much as inclination, to look into; I
say, I took it out, and brought both that and the tobacco with me to the table.
What use to make of the tobacco I knew not, as to my distemper, or whether it was good
for it or no; but I tried several experiments with it, as if I was resolved it should hit one
way or other. I first took a piece of a leaf, and chewed it in my mouth, which indeed at
first almost stupefied my brain, the tobacco being green and strong and that I had not been
much used to it; then I took some and steeped it an hour or two in some rum, and resolved
to take a dose of it when I lay down; and lastly, I burnt some upon a pan of coals, and held
my nose close over the smoke of it as long as I could bear it, as well for the heat as almost
for suffocation.
In the interval of this operation, I took up the Bible and began to read, but my head was
too much disturbed with the tobacco to bear reading, at least at that time; only having
opened the book casually, the first words that occurred to me were these, ‘‘Call on me in
the day of trouble, and I will deliver, and thou shalt glorify me.’’
The words were very apt to my case, and made some impression upon my thoughts at
the time of reading them, though not so much as they did afterwards; for as for being
delivered, the word had no sound, as I may say, to me; the thing was so remote, so
impossible in my apprehension of things, that I began to say, as the children of Israel did,
when they were promised flesh to eat, ‘‘Can God spread a table in the wilderness?’’; so I
began to say, ‘‘Can God Himself deliver me from this place?’’ and as it was not for many
years that any hope appeared, this prevailed very often upon my thoughts. But, however,
the words made a great impression upon me, and I mused upon them very often. It grew
now late, and the tobacco had, as I said, dozed my head so much, that I inclined to sleep;
so I left my lamp burning in the cave, lest I should want anything in the night, and went to
bed; but before I lay down, I did what I never had done in all my life: I kneeled down and
prayed to God to fulfill the promise to me, that if I called upon Him in the day of trouble,
He would deliver me. After my broken and imperfect prayer was over, I drank the rum in
which I had steeped the tobacco, which was so strong and rank of the tobacco, that indeed
I could scarce get it down; immediately upon this I went to bed; I found presently it flew
up in my head violently, but I fell into a sound sleep and waked no more till by the sun it
must necessarily be near three o’clock in the afternoon the next day; nay, to this hour I am
partly of the opinion that I slept all the next day and night, and till almost three that day
after; for otherwise I knew not how I should lose a day out of my reckoning in the days of
the week, as it appeared some years after I had done; for if I had lost it by crossing and re-
crossing the Line, I should have lost more than one day. But certainly I lost a day in my
account, and never knew which way.
Be that, however, one way or other, when I awaked I found myself exceedingly
refreshed, and my spirits lively and cheerful; when I got up, I was stronger than I was the
day before, and my stomach better, for I was hungry; and in short, I had no fit the next
day, but continued much altered for the better; this was the 29th.
The 30th was my well day, of course, and I went abroad with my gun, but did not care
to travel too far. I killed a seafowl or two, something like a brand goose, and brought them
home, but was not very forward to eat them; so I ate some more of the turtle’s eggs, which
were very good. This evening I renewed the medicine, which I had supposed did me good
the day before, viz., the tobacco steeped in rum, only I did not take so much as before, nor
did I chew any of the leaf or hold my head over the smoke; however, I was not so well the
next day, which was the 1st of July, as I hoped I should have been; for I had a little spice
of the cold fit, but it was not much.
July 2. I renewed the medicine all the three ways, and dosed myself with it as at first;
and doubled the quantity which I drank.
July 3. I missed the fit for good and all, though I did not recover my full strength for
some weeks after. While I was thus gathering strength, my thoughts ran exceedingly upon
this Scripture, ‘‘I will deliver thee’’; and the impossibility of my deliverance lay much
upon my mind, in bar of my ever expecting it. But as I was discouraging myself with such
thoughts, it occurred to my mind that I pored so much upon my deliverance from the main
affliction that I disregarded the deliverance I had received; and I was, as it were, made to
ask myself such questions as these, viz.: Have I not been delivered, and wonderfully, too,
from sickness? From the most distressed condition that could be, and that was so frightful
to me? And what notice had I taken of it? Had I done my part? God had delivered me, but
I had not glorified Him; that is to say, I had not owned and been thankful for that as a
deliverance, and how could I expect greater deliverance?
This touched my heart very much, and immediately I kneeled down and gave God
thanks aloud for my recovery from my sickness.
July 4. In the morning I took the Bible, and beginning at the New Testament, I began
seriously to read it, and imposed upon myself to read a while every morning and every
night, not tying myself to the number of chapters, but as long as my thoughts should
engage me. It was not long after I set seriously to this work but I found my heart more
deeply and sincerely affected with the wickedness of my past life. The impression of my
dream revived, and the words, ‘‘All these things have not brought thee to repentance,’’ ran
seriously in my thoughts. I was earnestly begging of God to give me repentance, when it
happened providentially the very day that reading the Scripture, I came to these words,
‘‘He is exalted a Prince and a Saviour, to give repentance, and to give remission.’’ I threw
down the book, and with my heart as well as my hands lifted up to Heaven, in a kind of
ecstasy of joy, I cried out aloud, ‘‘Jesus, Thou Son of David, Jesus, Thou exalted Prince
and Saviour, give me repentance!’’
This was the first time that I could say, in the true sense of the words, that I prayed in all
my life; for now I prayed with a sense of my condition, and with a true Scripture view of
hope founded on the encouragement of the Word of God; and from this time, I may say, I
began to have hope that God would hear me.
Now I began to construe the words mentioned above, ‘‘Call on Me, and I will deliver
you,’’ in a different sense from what I had ever done before; for then I had no notion of
anything being called deliverance but my being delivered from the captivity I was in, for
though I was indeed at large in the place, yet the island was certainly a prison to me, and
that in the worst sense in the world; but now I learned to take it in another sense. Now I
looked back upon my past life with such horror, and my sins appeared so dreadful, that my
soul sought nothing of God but deliverance from the load of guilt that bore down all my
comfort. As for my solitary life, it was nothing; I did not so much as pray to be delivered
from it or think of it; it was all of no consideration in comparison to this; and I added this
part here to hint to whoever shall read it, that whenever they come to a true sense of
things, they will find deliverance from sin a much greater blessing than deliverance from
affliction.
I Take a Survey of the Island
But, leaving this part, I return to my journal.
My condition began now to be, though not less miserable as to my way of living, yet
much easier to my mind; and my thoughts being directed, by a constant reading the
Scripture and praying to God, to things of a higher nature, I had a great deal of comfort
within which till now I knew nothing of; also, as my health and strength returned, I
bestirred myself to furnish myself with everything that I wanted and make my way of
living as regular as I could.
From the 4th of July to the 14th I was chiefly employed in walking about with my gun
in my hand, a little and a little at a time, as a man that was gathering up his strength after a
fit of sickness. For it is hardly to be imagined how low I was, and to what weakness I was
reduced. The application which I made use of was perfectly new and perhaps what had
never cured an ague before; neither can I recommend it to anyone to practice, by this
experiment; and though it did carry off the fit, yet it rather contributed to weakening me;
for I had frequent convulsions in my nerves and limbs for some time.
I learned from it also this in particular, that being abroad in the rainy season was the
most pernicious thing to my health that could be, especially in those rains which came
attended with storms and hurricanes of wind; for as the rain which came in a dry season
was always most accompanied with such storms, so I found that rain was much more
dangerous than the rain which fell in September and October.
I had been now in this unhappy island above ten months; all possibility of deliverance
from this condition seemed to be entirely taken from me; and I firmly believed that no
human shape had ever set foot upon that place. Having now secured my habitation, as I
thought, fully to my mind, I had a great desire to make a more perfect discovery of the
island and to see what other productions I might find, which I yet knew nothing of.
It was the 15th July that I began to take a more particular survey of the island itself. I
went up the creek first, where, as I hinted, I brought my rafts on shore; I found, after I
came about two miles up, that the tide did not flow any higher and that it was no more
than a little brook of running water, and very fresh and good; but this being the dry season,
there was hardly any water in some parts of it, at least not enough to run in any stream, so
as it could be perceived.
On the bank of this brook I found many pleasant savannas, or meadows, plain, smooth,
and covered with grass; and on the rising parts of them next to the higher grounds, where
the water, as it might be supposed, never overflowed, I found a great deal of tobacco,
green and growing to a great and very strong stalk. There were divers other plants, which I
had no notion of, or understanding about, and might perhaps have virtues of their own,
which I could not find out.
I searched for the cassava root, which the Indians in all that climate make their bread of,
but I could find none. I saw large plants of aloes, but did not then understand them. I saw
several sugar canes, but wild, and, for want of cultivation, imperfect. I contented myself
with these discoveries for this time, and came back musing with myself what course I
might take to know the virtue and goodness of any of the fruits or plants which I should
discover; but could bring it to no conclusion; for in short, I had made so little observation
while I was in the Brazils that I knew little of the plants in the field, at least very little that
might serve me to any purpose now in my distress.
The next day, the 16th, I went up the same way again, and after going something farther
than I had gone the day before, I found the brook and the savannas began to cease, and the
country became more woody than before; in this part I found different fruits, and
particularly I found melons upon the ground in great abundance, and grapes upon the
trees; the vines had spread indeed over the trees, and the clusters of grapes were just now
in their prime, very ripe and rich. This was a surprising discovery, and I was exceeding
glad of them; but I was warned by my experience to eat sparingly of them, remembering
that when I was ashore in Barbary the eating of grapes killed several of our Englishmen
who were slaves there, by throwing them into fluxes and fevers. But I found an excellent
use for these grapes, and that was to cure or dry them in the sun and keep them as dried
grapes or raisins are kept, which I thought would be, as indeed they were, as wholesome
and as agreeable to eat when no grapes might be to be had.
I spent all that evening there, and went not back to my habitation, which by the way was
the first night, as I might say, I had lain from home. In the night I took my first
contrivance, and got up into a tree, where I slept well; and the next morning proceeded
upon my discovery, travelling near four miles, as I might judge by the length of the valley,
keeping still due north, with a ridge of hills on the south and north side of me.
At the end of this march I came to an opening, where the country seemed to descend to
the west, and a little spring of fresh water, which issued out of the side of the hill by me,
ran the other way, that is, due east; and the country appeared so fresh, so green, so
flourishing, everything being in a constant verdure, or flourish of spring, that it looked like
a planted garden.
I descended a little on the side of that delicious vale, surveying it with a secret kind of
pleasure (though mixed with my other afflicting thoughts), to think that this was all my
own, that I was king and lord of all this country indefeasibly and had a right of possession;
and if I could convey it, I might have it in inheritance, as completely as any lord of a
manor in England. I saw here abundance of cocoa trees, orange and lemon and citron
trees; but all wild and very few bearing any fruit, at least not then. However, the green
limes that I gathered were not only pleasant to eat but very wholesome; and I mixed their
juice afterwards with water, which made it very wholesome and very cool and refreshing.
I found now I had business enough to gather and carry home; and I resolved to lay up a
store as well of grapes as limes and lemons, to furnish myself for the wet season, which I
knew was approaching.
In order to do this, I gathered a great heap of grapes in one place and a lesser heap in
another place, and a great parcel of limes and lemons in another place; and taking a few of
each with me, I travelled homeward and resolved to come again and bring a bag or sack,
or what I could make, to carry the rest home.
Accordingly, having spent three days in this journey, I came home (so I must now call
my tent and my cave). But before I got thither, the grapes were spoiled; the richness of the
fruits and the weight of the juice having broken them and bruised them, they were good
for little or nothing; as to the limes, they were good, but I could bring but a few.
The next day, being the 19th, I went back, having made me two small bags to bring
home my harvest. But I was surprised, when coming to my heap of grapes, which were so
rich and fine when I gathered them, I found them all spread about, trod to pieces, and
dragged about, some here, some there, and abundance eaten and devoured. By this I
concluded there were some wild creatures thereabouts, which had done this; but what they
were I knew not.
However, as I found that there was no laying them up in heaps, and no carrying them
away in a sack, but that one way they would be destroyed, and the other way they would
be crushed with their own weight, I took another course; for I gathered a large quantity of
the grapes, and hung them up upon the out-branches of the trees, that they might cure and
dry in the sun; and as for the limes and lemons, I carried as many back as I could well
stand under.
When I came home from this journey, I contemplated with great pleasure the
fruitfulness of that valley and the pleasantness of the situation, the security from storms on
that side the water, and the wood, and concluded that I had pitched upon a place to fix my
abode which was by far the worst part of the country. Upon the whole, I began to consider
of removing my habitation, and to look out for a place equally safe as where I now was
situate, if possible, in that pleasant fruitful part of the island.
This thought ran long in my head, and I was exceeding fond of it for some time, the
pleasantness of the place tempting me; but when I came to a nearer view of it, and to
consider that I was now by the seaside, where it was at least possible that something might
happen to my advantage, and by the same ill fate that brought me hither might bring some
other unhappy wretches to the same place; and though it was scarce probable that any such
thing should ever happen, yet to enclose myself among the hills and woods, in the centre
of the island, was to anticipate my bondage and to render such an affair not only
improbable but impossible; and that therefore I ought not by any means to remove.
However, I was so enamoured of this place that I spent much of my time there for the
whole remaining part of the month of July; and though upon second thoughts I resolved as
above not to remove, yet I built me a little kind of a bower and surrounded it at a distance
with a strong fence, being a double hedge as high as I could reach, well staked and filled
between with brushwood; and here I lay very secure, sometimes two or three nights
together, always going over it with a ladder, as before; so that I fancied now I had my
country house and my seacoast house. And this work took me up to the beginning of
August.
I had but newly finished my fence and began to enjoy my labour, but the rains came on
and made me stick close to my first habitation; for though I had made me a tent like the
other, with a piece of a sail, and spread it very well; yet I had not the shelter of a hill to
keep me from storms, not a cave behind me to retreat into, when the rains were
extraordinary.
About the beginning of August, as I said, I had finished my bower and began to enjoy
myself. The 3rd of August I found the grapes I had hung up were perfectly dried, and
indeed, were excellent good raisins of the sun; so I began to take them down from the
trees, and it was very happy that I did so; for the rains which followed would have spoiled
them, and I had lost the best part of my winter food; for I had above two hundred large
bunches of them. No sooner had I taken them all down and carried most of them home to
my cave but it began to rain, and from hence, which was the 14th of August, it rained
more or less every day, till the middle of October; and sometimes so violently that I could
not stir out of my cave for several days.
In this season I was much surprised with the increase of my family. I had been
concerned for the loss of one of my cats, who ran away from me, or, as I thought, had
been dead, and I heard no more tale or tidings of her till, to my astonishment, she came
home about the end of August, with three kittens. This was the more strange to me
because though I had killed a wild cat, as I called it, with my gun, yet I thought it was a
quite different kind from our European cats; yet the young cats were the same kind of
house breed like the old one; and both my cats being females, I thought it very strange.
But from these three cats, I afterwards came to be so pestered with cats that I was forced
to kill them like vermin or wild beasts, and to drive them from my house as much as
possible.
From the 14th of August to the 26th, incessant rain, so that I could not stir, and was now
very careful not to be much wet. In this confinement I began to be straitened for food, but
venturing out twice, I one day killed a goat; and the last day, which was the 26th, found a
very large tortoise, which was a treat to me, and my food was regulated thus: I ate a bunch
of raisins for my breakfast, a piece of the goat’s flesh, or of the turtle, for my dinner,
broiled (for to my great misfortune, I had no vessel to boil or stew anything); and two or
three of the turtle’s eggs for my supper.
During this confinement in my cover by the rain, I worked daily two or three hours at
enlarging my cave, and by degrees worked it on towards one side, till I came to the outside
of the hill, and made a door or way out, which came beyond my fence or wall, and so I
came in and out this way; but I was not perfectly easy at lying so open; for as I had
managed myself before, I was in a perfect enclosure, whereas now I thought I lay exposed,
and open for anything to come in upon me; and yet I could not perceive that there was any
living thing to fear, the biggest creature that I had yet seen upon the island being a goat.
September 30. I was now come to the unhappy anniversary of my landing. I cast up the
notches on my post, and found I had been on shore three hundred and sixty-five days. I
kept this day as a solemn fast, setting it apart to religious exercise, prostrating myself on
the ground with the most serious humiliation, confessing my sins to God, acknowledging
His righteous judgments upon me, and praying to Him to have mercy on me, through
Jesus Christ; and having not tasted the least refreshment for twelve hours, even till the
going down of the sun, I then ate a biscuit cake and a bunch of grapes, and went to bed,
finishing the day as I began it.
I had all this time observed no Sabbath day; for as at first I had no sense of religion
upon my mind, I had after some time omitted to distinguish the weeks by making a longer
notch than ordinary for the Sabbath day, and so did not really know what any of the days
were; but now having cast up the days, as above, I found I had been there a year; so I
divided it into weeks, and set apart every seventh day for a Sabbath; though I found at the
end of my account I had lost a day or two in my reckoning.
A little after this my ink began to fail me, and so I contented myself to use it more
sparingly, and to write down only the most remarkable events of my life, without
continuing a daily memorandum of other things.
 I Sow My Grain
THE RAINY season and the dry season began now to appear regular to me, and I learned
to divide them so as to provide for them accordingly. But I bought all my experience
before I had it; and this I am going to relate was one of the most discouraging experiments
that I made at all. I have mentioned that I had saved the few ears of barley and rice which I
had so surprisingly found spring up, as I thought, of themselves, and believe there were
about thirty stalks of rice, and about twenty of barley; and now I thought it a proper time
to sow it after the rains, the sun being in its southern position, going from me.
Accordingly I dug up a piece of ground as well as I could with my wooden spade, and
dividing it into two parts, I sowed my grain; but as I was sowing, it casually occurred to
my thoughts that I would not sow it all at first, because I did not know when was the
proper time for it; so I sowed about two-thirds of the seed, leaving about a handful of
each.
It was a great comfort to me afterwards that I did so, for not one grain of that I sowed
this time came to anything; for the dry months following, the earth having had no rain
after the seed was sown, it had no moisture to assist its growth, and never came up at all
till the wet season had come again, and then it grew as if it had been but newly sown.
Finding my first seed did not grow, which I easily imagined was by the drought, I
sought for a moister piece of ground to make another trial in, and I dug up a piece of
ground near my new bower and sowed the rest of my seed in February, a little before the
vernal equinox; and this, having the rainy months of March and April to water it, sprung
up very pleasantly and yielded a very good crop; but having part of the seed left only, and
not daring to sow all that I had, I had but a small quantity at last, my whole crop not
amounting to above half a peck of each kind.
But by this experiment I was made master of my business, and knew exactly when the
proper season was to sow; and that I might expect two seed times, and two harvests, every
year.
While this corn was growing, I made a little discovery which was of use to me
afterwards. As soon as the rains were over and the weather began to settle, which was
about the month of November, I made a visit up the country to my bower, where, though I
had not been some months, yet I found all things just as I left them. The circle or double
hedge that I had made was not only firm and entire, but the stakes which I had cut out of
some trees that grew thereabouts were all shot out and grown with long branches, as much
as a willow-tree usually shoots the first year after lopping its head. I could not tell what
tree to call it, that these stakes were cut from. I was surprised, and yet very well pleased,
to see the young trees grow; and I pruned them, and led them up to grow as much alike as
I could; and it is scarce credible how beautiful a figure they grew into in three years; so
that though the hedge made a circle of about twenty-five yards in diameter, yet the trees,
for such I might now call them, soon covered it; and it was a complete shade, sufficient to
lodge under all the dry season.
This made me resolve to cut some more stakes, and make me a hedge like this in a
semicircle round my wall (I mean that of my first dwelling), which I did; and placing the
trees or stakes in a double row, at about eight yards’ distance from my first fence, they
grew presently, and were at first a fine cover to my habitation, and afterwards served for a
defence also, as I shall observe in its order.
I found now that the seasons of the year might generally be divided, not into summer
and winter, as in Europe, but into the rainy seasons and the dry seasons, which were
generally thus:

The rainy season sometimes held longer or shorter, as the winds happened to blow; but
this was the general observation I made. After I had found by experience the ill
consequence of being abroad in the rain, I took care to furnish myself with provisions
beforehand, that I might not be obliged to go out; and I sat within doors as much as
possible during the wet months.
In this time I found much employment (and very suitable also to the time), for I found
great occasion of many things which I had no way to furnish myself with but by hard
labour and constant application; particularly, I tried many ways to make myself a basket,
but all the twigs I could get for the purpose proved so brittle that they would do nothing. It
proved of excellent advantage to me now, that when I was a boy, I used to take great
delight in standing at a basket maker’s, in the town where my father lived, to see them
make their wickerware; and being, as boys usually are, very officious to help, and a great
observer of the manner how they worked those things, and sometimes lending a hand, I
had by this means full knowledge of the methods of it, that I wanted nothing but the
materials; when it came into my mind that the twigs of that tree from whence I cut my
stakes that grew might possibly be as tough as the sallows and willows and osiers in
England, and I resolved to try.
Accordingly, the next day I went to my country house, as I called it, and cutting some of
the smaller twigs, I found them to my purpose as much as I could desire; whereupon I
came the next time prepared with a hatchet to cut down a quantity, which I soon found, for
there was great plenty of them; these I set up to dry within my circle or hedge, and when
they were fit for use, I carried them to my cave; and here during the next season I
employed myself in making, as well as I could, a great many baskets, both to carry earth
or to carry or lay up anything as I had occasion; and though I did not finish them very
handsomely, yet I made them sufficiently serviceable for my purpose; and thus afterwards
I took care never to be without them; and as my wickerware decayed, I made more;
especially I made strong deep baskets to place my corn in, instead of sacks, when I should
come to have any quantity of it.
Having mastered this difficulty, and employed a world of time about it, I bestirred
myself to see, if possible, how to supply two wants. I had no vessels to hold anything that
was liquid, except two runlets which were almost full of rum, and some glass bottles,
some of the common size, and others which were case bottles, square, for the holding of
waters, spirits, etc. I had not so much as a pot to boil anything, except a great kettle which
I saved out of the ship, and which was too big for such use as I desired it, viz., to make
broth and stew a bit of meat by itself. The second thing I would fain have had was a
tobacco pipe; but it was impossible to me to make one; however, I found a contrivance for
that too at last.
I employed myself in planting my second rows of stakes, or piles, and in this wicker
working all the summer, or dry season, when another business took me up more time than
it could be imagined I could spare.
 I Travel Quite Across the Island
I MENTIONED before that I had a great mind to see the whole island, and that I had
travelled up the brook, and so on to where I built my bower, and where I had an opening
quite to the sea on the other side of the island; I now resolved to travel quite across to the
seashore on that side; so taking my gun, a hatchet, and my dog, and a larger quantity of
powder and shot than usual, with two biscuit cakes and a great bunch of raisins in my
pouch for my store, I began my journey. When I had passed the vale where my bower
stood, as above, I came within view of the sea to the west, and it being a very clear day, I
fairly descried land, whether an island or a continent I could not tell; but it lay very high,
extending from the west to the west-southwest at a very great distance; by my guess it
could not be less than fifteen or twenty leagues off.
I could not tell what part of the world this might be, otherwise than that I knew it must
be part of America; and, as I concluded by all my observations, must be near the Spanish
dominions, and perhaps was all inhabited by savages, where if I should have landed, I had
been in a worse condition than I was now; and therefore I acquiesced in the dispositions of
Providence, which, I began now to own, and to believe, ordered everything for the best; I
say, I quieted my mind with this, and left afflicting myself with fruitless wishes of being
there.
Besides, after some pause upon this affair, I considered that if this land was the Spanish
coast, I should certainly, one time or other, see some vessel pass or repass one way or
other; but if not, then it was the savage coast between the Spanish country and Brazil,
which are indeed the worst of savages; for they are cannibals, or men-eaters, and fail not
to murder and devour all the human bodies that fall into their hands.
With these considerations I walked very leisurely forward. I found that side of the
island, where I now was, much pleasanter than mine, the open or savanna fields sweet,
adorned with flowers and grass, and full of very fine woods. I saw abundance of parrots,
and fain I would have caught one, if possible, to have kept it to be tame and taught it to
speak to me. I did, after some painstaking, catch a young parrot, for I knocked it down
with a stick, and having recovered it, I brought it home; but it was some years before I
could make him speak. However, at last I taught him to call me by my name very
familiarly. But the accident that followed, though it be a trifle, will be very diverting in its
place.
I was exceedingly diverted with this journey. I found in the low grounds hares, as I
thought them to be, and foxes, but they differed greatly from all the other kinds I had met
with; nor could I satisfy myself to eat them, though I killed several. But I had no need to
be venturous; for I had no want of food, and of that which was very good too; especially
these three sorts, viz., goats, pigeons, and turtle or tortoise; which, added to my grapes,
Leadenhall Market could not have furnished a table better than I, in proportion to the
company; and though my case was deplorable enough, yet I had great cause for
thankfulness, that I was not driven to any extremities for food; but rather plenty, even to
dainties.
 I never travelled in this journey above two miles outright in a day, or thereabouts; but I
took so many turns and returns, to see what discoveries I could make, that I came weary
enough to the place where I resolved to sit down for all night; and then I either reposed
myself in a tree, or surrounded myself with a row of stakes set upright in the ground,
either from one tree to another, or so as no wild creature could come at me without waking
me.
As soon as I came to the seashore, I was surprised to see that I had taken up my lot on
the worst side of the island; for here indeed the shore was covered with innumerable
turtles, whereas on the other side I had found but three in a year and a half. Here was also
an infinite number of fowls of many kinds, some which I had seen, and some of which I
had not seen before, and many of them very good meat; but such as I knew not the names
of, except those called penguins.
I could have shot as many as I pleased, but was very sparing of my powder and shot;
and therefore had more mind to kill a she-goat, if I could, which I could better feed on;
and though there were many goats here more than on my side the island, yet it was with
much more difficulty that I could come near them, the country being flat and even, and
they saw me much sooner than when I was on the hill.
I confess this side of the country was much pleasanter than mine, but yet I had not the
least inclination to remove; for as I was fixed in my habitation, it became natural to me,
and I seemed all the while I was here to be, as it were, upon a journey, and from home.
However, I travelled along the shore of the sea, towards the east, I suppose about twelve
miles; and then setting up a great pole upon the shore for a mark, I concluded I would go
home again; and that the next journey I took should be on the other side of the island, east
from my dwelling, and so round till I came to my post again. Of which in its place.
I took another way to come back than that I went, thinking I could easily keep all the
island so much in my view that I could not miss finding my first dwelling by viewing the
country; but I found myself mistaken; for being come about two or three miles, I found
myself descended into a very large valley, but so surrounded with hills, and those hills
covered with wood, that I could not see which was my way by any direction but that of the
sun, nor even then, unless I knew very well the position of the sun at that time of the day.
It happened, to my further misfortune, that the weather proved hazy for three or four
days while I was in this valley; and not being able to see the sun, I wandered about very
uncomfortably, and at last was obliged to find out the seaside, look for my post, and come
back the same way I went; and then by easy journeys I turned homeward, the weather
being exceeding hot, and my gun, ammunition, hatchet, and other things very heavy.
In this journey my dog surprised a young kid, and seized upon it, and I, running in to
take hold of it, caught it, and saved it alive from the dog. I had a great mind to bring it
home if I could; for I had often been musing, whether it might not be possible to get a kid
or two and so raise a breed of tame goats, which might supply me when my powder and
shot should be all spent.
I made a collar to this little creature, and with a string which I made of some rope-yarn
which I always carried about me, I led him along, though with some difficulty, till I came
to my bower, and there I enclosed him and left him; for I was very impatient to be at
home, from whence I had been absent above a month.
I cannot express what a satisfaction it was to me to come into my old hutch and lie
down in my hammock-bed. This little wandering journey, without settled place of abode,
had been so unpleasant to me that my own house, as I called it to myself, was a perfect
settlement to me compared to that; and it rendered everything about me so comfortable
that I resolved I would never go a great way from it again while it should be my lot to stay
on the island.
I reposed myself here a week, to rest and regale myself after my long journey; during
which most of the time was taken up in the weighty affair of making a cage for my Poll,
who began now to be a mere domestic and to be mighty well acquainted with me. Then I
began to think of the poor kid, which I had penned in within my little circle, and resolved
to go and fetch it home, or give it some food; accordingly I went, and found it where I left
it; for indeed it could not get out, but was almost starved for want of food. I went and cut
boughs of trees, and branches of such shrubs as I could find, and threw it over, and having
fed it, I tied it as I did before to lead it away; but it was so tame with being hungry that I
had no need to have tied it, for it followed me like a dog; and as I continually fed it, the
creature became so loving, so gentle, and so fond, that it became from that time one of my
domestics also, and would never leave me afterwards.
The rainy season of the autumnal equinox was now come, and I kept the 30th of
September in the same solemn manner as before, being the anniversary of my landing on
the island, having now been there two years, and no more prospect of being delivered than
the first day I came there. I spent the whole day in humble and thankful
acknowledgements of the many wonderful mercies which my solitary condition was
attended with, and without which it might have been infinitely more miserable. I gave
humble and hearty thanks that God had been pleased to discover to me, even that it was
possible I might be more happy in this solitary condition than I should have been in a
liberty of society and in all the pleasures of the world. That He could fully make up to me
the deficiencies of my solitary state and the want of human society by His presence, and
the communications of His grace to my soul, supporting, comforting, and encouraging me
to depend upon His Providence here, and hope for His eternal presence hereafter.
It was now that I began sensibly to feel how much more happy this life I now led was,
with all its miserable circumstances, than the wicked, cursed, abominable life I led all the
past part of my days; and now I changed both my sorrows and my joys; my very desires
altered, my affections changed their gusts, and my delights were perfectly new, from what
they were at my first coming, or indeed for the two years past.
Before, as I walked about, either on my hunting or for viewing the country, the anguish
of my soul at my condition would break out upon me on a sudden, and my very heart
would die within me to think of the woods, the mountains, the deserts I was in; and how I
was a prisoner locked up with the eternal bars and bolts of the ocean, in an uninhabited
wilderness, without redemption. In the midst of the greatest composures of my mind, this
would break out upon me like a storm and make me wring my hands and weep like a
child. Sometimes it would take me in the middle of my work, and I would immediately sit
down and sigh, and look upon the ground for an hour or two together; and this was still
worse to me; for if I could burst out into tears or vent myself by words, it would go off,
and the grief having exhausted itself would abate.
But now I began to exercise myself with new thoughts; I daily read the Word of God
and applied all the comforts of it to my present state. One morning, being very sad, I
opened the Bible upon these words, ‘‘I will never, never leave thee, nor forsake thee’’;
immediately it occurred that these words were to me; why else should they be directed in
such a manner, just at the moment when I was mourning over my condition, as one
forsaken of God and man? ‘‘Well then,’’ said I, ‘‘if God does not forsake me, of what ill
consequence can it be, or what matters it, though the world should all forsake me; seeing
on the other hand, if I had all the world and should lose the favour and blessing of God,
there would be no comparison in the loss?’’
From this moment I began to conclude in my mind that it was possible for me to be
more happy in this forsaken, solitary condition than it was probable I should ever have
been in any other particular state in the world; and with this thought I was going to give
thanks to God for bringing me to this place.
I know not what it was, but something shocked my mind at that thought, and I durst not
speak the words. ‘‘How canst thou be such a hypocrite,’’ said I, even audibly, ‘‘to pretend
to be thankful for a condition which however thou may’st endeavour to be contented with,
thou wouldst rather pray heartily to be delivered from?’’ So I stopped there. But though I
could not say I thanked God for being there, yet I sincerely gave thanks to God for
opening my eyes, by whatever afflicting providences, to see the former condition of my
life, and to mourn for my wickedness, and repent. I never opened the Bible or shut it but
my very soul within me blessed God for directing my friend in England, without any order
of mine, to pack it up among my goods; and for assisting me afterwards to save it out of
the wreck of the ship.
 I Am Very Seldom Idle
THUS, and in this disposition of mind, I began my third year; and though I have not given
the reader the trouble of so particular an account of my works this year as the first, yet in
general it may be observed that I was very seldom idle; but having regularly divided my
time, according to the several daily employments that were before me, such as, first, my
duty to God, and the reading the Scriptures, which I constantly set apart some time for
thrice every day; secondly, the going abroad with my gun for food, which generally took
me up three hours in every morning, when it did not rain; thirdly, the ordering, curing,
preserving and cooking what I had killed or caught for my supply; these took up great part
of the day; also it is to be considered that the middle of the day, when the sun was in the
zenith, the violence of the heat was too great to stir out; so that about four hours in the
evening was 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 labour, 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
making me 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 a-cutting down, and two more cutting off
the boughs, and reducing it to a log, or piece of timber. With inexpressible 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. Anyone may judge the labour of my hands in such
a piece of work; but labour 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 labour and required a prodigious time to do alone and by hand.
But notwithstanding this, with patience and labour I went through many things; and
indeed everything 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 or 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 I 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 scarce
possible to keep from it; at 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 eat 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 it with a hedge, which I did
with a great deal of toil; and the more, because it required speed. However, as my arable
land was but small, suited to my crop, I got it totally well fenced in about three weeks’
time; and shooting some of the creatures in the daytime, I set my dog to guard it in the
night, tying him up to a stake at the gate, where he would stand and bark all night long; so
in a little time the enemies forsook the place, and the corn grew very strong and well, and
began to ripen apace.
But as the beasts ruined me before, while my corn was in the blade, so the birds were as
likely to ruin me now, when it was in the ear; for going along by the place to see how it
throve, I saw my little crop surrounded with fowls of I know not how many sorts, who
stood, as it were, watching till I should be gone. I immediately let fly among them (for I
always had my gun with me). I had no sooner shot, but there rose up a little cloud of
fowls, which I had not seen at all, from among the corn itself.
This touched me sensibly, for I foresaw that in a few days they would devour all my
hopes, that I should be starved, and never be able to raise a crop at all, and what to do I
could not tell. However, I resolved not to lose my corn, if possible, though I should watch
it night and day. In the first place, I went among it to see what damage was already done,
and found they had spoiled a good deal of it, but that as it was yet too green for them, the
loss was not so great, but that the remainder was like to be a good crop if it could be
saved.
I stayed by it to load my gun, and then coming away I could easily see the thieves
sitting upon all the trees about me, as if they only waited till I was gone away, and the
event proved it to be so; for as I walked off as if I was gone, I was no sooner out of their
sight but they dropped down one by one into the corn again. I was so provoked that I
could not have patience to stay till more came on, knowing that every grain that they ate
now was, as it might be said, a peck-loaf to me in the consequence; but coming up to the
hedge, I fired again, and killed three of them. This was what I wished for; so I took them
up and served them as we serve notorious thieves in England, viz., hanged them in chains
for a terror to others; it is impossible to imagine, almost, that this should have such an
effect as it had; for the fowls would not only not come at the corn, but in short, they
forsook all that part of the island, and I could never see a bird near the place as long as my
scarecrows hung there.
This I was very glad of, you may be sure, and about the latter end of December, which
was our second harvest of the year, I reaped my crop.
I was sadly put to it for a scythe or a sickle to cut it down, and all I could do was to
make one as well as I could out of one of the broadswords, or cutlasses, which I saved
among the arms out of the ship. However, as my first crop was but small, I had no great
difficulty to cut it down; in short, I reaped it my way, for I cut nothing off but the ears, and
carried it away in a great basket which I had made, and so rubbed it out with my hands;
and at the end of all my harvesting, I found that out of my half peck of seed I had near two
bushels of rice and above two bushels and a half of barley, that is to say, by my guess, for I
had no measure at that time.
 However, this was a great encouragement to me, and I foresaw that in time it would
please God to supply me with bread. And yet here I was perplexed again, for I neither
knew how to grind or make meal of my corn, or indeed how to clean it and part it; nor if
made into meal, how to make bread of it; and if how to make it, yet I knew not how to
bake it. These things being added to my desire of having a good quantity for store, and to
secure a constant supply, I resolved not to taste any of this crop, but to preserve it all for
seed against the next season, and in the meantime to employ all my study and hours of
working to accomplish this great work of providing myself with corn and bread.
It might be truly said that now I worked for my bread. ’Tis a little wonderful, and what I
believe few people have thought much upon, viz., the strange multitude of little things
necessary in the providing, producing, curing, dressing, making, and finishing this one
article of bread.
I, that was reduced to a mere state of nature, found this to my daily discouragement, and
was made more and more sensible of it every hour, even after I had got the first handful of
seed corn, which, as I have said, came up unexpectedly and indeed to a surprise.
First, I had no plough to turn up the earth, no spade or shovel to dig it. Well, this I
conquered by making a wooden spade, as I observed before; but this did my work in but a
wooden manner; and though it cost me a great many days to make it, yet for want of iron
it not only wore out the sooner, but made my work the harder, and made it be performed
much worse.
However, this I bore with, and was content to work it out with patience and bear with
the badness of the performance. When the corn was sowed, I had no harrow but was
forced to go over it myself and drag a great heavy bough of a tree over it, to scratch it, as it
may be called, rather than rake or harrow it.
When it was growing and grown, I have observed already how many things I wanted, to
fence it, secure it, mow or reap it, cure and carry it home, thrash, part it from the chaff,
and save it. Then I wanted a mill to grind it, sieves to dress it, yeast and salt to make it into
bread, and an oven to bake it; and yet all these things I did without, as shall be observed;
and yet the corn was an inestimable comfort and advantage to me too. All this, as I said,
made everything laborious and tedious to me, but that there was no help for; neither was
my time so much loss to me, because, as I had divided it, a certain part of it was every day
appointed to these works; and as I resolved to use none of the corn for bread till I had a
greater quantity by me, I had the next six months to apply myself wholly by labour and
invention to furnish myself with utensils proper for the performing all the operations
necessary for the making the corn (when I had it) fit for my use.
But first I was to prepare more land, for I had now seed enough to sow above an acre of
ground. Before I did this, I had a week’s work at least to make me a spade, which when it
was done was but a sorry one indeed, and very heavy, and required double labour to work
with it; however, I went through that, and sowed my seed in two large flat pieces of
ground, as near my house as I could find them to my mind, and fenced them in with a
good hedge, the stakes of which were all cut of that wood which I had set before, and
knew it would grow; so that in one year’s time I knew I should have a quick or living
hedge that would want but little repair. This work was not so little as to take me up less
than three months, because great part of that time was of the wet season, when I could not
go abroad.
Within doors, that is, when it rained, and I could not go out, I found employment on the
following occasions; always observing, that all the while I was at work I diverted myself
with talking to my parrot and teaching him to speak, and I quickly learned him to know
his own name and at last to speak it out pretty loud, ‘‘Poll,’’ which was the first word I
ever heard spoken in the island by any mouth but my own. This therefore was not my
work, but an assistant to my work, for now, as I said, I had a great employment upon my
hands, as follows, viz., I had long studied, by some means or other, to make myself some
earthen vessels, which indeed I wanted sorely, but knew not where to come at them.
However, considering the heat of the climate, I did not doubt but if I could find out any
such clay, I might botch up some such pot, as might, being dried in the sun, be hard
enough and strong enough to bear handling, and to hold anything that was dry, and
required to be kept so; and as this was necessary in the preparing corn, meal, etc., which
was the thing I was upon, I resolved to make some as large as I could, and fit only to stand
like jars to hold what should be put into them.
It would make the reader pity me, or rather laugh at me, to tell how many awkward
ways I took to raise this paste; what odd, misshapen, ugly things I made; how many of
them fell in, and how many fell out, the clay not being stiff enough to bear its own weight;
how many cracked by the over-violent heat of the sun, being set out too hastily; and how
many fell in pieces with only removing, as well before as after they were dried; and in a
word, how after having laboured hard to find the clay, to dig it, to temper it, to bring it
home and work it, I could not make above two large earthen ugly things, I cannot call
them jars, in about two months’ labour.
However, as the sun baked these two very dry and hard, I lifted them very gently up,
and set them down again in two great wicker baskets, which I had made on purpose for
them, that they might not break; and as between the pot and the basket there was a little
room to spare, I stuffed it full of the rice and barley straw, and these two pots being to
stand always dry, I thought would hold my dry corn, and perhaps the meal when the corn
was bruised.
Though I miscarried so much in my design for large pots, yet I made several smaller
things with better success; such as little round pots, flat dishes, pitchers, and pipkins, and
anything my hand turned to, and the heat of the sun baked them strangely hard.
But all this would not answer my end, which was to get an earthen pot to hold what was
liquid, and bear the fire, which none of these could do. It happened after some time,
making a pretty large fire for cooking my meat, when I went to put it out after I had done
with it, I found a broken piece of one of my earthenware vessels in the fire, burnt as hard
as a stone, and red as a tile. I was agreeably surprised to see it, and said to myself that
certainly they might be made to burn whole, if they would burn broken.
This set me to studying how to order my fire, so as to make it burn me some pots. I had
no notion of a kiln such as the potters burn in, or of glazing them with lead, though I had
some lead to do it with; but I placed three large pipkins and two or three pots in a pile one
upon another and placed my firewood all round it with a great heap of embers under them;
I plied the fire with fresh fuel round the outside and upon the top, till I saw the pots in the
inside red hot quite through, and observed that they did not crack at all; when I saw them
clear red, I let them stand in that heat about five or six hours, till I found one of them,
though it did not crack, did melt or run, for the sand which was mixed with the clay
melted by the violence of the heat, and would have run into glass if I had gone on; so I
slacked my fire gradually, till the pots began to abate of the red colour, and watching them
all night, that I might not let the fire abate too fast, in the morning I had three very good, I
will not say handsome, pipkins, and two other earthen pots, as hard burnt as could be
desired; and one of them perfectly glazed with the running of the sand.
After this experiment, I need not say that I wanted no sort of earthenware for my use;
but I must needs say, as to the shapes of them, they were very indifferent, as anyone may
suppose, when I had no way of making them, but as the children make dirt pies, or as a
woman would make pies that never learned to raise paste.
No joy at a thing of so mean a nature was ever equal to mine, when I found I had made
an earthen pot that would bear the fire; and I had hardly patience to stay till they were
cold, before I set one upon the fire again, with some water in it, to boil me some meat,
which it did admirably well; and with a piece of a kid I made some very good broth,
though I wanted oatmeal, and 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 at 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 indeed were the rocks in the island of hardness sufficient, but
were all of a sandy crumbling stone, which would neither 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 prepared 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 searce, 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 searce 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 was 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 of calico or muslin; and with some pieces of
these, I made three small sieves, but proper enough for the work; and thus I made shift for
some years. How I did afterwards, I shall show in its place.
The baking part was the next thing to be considered and how I should make bread when
I came to have corn; for, first, I had no yeast; as to that part, as there was no supplying the
want, so I did not concern myself much about it; but for an oven I was indeed in great
pain. At length I found out an experiment for that also, which was this: I made some
earthen vessels very broad, but not deep; that is to say, about two foot diameter, and not
above nine inches deep; these I burned in the fire, as I had done the other, and laid them
by; and when I wanted to bake, I made a great fire upon my hearth, which I had paved
with some square tiles of my own making and burning also; but I should not call them
square.
When the firewood was burned pretty much into embers, or live coals, I drew them
forward upon this hearth, so as to cover it all over, and there I let them lie, till the hearth
was very hot; then sweeping away all the embers, I set down my loaf, or loaves, and
whelming down the earthen pot upon them, drew the embers all round the outside of the
pot, to keep in, and add to the heat; and thus, as well as in the best oven in the world, I
baked my barley loaves, and became in little time a mere pastry-cook into the bargain; for
I made myself several cakes of the rice and puddings; indeed I made no pies, neither had I
anything to put into them, supposing I had, except the flesh either of fowls or goats.
It need not be wondered at, if all these things took me up most part of the third year of
my abode here; for it is to be observed that in the intervals of these things I had my new
harvest and husbandry to manage; for I reaped my corn in its season and carried it home as
well as I could, and laid it up in the ear, in my large baskets, till I had time to rub it out; for
I had no floor to thrash it on, or instrument to thrash it with.
And now indeed my stock of corn increasing, I really wanted to build my barns bigger. I
wanted a place to lay it up in; for the increase of the corn now yielded me so much that I
had of the barley about twenty bushels, and of the rice as much or more; insomuch that
now I resolved to begin to use it freely, for my bread had been quite gone a great while;
also I resolved to see what quantity would be sufficient for me a whole year, and to sow
but once a year.
Upon the whole, I found that the forty bushels of barley and rice was much more than I
could consume in a year; so I resolved to sow just the same quantity every year that I
sowed the last, in hopes that such a quantity would fully provide me with bread, etc.
All the while these things were doing, you may be sure my thoughts ran many times
upon the prospect of land which I had seen from the other side of the island, and I was not
without secret wishes that I were on shore there, fancying that seeing the mainland, and an
inhabited country, I might find some way or other to convey myself farther, and perhaps at
last find some means of escape.
 But all this while I made no allowance for the dangers of such a condition, and how I
might fall into the hands of savages, and perhaps such as I might have reason to think far
worse than the lions and tigers of Africa. That if I once came into their power, I should run
a hazard more than a thousand to one of being killed and perhaps of being eaten; for I had
heard that the people of the Caribbean coasts were cannibals, or man-eaters, and I knew by
the latitude that I could not be far off from that shore. That suppose they were not
cannibals, yet that they might kill me, as many Europeans who had fallen into their hands
had been served, even when they had been ten or twenty together; much more I, that was
but one, and could make little or no defence. All these things, I say, which I ought to have
considered well of, and did cast up in my thoughts afterwards, yet took up none of my
apprehensions at first; but my head ran mightily upon the thought of getting over to the
shore.
Now I wished for my boy Xury, and the longboat with the shoulder-of-mutton sail with
which I sailed above a thousand miles on the coast of Africa; but this was in vain. Then I
thought I would go and look at our ship’s boat, which, as I have said, was blown up upon
the shore a great way in the storm, when we were first cast away. She lay almost where
she did at first, but not quite; and was turned by the force of the waves and the winds,
almost bottom upward against a high ridge of beachy rough sand; but no water about her
as before.
If I had had hands to have refitted her and to have launched her into the water, the boat
would have done well enough, and I might have gone back into Brazil with her easily
enough; but I might have foreseen that I could no more turn her and set her upright upon
her bottom than I could remove the island. However, I went to the woods and cut levers
and rollers, and brought them to the boat, resolved to try what I could do; suggesting to
myself that if I could but turn her down, I might easily repair the damage she had received,
and she would be a very good boat, and I might go to sea in her very easily.
I spared no pains, indeed, in this piece of fruitless toil, and spent, I think, three or four
weeks about it; at last finding it impossible to heave it up with my little strength, I fell to
digging away the sand to undermine it, and so to make it fall down, setting pieces of wood
to thrust and guide it right in the fall.
But when I had done this, I was unable to stir it up again, or to get under it, much less to
move it forward towards the water; so I was forced to give it over; and yet, though I gave
over the hopes of the boat, my desire to venture over for the main increased, rather than
decreased, as the means for it seemed impossible.
 I Make Myself a Canoe
THIS at length put me upon thinking whether it was not possible to make myself a canoe
or piragua, such as the natives of those climates make, even without tools, or, as I might
say, without hands, viz., of the trunk of a great tree. This I not only thought possible, but
easy, and pleased myself extremely with the thoughts of making it, and with my having
much more convenience for it than any of the Negroes or Indians; but not at all
considering the particular inconveniences which I lay under, more than the Indians did,
viz., want of hands to move it, when it was made, into the water, a difficulty much harder
for me to surmount than all the consequences of want of tools could be to them; for what
was it to me, that when I had chosen a vast tree in the woods, I might with great trouble
cut it down, if after I might be able with my tools to hew and dub the outside into the
proper shape of a boat, and burn or cut out the inside to make it hollow, so to make a boat
of it if after all this, I must leave it just there where I found it, and was not able to launch it
into the water?
One would have thought I could not have had the least reflection upon my mind of my
circumstance, while I was making this boat; but I should have immediately thought how I
should get it into the sea; but my thoughts were so intent upon my voyage over the sea in
it that I never once considered how I should get it off of the land; and was really in its own
nature more easy for me to guide it over forty-five miles of sea, than about forty-five
fathom of land, where it lay, to set it afloat in the water.
I went to work upon this boat the most like a fool that ever man did, who had any of his
senses awake. I pleased myself with the design, without determining whether I was ever
able to undertake it; not but that the difficulty of launching my boat came often 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; I’ll 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 felled a cedar tree. I question much whether Solomon ever had such a one
for the building of the Temple at Jerusalem. It was five foot ten inches diameter at the
lower part next the stump, and four foot eleven inches diameter at the end of twenty-two
foot, 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 getting 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 out 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 piragua 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 extremely delighted with it. The boat was
really much bigger than I ever saw a canoe, or piragua, 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 uphill towards the creek. Well, to take away this
discouragement, 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 pains; but who grudges pains, that have
their deliverance in view? But when this was worked through, and this difficulty managed,
it was still much at one; for I could no more stir the canoe than I could the other boat.
Then I measured the distance of ground, and resolved to cut a dock, or canal, to bring
the water up to the canoe, seeing I could not bring the canoe down to the water. Well, I
began this work, and when I began to enter into it and calculate how deep it was to be dug,
how broad, how the stuff to be thrown out, I found that by the number of hands I had,
being none but my own, it must have been ten or twelve years before I should have gone
through with it; but the shore lay high, so that at the upper end it must have been at least
twenty foot deep; so at length, though with great reluctancy, I gave this attempt over also.
This grieved me heartily, and now I saw, though too late, the folly of beginning a work
before we count the cost, and before we judge rightly of our own strength to go through
with it.
In the middle of this work I finished my fourth year in this place, and kept my
anniversary with the same devotion and with as much comfort as ever before; for by a
constant study, and serious application of the Word of God, and by the assistance of His
grace, I gained a different knowledge from what I had before. I entertained different
notions of things. I looked now upon the world as a thing remote, which I had nothing to
do with, no expectation from, and, indeed, no desires about. In a word, I had nothing
indeed to do with it, nor was ever like to have; so I thought it looked as we may perhaps
look upon it hereafter, viz., as a place I had lived in but was come out of it; and well might
I say, as Father Abraham to Dives, ‘‘Between me and thee is a great gulf fixed.’’
In the first place, I was removed from all the wickedness of the world here. I had neither
the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, or the pride of life. I had nothing to covet; for I had
all that I was now capable of enjoying. I was lord of the whole manor; or if I pleased, I
might call myself king, or emperor over the whole country which I had possession of.
There were no rivals. I had no competitor, none to dispute sovereignty or command with
me. I might have raised shiploadings of corn; but I had no use for it; so I let as little grow
as I thought enough for my occasion. I had tortoise or turtles enough; but now and then
one was as much as I could put to any use. I had timber enough to have built a fleet of
ships. I had grapes enough to have made wine, or to have cured into raisins, to have
loaded that fleet, when they had been built.
But all I could make use of was all that was valuable. I had enough to eat, and to supply
my wants, and what was all the rest to me? If I killed more flesh than I could eat, the dog
must eat it, or the vermin. If I sowed more corn than I could eat, it must be spoiled. The
trees that I cut down were lying to rot on the ground. I could make no more use of them
than for fuel; and that I had no occasion for but to dress my food.
In a word, the nature and experience of things dictated to me upon just reflection that all
the good things of this world are no farther good to us than they are for our use; and that
whatever we may heap up indeed to give others, we enjoy just as much as we can use, and
no more. The most covetous griping miser in the world would have been cured of the vice
of covetousness, if he had been in my case; for I possessed infinitely more than I knew
what to do with. I had no room for desire, except it was of things which I had not, and they
were but trifles, though indeed of great use to me. I had, as I hinted before, a parcel of
money, as well gold as silver, about thirty-six pounds sterling. Alas! There the nasty, sorry,
useless stuff lay; I had no manner of business for it; and I often thought with myself that I
would have given a handful of it for a gross of tobacco pipes or for a hand mill to grind
my corn; nay, I would have given it all for sixpennyworth of turnip and carrot seed out of
England, or for a handful of peas and beans and a bottle of ink. As it was, I had not the
least advantage by it or benefit from it; but there it lay in a drawer and grew mouldy with
the damp of the cave in the wet season; and if I had had the drawer full of diamonds, it had
been the same case; and they had been of no manner of value to me because of no use.
I had now brought my state of life to be much easier in itself than it was at first and
much easier to my mind, as well as to my body. I frequently sat down to my meat with
thankfulness, and admired the hand of God’s providence, which had thus spread my table
in the wilderness. I learned to look more upon the bright side of my condition and less
upon the dark side; and to consider what I enjoyed rather than what I wanted; and this
gave me sometimes such secret comforts that I cannot express them; and which I take
notice of here, to put those discontented people in mind of it who cannot enjoy
comfortably what God has given them because they see and covet something that He has
not given them. All our discontents about what we want appeared to me to spring from the
want of thankfulness for what we have.
Another reflection was of great use to me, and doubtless would be so to anyone that
should fall into such distress as mine was; and this was to compare my present condition
with what I at first expected it should be; nay, with what it would certainly have been, if
the good providence of God had not wonderfully ordered the ship to be cast up nearer to
the shore, where I not only could come at her but could bring what I got out of her to the
shore for my relief and comfort; without which, I had wanted for tools to work, weapons
for defence, or gunpowder and shot for getting my food.
I spent whole hours, I may say whole days, in representing to myself, in the most lively
colours, how I must have acted if I had got nothing out of the ship; how I could not have
so much as got any food, except fish and turtles; and that as it was long before I found any
of them, I must have perished first; that I should have lived, if I had not perished, like a
mere savage; that if I had killed a goat, or a fowl, by any contrivance, I had no way to flay
or open them, or part the flesh from the skin and the bowels, or to cut it up, but must gnaw
it with my teeth and pull it with my claws like a beast.
 These reflections made me very sensible of the goodness of Providence to me, and very
thankful for my present condition, with all its hardships and misfortunes. And this part
also I cannot but recommend to the reflection of those who are apt in their misery to say,
‘‘Is any affliction like mine?’’ Let them consider how much worse the cases of some
people are, and their case might have been, if Providence had thought fit.
I had another reflection which assisted me also to comfort my mind with hopes; and this
was comparing my present condition with what I had deserved, and had therefore reason
to expect from the hand of Providence. I had lived a dreadful life, perfectly destitute of the
knowledge and fear of God. I had been well instructed by father and mother; neither had
they been wanting to me in their early endeavours to infuse a religious awe of God into
my mind, a sense of my duty, and of what the nature and end of my being required of me.
But alas! falling early into the seafaring life, which of all the lives is the most destitute of
the fear of God, though His terrors are always before them; I say, falling early into the
seafaring life, and into seafaring company, all that little sense of religion which I had
entertained was laughed out of me by my messmates, by a hardened despising of dangers,
and the views of death, which grew habitual to me, by my long absence from all manner
of opportunities to converse with anything but what was like myself or to hear anything
that was good, or tended towards it.
So void was I of everything that was good, or of the least sense of what I was or was to
be, that in the greatest deliverances I enjoyed, such as my escape from Sallee, my being
taken up by the Portuguese master of the ship, my being planted so well in Brazil, my
receiving the cargo from England, and the like, I never had once the words, ‘‘Thank God,’’
so much as on my mind, or in my mouth; nor in the greatest distress had I so much as a
thought to pray to Him; or so much as to say, ‘‘Lord, have mercy upon me’’; no, nor to
mention the name of God, unless it was to swear by and blaspheme it.
I had terrible reflections upon my mind for many months, as I have already observed,
on the account of my wicked and hardened life past; and when I looked about me and
considered what particular providences had attended me since my coming into this place,
and how God had dealt bountifully with me; had not only punished me less than my
iniquity had deserved, but had so plentifully provided for me; this gave me great hopes
that my repentance was accepted, and that God had yet mercy in store for me.
With these reflections I worked my mind up, not only to resignation to the will of God
in the present disposition of my circumstances, but even to a sincere thankfulness for my
condition; and that I, who was yet a living man, ought not to complain, seeing I had not
the due punishment of my sins; that I enjoyed so many mercies which I had no reason to
have expected in that place; that I ought never more to repine at my condition, but to
rejoice and to give daily thanks for that daily bread which nothing but a crowd of wonders
could have brought. That I ought to consider I had been fed even by a miracle, even as
great as that of feeding Elijah by ravens; nay, by a long series of miracles; and that I could
hardly have named a place in the unhabitable part of the world where I could have been
cast more to my advantage. A place, where as I had no society, which was my affliction on
one hand, so I found no ravenous beasts, no furious wolves or tigers to threaten my life; no
venomous creatures or poisonous which I might feed on to my hurt, no savages to murder
and devour me.
In a word, as my life was a life of sorrow one way, so it was a life of mercy another; and
I wanted nothing to make it a life of comfort, but to be able to make my sense of God’s
goodness to me, and care over me in this condition, be my daily consolation; and after I
did make a just improvement of these things, I went away and was no more sad.
I had now been here so long that many things which I brought on shore for my help
were either quite gone, or very much wasted and near spent.
My ink, as I observed, had been gone for some time, all but a very little, which I eked
out with water a little and a little, till it was so pale it scarce left any appearance of black
upon the paper. As long as it lasted I made use of it to minute down the days of the month
on which any remarkable thing happened to me; and first by casting up times past, I
remember that there was a strange concurrence of days in the various providences which
befell me, and which, if I had been superstitiously inclined to observe days as fatal or
fortunate, I might have had reason to have looked upon with a great deal of curiosity.
First, I had observed that the same day that I broke away from my father and my friends
and ran away to Hull in order to go to sea, the same day afterwards I was taken by the
Sallee man-of-war and made a slave.
The same day of the year that I escaped out of the wreck of that ship in Yarmouth
Roads, that same day-year afterwards I made my escape from Sallee in the boat.
The same day of the year I was born on, viz., the 30th of September, that same day I
had my life so miraculously saved twenty-six years after, when I was cast on shore in this
island; so that my wicked life and my solitary life begun both on a day.
The next thing to my ink’s being wasted was that of my bread, I mean the biscuit which
I brought out of the ship. This I had husbanded to the last degree, allowing myself but one
cake of bread a day for above a year; and yet I was quite without bread for near a year
before I got any corn of my own; and great reason I had to be thankful that I had any at all,
the getting it being, as has been already observed, next to miraculous.
My clothes began to decay too mightily. As to linen, I had none a good while, except
some checkered shirts which I found in the chests of the other seamen, and which I
carefully preserved, because many times I could bear no other clothes on but a shirt; and it
was a very great help to me that I had among all the men’s clothes of the ship almost three
dozen of shirts. There were also several thick watch coats of the seamen’s, which were left
indeed, but they were too hot to wear; and though it is true that the weather was so violent
hot that there was no need of clothes, yet I could not go quite naked; no, though I had been
inclined to it, which I was not, nor could abide the thoughts of it, though I was all alone.
The reason why I could not go quite naked was, I could not bear the heat of the sun so
well when quite naked, as with some clothes on; nay, the very heat frequently blistered my
skin; whereas with a shirt on, the air itself made some motion, and whistling under that
shirt, was twofold cooler than without it. No more could I ever bring myself to go out in
the heat of the sun without a cap or a hat; the heat of the sun, beating with such violence as
it does in that place, would give me the headache presently, by darting so directly on my
head, without a cap or hat on, so that I could not bear it; whereas if I put on my hat, it
would presently go away.
Upon those views I began to consider about putting the few rags I had, which I called
clothes, into some order; I had worn out all the waistcoats I had, and my business was now
to try if I could not make jackets out of the great watch coats which I had by me, and with
such other materials as I had; so I set to work a-tailoring, or rather indeed a-botching, for I
made most piteous work of it. However, I made shift to make two or three new waistcoats,
which I hoped would serve me a great while; as for breeches or drawers, I made but a very
sorry shift indeed, till afterwards.
I have mentioned that I saved the skins of all the creatures that I killed, I mean four-
footed ones, and I had hung them up stretched out with sticks in the sun, by which means
some of them were so dry and hard that they were fit for little, but others it seems were
very useful. The first thing I made of these was a great cap for my head, with the hair on
the outside, to shoot off the rain; and this I performed so well, that after this I made me a
suit of clothes wholly of these skins, that is to say, a waistcoat, and breeches open at
knees, and both loose, for they were rather wanting to keep me cool than to keep me
warm. I must not omit to acknowledge that they were wretchedly made; for if I was a bad
carpenter, I was a worse tailor. However, they were such as I made very good shift with;
and when I was abroad, if it happened to rain, the hair of my waistcoat and cap being
outermost, I was kept very dry.
After this I spent a great deal of time and pains to make me an umbrella; I was indeed in
great want of one, and had a great mind to make one; I had seen them made in Brazil,
where they are very useful in the great heats which are there. And I felt the heats every jot
as great here, and greater too, being nearer the equinox; besides, as I was obliged to be
much abroad, it was a most useful thing to me, as well for the rains as the heats. I took a
world of pains at it, and was a great while before I could make anything likely to hold;
nay, after I thought I had hit the way, I spoiled two or three before I made one to my mind;
but at last I made one that answered indifferently well. The main difficulty I found was to
make it to let down. I could make it to spread, but if it did not let down too and draw in, it
was not portable for me any way but just over my head, which would not do. However, at
last, as I said, I made one to answer, and covered it with skins, the hair upwards, so that it
cast off the rains like a penthouse and kept off the sun so effectually, that I could walk out
in the hottest of the weather with greater advantage than I could before in the coolest, and
when I had no need of it, could close it and carry it under my arm.
Thus I lived mighty comfortably, my mind being entirely composed by resigning to the
will of God and throwing myself wholly upon the disposal of His Providence. This made
my life better than sociable; for when I began to regret the want of conversation, I would
ask myself whether thus conversing mutually with my own thoughts, and as I hope I may
say, with even God Himself, by ejaculations, was not better than the utmost enjoyment of
human society in the world.
 I cannot say that after this, for five years, any extraordinary thing happened to me, but I
lived on in the same course, in the same posture and place, just as before; the chief thing 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
digging a canal to it of six foot wide, and four foot 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
memorandum 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 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 boat to go off to sea at last.
However, though my little piragua 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 ammunition, etc., into, to be kept dry, either from rain or the spray of the
sea; and a little long hollow place I cut in the inside of the boat, where I could lay my gun,
making a flap to hang down over it to keep it dry.
I fixed my umbrella also in a step at the stern, like a mast, to stand over my head, and
keep the heat of the sun off of me like an awning; and thus I every now and then took a
little voyage upon the sea, but never went far out, nor far from the little creek; but at last
being eager to view the circumference of my little kingdom, I resolved upon my tour and
accordingly I victualled my ship for the voyage, putting in two dozen of my loaves (cakes
I should rather call them) of barley bread, an earthen pot full of parched rice, a food I ate a
great deal of, a little bottle of rum, half a goat, and powder and shot for killing more, and
two large watch coats, of those which, as I mentioned before, I had saved out of the
seamen’s chests; these I took, one to lie upon, and the other to cover me in the night.
It was the 6th of November, in the sixth year of my reign, or my captivity, which you
please, that I set out on this voyage, and I found it much longer than I expected; for though
the island itself was not very large, yet when I came to the east side of it, I found a great
ledge of rocks lie out about two leagues into the sea, some above water, some under it; and
beyond that, a shoal of sand lying dry half a league more; so that I was obliged to go a
great way out to sea to double the point.
When first I discovered them, I was going to give over my enterprise, and come back
again, not knowing how far it might oblige me to go out to sea; and above all, doubting
how I should get back again; so I came to an anchor; for I had made me a kind of an
anchor with a piece of a broken grappling, which I got out of the ship.
Having secured my boat, I took my gun, and went on shore, climbing up upon a hill,
which seemed to overlook that point, where I saw the full extent of it, and resolved to
venture.
In my viewing the sea from that hill where I stood, I perceived a strong, and indeed a
most furious current, which ran to the east, and even came close to the point; and I took
the more notice of it, because I saw there might be some danger that when I came into it, I
might be carried out to sea by the strength of it and not be able to make the island again;
and indeed, had I not gotten first up upon this hill, I believe it would have been so; for
there was the same current on the other side the island, only that it set off at a farther
distance; and I saw there was a strong eddy under the shore; so I had nothing to do but to
get in out of the first current, and I should presently be in an eddy.
I lay here, however, two days; because the wind, blowing pretty fresh at east-southeast,
and that being just contrary to the said current, made a great breach of the sea upon the
point; so that it was not safe for me to keep too close to the shore for the breach, nor to go
too far off because of the stream.
The third day in the morning, the wind having abated overnight, the sea was calm, and I
ventured; but I am a warning piece again to all rash and ignorant pilots; for no sooner was
I come to the point, when even I was not my boat’s length from the shore, but I found
myself in a great depth of water, and a current like the sluice of a mill. It carried my boat
along with it with such violence that all I could do could not keep her so much as on the
edge of it; but I found it hurried me farther and farther out from the eddy, which was on
my left hand. There was no wind stirring to help me, and all I could do with my paddles
signified nothing; and now I began to give myself over for lost; for as the current was on
both sides of the island, I knew in a few leagues’ distance they must join again, and then I
was irrecoverably gone; nor did I see any possibility of avoiding it; so that I had no
prospect before me but of perishing; not by the sea, for that was calm enough, but of
starving for hunger. I had indeed found a tortoise on the shore, as big almost as I could lift,
and had tossed it into the boat; and I had a great jar of fresh water, that is to say, one of my
earthen pots; but what was all this to being driven into the vast ocean, where, to be sure,
there was no shore, no mainland or island, for a thousand leagues at least?
And now I saw how easy it was for the Providence of God to make the most miserable
condition mankind could be in, worse. Now I looked back upon my desolate solitary
island as the most pleasant place in the world, and all the happiness my heart could wish
for was to be but there again. I stretched out my hands to it with eager wishes. “O happy
desert!’’ said I, ‘‘I shall never see thee more! O miserable creature,’’ said I, ‘‘whither am I
going!’’ Then I reproached myself with my unthankful temper, and how I had repined at
my solitary condition; and now what would I give to be on shore there again! Thus we
never see the true state of our condition till it is illustrated to us by its contraries; nor know
how to value what we enjoy, but by the want of it. It is scarce possible to imagine the
consternation I was now in, being driven from my beloved island (for so it appeared to me
now to be) into the wide ocean almost two leagues, and in the utmost despair of ever
recovering it again. However, I worked hard till indeed my strength was almost exhausted,
and kept my boat as much to the northward, that is, towards the side of the current which
the eddy lay on, as possibly I could; when about noon, as the sun passed the meridian, I
thought I felt a little breeze of wind in my face, springing up from the south-southeast.
This cheered my heart a little, and especially when, in about half an hour more, it blew a
pretty small gentle gale. By this time I was gotten at a frightful distance from the island,
and had the least cloud or hazy weather intervened, I had been undone another way too;
for I had no compass on board, and should never have known how to have steered towards
the island, if I had but once lost sight of it; but the weather continuing clear, I applied
myself to get up my mast again and spread my sail, standing away to the north as much as
possible, to get out of the current.
Just as I had set my mast and sail, and the boat began to stretch away, I saw even by the
clearness of the water some alteration of the current was near; for where the current was
so strong, the water was foul; but perceiving the water clear, I found the current abate, and
presently I found to the east, at about half a mile, a breach of the sea upon some rocks;
these rocks I found caused the current to part again, and as the main stress of it ran away
more southerly, leaving the rocks to the northeast, so the other returned by the repulse of
the rocks and made a strong eddy, which ran back again to the northwest with a very sharp
stream.
They who know what it is to have a reprieve brought to them upon the ladder or to be
rescued from thieves just going to murder them, or who have been in such like extremities,
may guess what my present surprise of joy was, and how gladly I put my boat into the
stream of this eddy, and the wind also freshening, how gladly I spread my sail to it,
running cheerfully before the wind, and with a strong tide or eddy under foot.
This eddy carried me about a league in my way back again directly towards the island,
but about two leagues more to the northward than the current which carried me away at
first; so that when I came near the island, I found myself open to the northern shore of it,
that is to say, the other end of the island, opposite to that which I went out from.
When I had made something more than a league of way by the help of this current or
eddy, I found it was spent and served me no further. However, I found that being between
the two great currents, viz., that on the south side, which had hurried me away, and that on
the north, which lay about a league on the other side: I say, between these two, in the wake
of the island, I found the water at least still and running no way, and having still a breeze
of wind fair for me, I kept on steering directly for the island, though not making such fresh
way as I did before.
 About four o’clock in the evening, being then within about a league of the island, I
found the point of the rocks which occasioned this disaster, stretching out, as is described
before, to the southward, and casting off the current more southwardly, had of course
made another eddy to the north, and this I found very strong, but not directly setting the
way my course lay, which was due west, but almost full north. However, having a fresh
gale, I stretched across this eddy, slanting northwest, and in about an hour came within
about a mile of the shore, where, it being smooth water, I soon got to land.
When I was on shore, I fell on my knees, and gave God thanks for my deliverance,
resolving to lay aside all thoughts of my deliverance by my boat; and refreshing myself
with such things as I had, I brought my boat close to the shore in a little cove that I had
spied under some trees, and laid me down to sleep, being quite spent with the labour and
fatigue of the voyage.
I was now at a great loss which way to get home with my boat. I had run so much
hazard, and knew too much the case, to think of attempting it by the way I went out; and
what might be at the other side (I mean the west side) I knew not, nor had I any mind to
run any more ventures; so I only resolved in the morning to make my way westward along
the shore and to see if there was no creek where I might lay up my frigate in safety, so as
to have her again if I wanted her. In about three miles, or thereabouts, coasting the shore, I
came to a very good inlet, or bay, about a mile over, which narrowed till it came to a very
little rivulet or brook, where I found a very convenient harbour for my boat, and where she
lay as if she had been in a little dock made on purpose for her. Here I put in, and having
stowed my boat very safe, I went on shore to look about me and see where I was.
I soon found I had but a little passed by the place where I had been before, when I
travelled on foot to that shore; so taking nothing out of my boat but my gun and my
umbrella, for it was exceeding hot, I began my march. The way was comfortable enough
after such a voyage as I had been upon, and I reached my old bower in the evening, where
I found everything standing as I left it; for I always kept it in good order, being, as I said
before, my country house.
I got over the fence and laid me down in the shade to rest my limbs, for I was very
weary, and fell asleep. But judge you, if you can, that read my story, what a surprise I must
be in, when I was waked out of my sleep by a voice calling me by my name several times,
‘‘Robin, Robin, Robin Crusoe, poor Robin Crusoe! Where are you, Robin Crusoe? Where
are you? Where have you been?’’
I was so dead asleep at first, being fatigued with rowing, or paddling, as it is called, the
first part of the day and with walking the latter part, that I did not wake thoroughly; but
dozing between sleeping and waking, thought I dreamed that somebody spoke to me. But
as the voice continued to repeat ‘‘Robin Crusoe, Robin Crusoe,’’ at last I began to wake
more perfectly, and was at first dreadfully frighted and started up in the utmost
consternation. But no sooner were my eyes open, but I saw my Poll sitting on the top of
the hedge; and immediately knew that it was he that spoke to me; for just in such
bemoaning language I had used to talk to him, and teach him; and he had learned it so
perfectly that he would sit upon my finger and lay his bill close to my face, and cry, ‘‘Poor
Robin Crusoe! Where are you? Where have you been? How come you here?’’ and such
things as I had taught him.
However, even though I knew it was the parrot, and that indeed it could be nobody else,
it was a good while before I could compose myself. First, I was amazed how the creature
got thither, and then how he should just keep about the place and nowhere else. But as I
was well satisfied it could be nobody but honest Poll, I got it over; and holding out my
hand, and calling him by his name, ‘‘Poll,’’ the sociable creature came to me, and sat upon
my thumb, as he used to do, and continued talking to me, ‘‘Poor Robin Crusoe!’’ and how
did I come here? and where had I been? just as if he had been overjoyed to see me again;
and so I carried him home along with me.
 I Improve Myself in the Mechanic Exercises
I HAD now had enough of rambling to sea for some time, and had enough to do for many
days to sit still and reflect upon the danger I had been in. I would have been very glad to
have had my boat again on my side of the island; but I knew not how it was practicable to
get it about. As to the east side of the island, which I had gone round, I knew well enough
there was no venturing that way; my very heart would shrink and my very blood run chill
but to think of it. And as to the other side of the island, I did not know how it might be
there; but supposing the current ran with the same force against the shore at the east as it
passed by it on the other, I might run the same risk of being driven down the stream, and
carried by the island, as I had been before, of being carried away from it; so with these
thoughts I contented myself to be without any boat, though it had been the product of so
many months’ labour to make it, and of so many more to get it unto the sea.
In this government of my temper I remained near a year, lived a very sedate, retired life,
as you may well suppose; and my thoughts being very much composed as to my
condition, and fully comforted in resigning myself to the dispositions of Providence, I
thought I lived really very happily in all things, except that of society.
I improved myself in this time in all the mechanic exercises which my necessities put
me upon applying myself to, and I believe could, upon occasion, have made a very good
carpenter, especially considering how few tools I had.
Besides this, I arrived at an unexpected perfection in my earthenware, and contrived
well enough to make them with a wheel, which I found infinitely easier and better;
because I made things round and shapeable which before were filthy things indeed to look
on. But I think I was never more vain of my own performance, or more joyful for anything
I found out, than for my being able to make a tobacco pipe. And though it was a very ugly,
clumsy thing when it was done, and only burned red, like other earthenware, yet as it was
hard and firm, and would draw the smoke, I was exceedingly comforted with it; for I had
been always used to smoke and there were pipes in the ship, but I forgot them at first, not
knowing that there was tobacco in the island; and afterwards, when I searched the ship
again, I could not come at any pipes at all.
In my wickerware also I improved much, and made abundance of necessary baskets, as
well as my invention showed me; though not very handsome, yet they were such as were
very handy and convenient for my laying things up in, or fetching things home in. For
example, if I killed a goat abroad, I could hang it up in a tree, flay it and dress it and cut it
in pieces and bring it home in a basket; and the like by a turtle, I could cut it up, take out
the eggs, and a piece or two of the flesh, which was enough for me, and bring them home
in a basket, and leave the rest behind me. Also large deep baskets were my receivers for
my corn, which I always rubbed out as soon as it was dry, and cured, and kept it in great
baskets.
I began now to perceive my powder abated considerably, and this was a want which it
was impossible for me to supply; and I began seriously to consider what I must do when I
should have no more powder; that is to say, how I should do to kill any goats. I had, as is
observed in the third year of my being here, kept a young kid, and bred her up tame, and I
was in hopes of getting a he-goat; but I could not by any means bring it to pass, till my kid
grew an old goat; and I could never find in my heart to kill her, till she died at last of mere
age.
But being now in the eleventh year of my residence, and, as I have said, my ammunition
growing low, I set myself to study some art to trap and snare the goats, to see whether I
could not catch some of them alive, and particularly I wanted a she-goat great with young.
To this purpose I made snares to hamper them, and I do believe they were more than
once taken in them; but my tackle was not good, for I had no wire, and I always found
them broken and my bait devoured.
At length I resolved to try a pitfall, so I dug several large pits in the earth, in places
where I had observed the goats used to feed, and over these pits I placed hurdles of my
own making too, with a great weight upon them; and several times I put ears of barley and
dry rice, without setting the trap, and I could easily perceive that the goats had gone in and
eaten up the corn, for I could see the mark of their feet. At length I set three traps in one
night, and going the next morning I found them all standing, and yet the bait eaten and
gone. This was very discouraging. However, I altered my traps, and, not to trouble you
with particulars, going one morning to see my traps, I found in one of them a large old he-
goat, and in one of the others, three kids, a male and two females.
As to the old one, I knew not what to do with him, he was so fierce I durst not go into
the pit to him; that is to say, to go about to bring him away alive, which was what I
wanted. I could have killed him, but that was not my business, nor would it answer my
end. So I e’en let him out, and he ran away, as if he had been frighted out of his wits. But I
had forgot then what I learned afterwards, that hunger will tame a lion. If I had let him
stay there three or four days without food and then have carried him some water to drink,
and then a little corn, he would have been as tame as one of the kids, for they are mighty
sagacious, tractable creatures where they are well used.
However, for the present I let him go, knowing no better at that time; then I went to the
three kids, and taking them one by one, I tied them with strings together and with some
difficulty brought them all home.
It was a good while before they would feed, but throwing them some sweet corn, it
tempted them and they began to be tame; and now I found that if I expected to supply
myself with goat-flesh when I had no powder or shot left, breeding some up tame was my
only way, when perhaps I might have them about my house like a flock of sheep.
But then it presently occurred to me that I must keep the tame from the wild, or else
they would always run wild when they grew up, and the only way for this was to have
some enclosed piece of ground, well fenced either with hedge or pale, to keep them in so
effectually that those within might not break out, or those without break in.
This was a great undertaking for one pair of hands, yet as I saw there was an absolute
necessity of doing it, my first piece of work was to find out a proper piece of ground, viz.,
where there was likely to be herbage for them to eat, water for them to drink, and cover to
keep them from the sun.
Those who understand such enclosures will think I had very little contrivance, when I
pitched upon a place very proper for all these, being a plain open piece of meadow land, or
savanna (as our people call it in the western colonies), which had two or three little drills
of fresh water in it and at one end was very woody. I say, they will smile at my forecast,
when I shall tell them I began my enclosing of this piece of ground in such a manner that
my hedge or pale must have been at least two mile about. Nor was the madness of it so
great as to the compass, for if it was ten mile about, I was like to have time enough to do it
in. But I did not consider that my goats would be as wild in so much compass as if they
had had the whole island, and I should have so much room to chase them in that I should
never catch them.
My hedge was begun and carried on, I believe, about 50 yards, when this thought
occurred to me; so I presently stopped short, and for the first beginning I resolved to
enclose a piece of about 150 yards in length, and 100 yards in breadth, which, as it would
maintain as many as I should have in any reasonable time, so, as my flock 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. And 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 my 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 a day. 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, very readily and
handily, though after a great many essays and miscarriages, made me both butter and
cheese at last, and never wanted it afterwards.
How mercifully can our great Creator treat His creatures, even in those conditions in
which they seemed to be overwhelmed in destruction! 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 a wilderness, where I saw nothing at first but to perish for hunger!
It would have made a stoic smile to have seen me and my little family sit down to
dinner; there was my majesty, the prince and lord of the whole island: I had the lives of all
my subjects at my absolute command. I could hang, draw, give liberty, and take it away,
and no rebels among all my subjects.
Then to see how like a king I dined, too, all alone, attended by my servants; Poll, as if
he had been my favourite, was the only person permitted to talk to me. My dog, who was
now grown very old and crazy, and had found no species to multiply his kind upon, sat
always at my right hand; and two cats, one on one side the table and one on the other,
expecting now and then a bit from my hand, as a mark of special favour.
But these were not the two cats which I brought on shore at first, for they were both of
them dead, and had been interred near my habitation by my own hand; but one of them
having multiplied by I know not what kind of creature, these were two which I had
preserved tame, whereas the rest ran wild in the woods, and became indeed troublesome to
me at last; for they would often come into my house, and plunder me too, till at last I was
obliged to shoot them, and did kill a great many; at length they left me with this
attendance; and in this plentiful manner I lived; neither could I be said to want anything
but society, and of that in some time after this I was like to have too much.
I was something impatient, as I have observed, to have the use of my boat, though very
loath to run any more hazards; and therefore sometimes I sat contriving ways to get her
about the island, and at other times I sat myself down contented enough without her. But I
had a strange uneasiness in my mind to go down to the point of the island, where, as I
have said, in my last ramble I went up the hill to see how the shore lay and how the
current set, that I might see what I had to do. This inclination increased upon me every
day, and at length I resolved to travel thither by land; following the edge of the shore I did
so. But had anyone in England been to meet such a man as I was, it must either have
frighted them or raised a great deal of laughter; and as I frequently stood still to look at
myself, I could not but smile at the notion of my travelling through Yorkshire with such an
equipage and in such a dress. Be pleased to take a sketch of my figure as follows:
I had a great high shapeless cap, made of a goat’s skin, with a flap hanging down
behind, as well to keep the sun from me as to shoot the rain off from running into my
neck; nothing being so hurtful in these climates as the rain upon the flesh under the
clothes.
I had a short jacket of goatskin, the skirts coming down to about the middle of my
thighs; and a pair of open-kneed breeches of the same; the breeches were made of the skin
of an old he-goat, whose hair hung down such a length on either side that, like pantaloons,
it reached to the middle of my legs; stockings and shoes I had none, but I had made me a
pair of somethings, I scarce know what to call them, like buskins, to flap over my legs,
and lace on either side like spatterdashes; but of a most barbarous shape, as indeed were
all the rest of my clothes.
I had on a broad belt of goatskin dried, which I drew together with two thongs of the
same, instead of buckles, and in a kind of a frog on either side of this, instead of a sword
and a dagger, hung a little saw and a hatchet, one on one side, one on the other. I had
another belt, not so broad, and fastened in the same manner, which hung over my
shoulder; and at the end of it, under my left arm, hung two pouches, both made of goatskin
too; in one of which hung my powder, in the other my shot. At my back I carried my
basket, on my shoulder my gun, and over my head a great clumsy ugly goatskin umbrella,
but which, after all, was the most necessary thing I had about me, next to my gun. As for
my face, the colour of it was really not so mulatto-like as one might expect from a man not
at all careful of it and living within nine or ten degrees of the equinox. My beard I had
once suffered to grow till it was about a quarter of a yard long; but as I had both scissors
and razors sufficient, I had cut it pretty short, except what grew on my upper lip, which I
had trimmed into a large pair of Mahometan whiskers, such as I had seen worn by some
Turks whom I saw at Sallee; for the Moors did not wear such, though the Turks did; of
these mustachios, or whiskers, I will not say they were long enough to hang my hat upon
them, but they were of a length and shape monstrous enough and such as in England
would have passed for frightful.
But all this is by the by; for as to my figure, I had so few to observe me that it was of no
manner of consequence; so I say no more to that part. In this kind of figure I went my new
journey, and was out five or six days. I travelled first along the seashore, directly to the
place where I first brought my boat to an anchor, to get up upon the rocks; and having no
boat now to take care of, I went over the land a nearer way to the same height that I was
upon before; when, looking forward to the point of the rocks which lay out, and which I
was obliged to double with my boat, as I said above, I was surprised to see the sea all
smooth and quiet, no rippling, no motion, no current, any more there than in other places.
I was at a strange loss to understand this, and resolved to spend some time in the
observing it, to see if nothing from the sets of the tide had occasioned it; but I was
presently convinced how it was, viz., that the tide of ebb setting from the west and joining
with the current of waters from some great river on the shore must be the occasion of this
current; and that according as the wind blew more forcibly from the west or from the
north, this current came near, or went farther from the shore; for waiting thereabouts till
evening, I went up to the rock again, and then the tide of the ebb being made, I plainly saw
the current again as before, only that it ran further off, being near half a league from the
shore; whereas in my case it set close upon the shore, and hurried me and my canoe along
with it, which at another time it would not have done.
This observation convinced me that I had nothing to do but to observe the ebbing and
the flowing of the tide, and I might very easily bring my boat about the island again. But
when I began to think of putting it in practice, I had such a terror upon my spirits at the
remembrance of the danger I had been in that I could not think of it again with any
patience; but on the contrary, I took up another resolution, which was more safe, though
more laborious; and this was that I would build, or rather make, me another piragua, or
canoe; and so have one for one side of the island and one for the other.
You are to understand that now I had, as I may call it, two plantations in the island; one
my little fortification or tent, with the wall about it under the rock, with the cave behind
me, which by this time I had enlarged into several apartments, or caves, one within
another. One of these, which was the driest and largest, and had a door out beyond my
wall of fortification, that is to say, beyond where my wall joined to the rock, was all filled
up with the large earthen pots, of which I have given an account, and with fourteen or
fifteen great baskets, which would hold five or six bushels each, where I laid up my stores
of provision, especially my corn, some in the ear cut off short from the straw, and the other
rubbed out with my hand.
As for my wall, made, as before, with long stakes, or piles, those piles grew all like
trees, and were by this time grown so big and spread so very much that there was not the
least appearance to anyone’s view of any habitation behind them.
Near this dwelling of mine, but a little farther within the land and upon lower ground,
lay my two pieces of corn ground, which I kept duly cultivated and sowed, and which duly
yielded me their harvest in its season; and whenever I had occasion for more corn, I had
more land adjoining as fit as that.
Besides this, I had my country seat, and I had now a tolerable plantation there also; for
first, I had my little bower, as I called it, which I kept in repair; that is to say, I kept the
hedge which circled it in, constantly fitted up to its usual height, the ladder standing
always in the inside; I kept the trees, which at first were no more than my stakes, but were
now grown very firm and tall; I kept them always so cut that they might spread and grow
thick and wild, and make the more agreeable shade, which they did effectually to my
mind. In the middle of this I had my tent always standing, being a piece of a sail spread
over poles set up for that purpose, and which never wanted any repair or renewing; and
under this I had made me a squab, or couch, with the skins of the creatures I had killed and
with other soft things, and a blanket laid on them such as belonged to our seabedding,
which I had saved, and a great watch coat to cover me; and here, whenever I had occasion
to be absent from my chief seat, I took up my country habitation.
Adjoining to this I had my enclosures for my cattle, that is to say, my goats. And as I
had taken an inconceivable deal of pains to fence and enclose this ground, so I was so
uneasy to see it kept entire, lest the goats should break through, that I never left off till
with infinite labour I had stuck the outside of the hedge so full of small stakes, and so near
to one another, that it was rather a pale than a hedge, and there was scarce room to put a
hand through between them, which afterwards, when those stakes grew, as they all did in
the next rainy season, made the enclosure strong, like a wall, indeed stronger than any
wall.
This will testify for me that I was not idle, and that I spared no pains to bring to pass
whatever appeared necessary for my comfortable support; for I considered the keeping up
a breed of tame creatures thus at my hand would be a living magazine of flesh, milk,
butter, and cheese for me as long as I lived in the place, if it were to be forty years, and
that keeping them in my reach depended entirely upon my perfecting my enclosures to
such a degree that I might be sure of keeping them together; which by this method indeed
I so effectually secured that when these little stakes began to grow, I had planted them so
very thick, I was forced to pull some of them up again.
In this place also I had my grapes growing, which I principally depended on for my
winter store of raisins, and which I never failed to preserve very carefully, as the best and
most agreeable dainty of my whole diet; and indeed they were not agreeable only, but
physical, wholesome, nourishing, and refreshing to the last degree.
As this was also about halfway between my other habitation and the place where I had
laid up my boat, I generally stayed and lay here in my way thither; for I used frequently to
visit my boat, and I kept all things about or belonging to her in very good order;
sometimes I went out in her to divert myself, but no more hazardous voyages would I go,
nor scarce ever above a stone’s cast or two from the shore, I was so apprehensive of being
hurried out of my knowledge again by the currents, or winds, or any other accident. But
now I come to a new scene of my life.
 I Find the Print of a Man’s Naked Foot
IT HAPPENED one day about noon, going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised
with the print of a man’s naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen in the
sand. I stood like one thunderstruck, or as if I had seen an apparition; I listened, I looked
round me, I could hear nothing, nor see anything; I went up to a rising ground to look
farther; I went up the shore and down the shore, but it was all one, I could see no other
impression but that one; I went to it again to see if there were any more, and to observe if
it might not be my fancy; but there was no room for that, for there was exactly the very
print of a foot, toes, heel, and every part of a foot; how it came thither I knew not, nor
could in the least imagine. But after innumerable fluttering thoughts, like a man perfectly
confused and out of myself, I came home to my fortification, not feeling, as we say, the
ground I went on, but terrified to the last degree, looking behind me at every two or three
steps, mistaking every bush and tree, and fancying every stump at a distance to be a man;
nor is it possible to describe how many various shapes affrighted imagination represented
things to me in; how many wild ideas were found every moment in my fancy, and what
strange, unaccountable whimsies came into my thoughts by the way.
When I came to my castle, for so I think I called it ever after this, I fled into it like one
pursued; whether I went over by the ladder, as first contrived, or went in at the hole in the
rock, which I called a door, I cannot remember; no, nor could I remember the next
morning; for never frighted hare fled to cover, or fox to earth, with more terror of mind
than I to this retreat.
I slept none that night; the farther I was from the occasion of my fright, the greater my
apprehensions were; which is something contrary to the nature of such things, and
especially to the usual practice of all creatures in fear. But I was so embarrassed with my
own frightful ideas of the thing that I formed nothing but dismal imaginations to myself,
even though I was now a great way off it. Sometimes I fancied it must be the Devil; and
reason joined in with me upon this supposition. For how should any other thing in human
shape come into the place? Where was the vessel that brought them? What marks were
there of any other footsteps? And how was it possible a man should come there? But then
to think that Satan should take human shape upon him in such a place where there could
be no manner of occasion for it, but to leave the print of his foot behind him, and that even
for no purpose too (for he could not be sure I should see it); this was an amusement 5 the
other way. I considered that the Devil might have found out abundance of other ways to
have terrified me than this of the single print of a foot. That as I lived quite on the other
side of the island, he would never have been so simple to leave a mark in a place where it
was ten thousand to one whether I should ever see it or not, and in the sand too, which the
first surge of the sea upon a high wind would have defaced entirely. All this seemed
inconsistent with the thing itself, and with all the notions we usually entertain of the
subtlety of the Devil.
Abundance of such things as these assisted to argue me out of all apprehensions of its
being the Devil. And I presently concluded then that it must be some more dangerous
creature, viz., that it must be some of the savages of the mainland over against me, who
had wandered out to sea in their canoes, and either driven by the currents or by contrary
winds, had made the island; and had been on shore, but were gone away again tosea, being
as loath, perhaps, to have stayed in this desolate island as I would have been to have had
them.
While these reflections were rolling upon my mind, I was very thankful in my thoughts
that I was so happy as not to be thereabouts at that time, or that they did not see my boat,
by which they would have concluded that some inhabitants had been in the place, and
perhaps have searched farther for me. Then terrible thoughts racked my imagination about
their having found my boat, and that there were people here; and that if so, I should
certainly have them come again in greater numbers, and devour me; that if it should
happen so that they should not find me, yet they would find my enclosure, destroy all my
corn, carry away all my flock of tame goats, and I should perish at last for mere want.
Thus my fear banished all my religious hope, all that former confidence in God, which
was founded upon such wonderful experience as I had had of His goodness, now
vanished, as if He that had fed me by miracle hitherto could not preserve by His power the
provision which He had made for me by His goodness. I reproached myself with my
easiness, that would not sow any more corn one year than would just serve me till the next
season, as if no accident could intervene to prevent my enjoying the crop that was upon
the ground; and this I thought so just a reproof that I resolved for the future to have two or
three years’ corn beforehand, so that whatever might come, I might not perish for want of
bread.
How strange a checker-work of Providence is the life of man! and by what secret
differing springs are the affections hurried about, as differing circumstances present!
Today we love what tomorrow we hate; today we seek what tomorrow we shun; today we
desire what tomorrow we fear; nay, even tremble at the apprehensions of. This was
exemplified in me at this time in the most lively manner imaginable; for I, whose only
affliction was that I seemed banished from human society, that I was alone, circumscribed
by the boundless ocean, cut off from mankind, and condemned to what I call silent life;
that I was as one whom Heaven thought not worthy to be numbered among the living, or
to appear among the rest of His creatures; that to have seen one of my own species would
have seemed to me a raising me from death to life, and the greatest blessing that Heaven
itself, next to the supreme blessing of salvation, could bestow; I say, that I should now
tremble at the very apprehensions of seeing a man, and was ready to sink into the ground
at but the shadow or silent appearance of a man’s having set his foot in the island.
Such is the uneven state of human life; and it afforded me a great many curious
speculations afterwards, when I had a little recovered my first surprise; I considered that
this was the station of life the infinitely wise and good providence of God had determined
for me; that as I could not foresee what the ends of divine wisdom might be in all this, so I
was not to dispute His sovereignty, who, as I was His creature, had an undoubted right by
creation to govern and dispose of me absolutely as He thought fit; and who, as I was a
creature who had offended Him, had likewise a judicial right to condemn me to what
punishment He thought fit; and that it was my part to submit to bear His indignation,
because I had sinned against Him.
I then reflected that God, who was not only righteous but omnipotent, as He had
thought fit thus to punish and afflict me, so He was able to deliver me; that if He did not
think fit to do it, ’twas my unquestioned duty to resign myself absolutely and entirely to
His will; and on the other hand, it was my duty also to hope in Him, pray to Him, and
quietly to attend the dictates and directions of His daily providence.
These thoughts took me up many hours, days, nay, I may say, weeks and months; and
one particular effect of my cogitations on this occasion I cannot omit, viz., one morning
early, lying in my bed, and filled with thought about my danger from the appearance of
savages, I found it discomposed me very much, upon which those words of the Scripture
came into my thoughts, ‘‘Call upon Me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver, and thou
shalt glorify Me.’’
Upon this, rising cheerfully out of my bed, my heart was not only comforted, but I was
guided and encouraged to pray earnestly to God for deliverance. When I had done
praying, I took up my Bible, and opening it to read, the first words that presented to me
were, ‘‘Wait on the Lord, and be of good cheer, and He shall strengthen thy heart; wait, I
say, on the Lord.’’ It is impossible to express the comfort this gave me. In answer, I
thankfully laid down the book, and was no more sad, at least not on that occasion.
In the middle of these cogitations, apprehensions, and reflections, it came into my
thought one day that all this might be a mere chimera of my own; and that this foot might
be the print of my own foot, when I came on shore from my boat. This cheered me up a
little too, and I began to persuade myself it was all a delusion; that it was nothing else but
my own foot; and why might not I come that way from the boat, as well as I was going
that way to the boat? Again, I considered also that I could by no means tell for certain
where I had trod, and where I had not; and that if at last this was only the print of my own
foot, I had played the part of those fools who strive to make stories of spectres and
apparitions, and then are frighted at them more than anybody.
Now I began to take courage and to peep abroad again, for I had not stirred out of my
castle for three days and nights, so that I began to starve for provision; for I had little or
nothing within doors, but some barley-cakes and water. Then I knew that my goats wanted
to be milked too, which usually was my evening diversion; and the poor creatures were in
great pain and inconvenience for want of it; and indeed, it almost spoiled some of them,
and almost dried up their milk.
Heartening myself therefore with the belief that this was nothing but the print of one of
my own feet (and so I might be truly said to start at my own shadow), I began to go abroad
again, and went to my country house to milk my flock; but to see with what fear I went
forward, how often I looked behind me, how I was ready every now and then to lay down
my basket, and run for my life, it would have made anyone have thought I was haunted
with an evil conscience, or that I had been lately most terribly frighted; and so indeed I
had.
However, as I went down thus two or three days, and having seen nothing, I began to be
a little bolder, and to think there was really nothing in it but my own imagination. But I
could not persuade myself fully of this, till I should go down to the shore again, and see
this print of a foot, and measure it by my own, and see if there was any similitude or
fitness, that I might be assured it was my own foot. But when I came to the place, first, it
appeared evidently to me, that when I laid up my boat, I could not possibly be on shore
anywhere thereabouts: secondly, when I came to measure the mark with my own foot, I
found my foot not so large by a great deal. Both these things filled my head with new
imaginations, and gave me the vapours again to the highest degree; so that I shook with
cold, like one in an ague, and I went home again, filled with the belief that some man or
men had been on shore there; or, in short, that the island was inhabited, and I might be
surprised before I was aware; and what course to take for my security, I knew not.
O what ridiculous resolution men take when possessed with fear! It deprives them of
the use of those means which reason offers for their relief. The first thing I proposed to
myself was to throw down my enclosures, and turn all my tame cattle wild into the woods,
that the enemy might not find them and then frequent the island in prospect of the same or
the like booty: then to the simple thing of digging up my two cornfields, that they might
not find such a grain there and still be prompted to frequent the island; then to demolish
my bower and tent, that they might not see any vestiges of habitation, and be prompted to
look further, in order to find out the persons inhabiting.
These were the subject of the first night’s cogitation, after I was come home again,
while the apprehensions which had so overrun my mind were fresh upon me, and my head
was full of vapours, as above. Thus fear of danger is ten thousand times more terrifying
than danger itself, when apparent to the eyes; and we find the burden of anxiety greater, by
much, than the evil which we are anxious about; and, which was worse than all this, I had
not that relief in this trouble from the resignation I used to practice, that I hoped to have. I
looked, I thought, like Saul, who complained not only that the Philistines were upon him
but that God had forsaken him; for I did not now take due ways to compose my mind, by
crying to God in my distress, and resting upon His providence, as I had done before, for
my defence and deliverance; which if I had done, I had, at least, been more cheerfully
supported under this new surprise, and perhaps carried through it with more resolution.
This confusion of my thoughts kept me waking all night; but in the morning I fell
asleep, and having, by the amusement of my mind, been, as it were, tired, and my spirits
exhausted, I slept very soundly, and waked much better composed than I had ever been
before. And now I began to think sedately; and upon the utmost debate with myself, I
concluded that this island, which was so exceeding pleasant, fruitful, and no farther from
the mainland than as I had seen, was not so entirely abandoned as I might imagine. That
although there were no stated inhabitants who lived on the spot, yet that there might
sometimes come boats off from the shore, who either with design, or perhaps never but
when they were driven by cross winds, might come to this place.
That I had lived here fifteen years now, and had not met with the least shadow or figure
of any people yet; and that if at any time they should be driven here, it was probable they
went away again as soon as ever they could, seeing they had never thought fit to fix there
upon any occasion, to this time.
That the most I could suggest any danger from was from any such casual accidental
landing of straggling people from the main, who, as it was likely if they were driven
hither, were here against their wills; so they made no stay here, but went off again with all
possible speed, seldom staying one night on shore, lest they should not have the help of
the tides and daylight back again; and that therefore I had nothing to do but to consider of
some safe retreat, in case I should see any savages land upon the spot.
Now I began sorely to repent that I had dug my cave so large as to bring a door through
again, which door, as I said, came out beyond where my fortification joined to the rock;
upon maturely considering this, therefore, I resolved to draw me a second fortification, in
the same manner of a semicircle, at a distance from my wall, just where I had planted a
double row of trees about twelve years before, of which I made mention. These trees
having been planted so thick before, there wanted but a few piles to be driven between
them, that they should be thicker and stronger, and my wall would be soon finished.
So that I had now a double wall, and my outer wall was thickened with pieces of timber,
old cables, and everything I could think of to make it strong; having in it seven little holes,
about as big as I might put my arm out at. In the inside of this I thickened my wall to
above ten foot thick, with continually bringing earth out of my cave, and laying it at the
foot of the wall, and walking upon it; and through the seven holes I contrived to plant the
muskets, of which I took notice that I got seven on shore out of the ship; these, I say, I
planted like my cannon, and fitted them into frames that held them like a carriage, that so I
could fire all the seven guns in two minutes’ time. This wall I was many a weary month a-
finishing, and yet never thought myself safe till it was done.
When this was done, I stuck all the ground without my wall, for a great way every way,
as full with stakes or sticks, or the osier-like wood, which I found so apt to grow, as they
could well stand; insomuch, that I believe I might set in near twenty thousand of them,
leaving a pretty large space between them and my wall, that I might have room to see an
enemy, and they might have no shelter from the young trees, if they attempted to approach
my outer wall.
Thus in two years’ time I had a thick grove, and in five or six years’ time I had a wood
before my dwelling, growing so monstrous thick and strong that it was indeed perfectly
impassable; and no men of what kind soever would ever imagine that there was anything
beyond it, much less a habitation. As for the way which I proposed to myself to go in and
out, for I left no avenue, it was by setting two ladders; one to a part of the rock which was
low, and then broke in, and left room to place another ladder upon that; so when the two
ladders were taken down, no man living could come down to me without mischieving
himself; and if they had come down, they were still on the outside of my outer wall.
Thus I took all the measures human prudence could suggest for my own preservation;
and it will be seen at length that they were not altogether without just reason; though I
foresaw nothing at that time more than my mere fear suggested to me.
While this was doing, I was not altogether careless of my other affairs; for I had a great
concern upon me for my little herd of goats; they were not only a present supply to me
upon every occasion, and began to be sufficient to me, without the expense of powder and
shot, but also without the fatigue of hunting after the wild ones; and I was loath to lose the
advantage of them, and to have them all to nurse up over again.
To this purpose, after long consideration, I could think of but two ways to preserve
them; one was to find another convenient place to dig a cave underground, and to drive
them into it every night; and the other was to enclose two or three little bits of land,
remote from one another and as much concealed as I could, where I might keep about half
a dozen young goats in each place; so that if any disaster happened to the flock in general,
I might be able to raise them again with little trouble and time. And this, though it would
require a great deal of time and labour, I thought was the most rational design.
Accordingly, I spent some time to find out the most retired parts of the island; and I
pitched upon one which was as private indeed as my heart could wish for; it was a little
damp piece of ground in the middle of the hollow and thick woods, where, as is observed,
I almost lost myself once before, endeavouring to come back that way from the eastern
part of the island. Here I found a clear piece of land, near three acres, so surrounded with
woods that it was almost an enclosure by Nature; at least it did not want near so much
labour to make it so as the other pieces of ground I had worked so hard at.
I immediately went to work with this piece of ground, and in less than a month’s time I
had so fenced it round that my flock or herd, call it which you please, who were not so
wild now as at first they might be supposed to be, were well enough secured in it. So
without any further delay, I removed ten young she-goats and two he-goats to this place;
and when they were there, I continued to perfect the fence till I had made it as secure as
the other, which, however, I did at more leisure, and it took me up more time by a great
deal.
All this labour I was at the expense of, purely from my apprehensions on the account of
the print of a man’s foot which I had seen; for as yet I never saw any human creature come
near the island, and I had now lived two years under these uneasinesses, which indeed
made my life much less comfortable than it was before; as may well be imagined by any
who know what it is to live in the constant snare of the fear of man; and this I must
observe with grief too, that the discomposure of my mind had too great impressions also
upon the religious part of my thoughts, for the dread and terror of falling into the hands of
savages and cannibals lay so upon my spirits that I seldom found myself in a due temper
for application to my Maker, at least not with the sedate calmness and resignation of soul
which I was wont to do; I rather prayed to God as under great affliction and pressure of
mind, surrounded with danger, and in expectation every night of being murdered and
devoured before morning; and I must testify from my experience that a temper of peace,
thankfulness, love, and affection is much more the proper frame for prayer than that of
terror and discomposure; and that under the dread of mischief impending, a man is no
more fit for a comforting performance of the duty of praying to God than he is for
repentance on a sickbed. For these discomposures affect the mind, as the others do the
body; and the discomposure of the mind must necessarily be as great a disability as that of
the body, and much greater, praying to God being properly an act of the mind, not of the
body.
 I See the Shore Spread with Bones
BUT to go on. After I had thus secured one part of my little living stock, I went about the
whole island, searching for another private place, to make such another deposit; when
wandering more to the west point of the island than I had ever done yet, and looking out to
sea, I thought I saw a boat upon the sea, at a great distance. I had found a perspective-glass
or two, in one of the seamen’s chests which I saved out of our ship; but I had it not about
me, and this was so remote that I could not tell what to make of it, though I looked at it till
my eyes were not able to hold to look any longer; whether it was a boat or not, I do not
know; but as I descended from the hill, I could see no more of it, so I gave it over; only I
resolved to go no more out without a perspective-glass in my pocket.
When I was come down the hill to the end of the island, where indeed I had never been
before, I was presently convinced that the seeing the print of a man’s foot was not such a
strange thing in the island as I imagined; and but that it was a special providence that I
was cast upon the side of the island where the savages never came, I should easily have
known that nothing was more frequent than for the canoes from the main, when they
happened to be a little too far out at sea, to shoot over to that side of the island for harbour;
likewise, as they often met and fought in their canoes, the victors, having taken any
prisoners, would bring them over to this shore, where, according to their dreadful customs,
being all cannibals, they would kill and eat them; of which hereafter.
When I was come down the hill to the shore, as I said above, being the southwest point
of the island, I was perfectly confounded and amazed; nor is it possible for me to express
the horror of my mind at seeing the shore spread with skulls, hands, feet, and other bones
of human bodies; and particularly, I observed a place where there had been a fire made,
and a circle dug in the earth, like a cockpit, where it is supposed the savage wretches had
sat down to their inhuman feastings upon the bodies of their fellow creatures.
I was so astonished with the sight of these things that I entertained no notions of any
danger to myself from it for a long while; all my apprehensions were buried in the
thoughts of such a pitch of inhuman, hellish brutality, and the horror of the degeneracy of
human nature; which though I had heard of often, yet I never had so near a view of before;
in short, I turned away my face from the horrid spectacle; my stomach grew sick, and I
was just at the point of fainting, when Nature discharged the disorder from my stomach;
and having vomited with an uncommon violence, I was a little relieved, but could not bear
to stay in the place a moment; so I got me up the hill again, with all the speed I could, and
walked on towards my own habitation.
When I came a little out of that part of the island, I stood still a while as amazed; and
then recovering myself, I looked up with the utmost affection of my soul, and with a flood
of tears in my eyes, gave God thanks that had cast my first lot in a part of the world where
I was distinguished from such dreadful creatures as these; and that though I had esteemed
my present condition very miserable, had yet given me so many comforts in it that I had
still more to give thanks for than to complain of; and this above all, that I had, even in this
miserable condition, been comforted with the knowledge of Himself and the hope of His
blessing, which was a felicity more than sufficiently equivalent to all the misery which I
had suffered or could suffer.
In this frame of thankfulness I went home to my castle, and began to be much easier
now, as to the safety of my circumstances, than ever I was before; for I observed that these
wretches never came to this island in search of what they could get; perhaps not seeking,
not wanting, or not expecting anything here; and having often, no doubt, been up in the
covered, woody part of it, without finding anything to their purpose. I knew I had been
here now almost eighteen years, and never saw the least footsteps of human creature there
before; and I might be here eighteen more as entirely concealed as I was now, if I did not
discover myself to them, which I had no manner of occasion to do, it being my only
business to keep myself entirely concealed where I was, unless I found a better sort of
creatures than cannibals to make myself known to.
Yet I entertained such an abhorrence of the savage wretches that I have been speaking
of, and of the wretched, inhuman custom of their devouring and eating one another up,
that I continued pensive and sad, and kept close within my own circle for almost two years
after this. When I say my own circle, I mean by it my three plantations, viz., my castle, my
country seat, which I called my bower, and my enclosure in the woods; nor did I look after
this for any other use than as an enclosure for my goats; for the aversion which Nature
gave me to these hellish wretches was such that I was fearful of seeing them as of seeing
the Devil himself; nor did I so much as go to look after my boat in all this time, but began
rather to think of making me another; for I could not think of ever making any more
attempts to bring the other boat round the island to me, lest I should meet with some of
these creatures at sea, in which, if I had happened to have fallen into their hands, I knew
what would have been my lot.
Time, however, and the satisfaction I had that I was in no danger of being discovered by
these people, began to wear off my uneasiness about them; and I began to live just in the
same composed manner as before; only with this difference, that I used more caution, and
kept my eyes more about me than I did before, lest I should happen to be seen by any of
them; and particularly I was more cautious of firing my gun, lest any of them, being on the
island, should happen to hear of it; and it was therefore a very good providence to me that
I had furnished myself with a tame breed of goats, that I needed not hunt any more about
the woods, or shoot at them; and if I did catch any of them after this, it was by traps and
snares, as I had done before; so that for two years after this, I believe I never fired my gun
off once, though I never went out without it; and which was more, as I had saved three
pistols out of the ship, I always carried them out with me, or at least two of them, sticking
them in my goatskin belt; also I furbished up one of the great cutlasses that I had out of the
ship, and made me a belt to put it on also; so that I was now a most formidable fellow to
look at when I went abroad, if you add to the former description of myself the particular of
two pistols and a great broadsword, hanging at my side in a belt, but without a scabbard.
Things going on thus, as I have said, for some time, I seemed, excepting these cautions,
to be reduced to my former calm, sedate way of living; all these things tended to showing
me more and more how far my condition was from being miserable, compared to some
others; nay, to many other particulars of life which it might have pleased God to have
made my lot. It put me upon reflecting how little repining there would be among mankind,
at any condition of life, if people would rather compare their condition with those that are
worse, in order to be thankful, than be always comparing them with those which are better,
to assist their murmurings and complainings.
As in my present condition there were not really many things which I wanted, so indeed
I thought that the frights I had been in about these savage wretches, and the concern I had
been in for my own preservation, had taken off the edge of my invention for my own
conveniences; and I had dropped a good design, which I had once bent my thoughts too
much upon; and that was to try if I could not make some of my barley into malt, and then
try to brew myself some beer. This was really a whimsical thought, and I reproved myself
often for the simplicity of it; for I presently saw there would be the want of several things
necessary to the making my beer that it would be impossible for me to supply; as first,
casks to preserve it in, which was a thing that, as I have observed already, I could never
compass; no, though I spent not many days, but weeks, nay, months, in attempting it, but
to no purpose. In the next place, I had no hops to make it keep, no yeast to make it work,
no copper or kettle to make it boil; and yet all these things notwithstanding, I verily
believe, had not these things intervened, I mean the frights and terrors I was in about the
savages, I had undertaken it, and perhaps brought it to pass too, for I seldom gave
anything over without accomplishing it, when I once had it in my head enough to begin it.
But my invention now ran quite another way; for night and day I could think of nothing
but how I might destroy some of these monsters in their cruel bloody entertainment, and,
if possible, save the victim they should bring hither to destroy. It would take up a larger
volume than this whole work is intended to be, to set down all the contrivances I hatched,
or rather brooded upon in my thoughts, for the destroying these creatures, or at least
frighting them so as to prevent their coming hither any more; but all was abortive, nothing
could be possible to take effect, unless I was to be there to do it myself; and what could
one man do among them, when perhaps there might be twenty or thirty of them together,
with their darts, or their bows and arrows, with which they could shoot as true to a mark as
I could with my gun?
Sometimes I contrived to dig a hole under the place where they made their fire, and put
in five or six pound of gunpowder, which, when they kindled their fire, would
consequently take fire and blow up all that was near it; but as in the first place I should be
very loath to waste so much powder upon them, my store being now within the quantity of
one barrel, so neither could I be sure of its going off at any certain time, when it might
surprise them; and at best, that it would do little more than just blow the fire about their
ears and fright them, but not sufficient to make them forsake the place; so I laid it aside,
and then proposed that I would place myself in ambush, in some convenient place, with
my three guns all double-loaded; and in the middle of their bloody ceremony, let fly at
them, when I should be sure to kill or wound perhaps two or three at every shoot; and then
falling in upon them with my three pistols and my sword, I made no doubt but that if there
was twenty I should kill them all. This fancy pleased my thoughts for some weeks, and I
was so full of it that I often dreamed of it; and sometimes that I was just going to let fly at
them in my sleep.
 I went so far with it in my imagination that I employed myself several days to find out
proper places to put myself in ambuscade, as I said, to watch for them; and I went
frequently to the place itself, which was now grown more familiar to me; and especially
while my mind was thus filled with thoughts of revenge, and of a bloody putting twenty or
thirty of them to the sword, as I may call it, the horror I had at the place and at the signals
of the barbarous wretches devouring one another abated my malice.
Well, at length I found a place in the side of the hill where I was satisfied I might
securely wait till I saw any of their boats coming, and might then, even before they would
be ready to come on shore, convey myself unseen into thickets of trees, in one of which
there was a hollow large enough to conceal me entirely; and where I might sit and observe
all their bloody doings, and take my full aim at their heads, when they were so close
together as that it would be next to impossible that I should miss my shoot, or that I could
fail wounding three or four of them at the first shoot.
In this place, then, I resolved to fix my design, and accordingly I prepared two muskets
and my ordinary fowling piece. The two muskets I loaded with a brace of slugs each, and
four or five smaller bullets, about the size of pistol bullets; and the fowling piece I loaded
with near a handful of swan shot, of the largest size; I also loaded my pistols with about
four bullets each, and in this posture, well provided with ammunition for a second and
third charge, I prepared myself for my expedition.
After I had thus laid the scheme of my design, and in my imagination put it in practice,
I continually made my tour every morning up to the top of the hill, which was from my
castle, as I called it, about three miles, or more, to see if I could observe any boats upon
the sea, coming near the island, or standing over towards it; but I began to tire of this hard
duty, after I had for two or three months constantly kept my watch; but came always back
without any discovery, there having not in all that time been the least appearance, not only
on or near the shore, but not on the whole ocean, so far as my eyes or glasses could reach
every way.
As long as I kept up my daily tour to the hill to look out, so long also I kept up the
vigour of my design, and my spirits seemed to be all the while in a suitable form for so
outrageous an execution as the killing twenty or thirty naked savages for an offence which
I had not at all entered into a discussion of in my thoughts, any farther than my passions
were at first fired by the horror I conceived at the unnatural custom of that people of the
country, who it seems had been suffered by Providence, in His wise disposition of the
world, to have no other guide than that of their own abominable and vitiated passions; and
consequently were left, and perhaps had been so for some ages, to act such horrid things
and receive such dreadful customs, as nothing but nature entirely abandoned of Heaven,
and acted by some hellish degeneracy, could have run them into. But now, when, as I have
said, I began to be weary of the fruitless excursion which I had made so long, and so far
every morning in vain, so my opinion of the action itself began to alter, and I began with
cooler and calmer thoughts to consider what it was I was going to engage in: What
authority or call I had to pretend to be judge and executioner upon these men as criminals,
whom Heaven had thought fit for so many ages to suffer unpunished to go on, and to be,
as it were, the executioners of His judgments one upon another. How far these people were
offenders against me, and what right I had to engage in the quarrel of that blood, which
they shed promiscuously one upon another. I debated this very often with myself thus:
‘‘How do I know what God Himself judges in this particular case? It is certain these
people do not commit this as a crime; it is not against their own consciences’ reproving, or
their light reproaching them. They do not know it to be an offence, and then commit it in
defiance of Divine justice, as we do in almost all the sins we commit. They think it no
more a crime to kill a captive taken in war than we do to kill an ox; nor to eat human flesh,
than we do to eat mutton.’’
When I had considered this a little, it followed necessarily that I was certainly in the
wrong in it; that these people were not murderers in the sense that I had before condemned
them in my thoughts; any more than those Christians were murderers, who often put to
death the prisoners taken in battle; or more frequently, upon many occasions, put whole
troops of men to the sword, without giving quarter, though they threw down their arms
and submitted.
In the next place it occurred to me that albeit the usage they thus gave one another was
thus brutish and inhuman, yet it was really nothing to me. These people had done me no
injury. That if they attempted me, or I saw it necessary for my immediate preservation to
fall upon them, something might be said for it; but that I was yet out of their power and
they had really no knowledge of me, and consequently no design upon me; and therefore it
could not be just for me to fall upon them. That this would justify the conduct of the
Spaniards in all their barbarities practiced in America, where they destroyed millions of
these people, who, however they were idolaters and barbarians and had several bloody and
barbarous rites in their customs, such as sacrificing human bodies to their idols, were yet,
as to the Spaniards, very innocent people; and that the rooting them out of the country is
spoken of with the utmost abhorrence and detestation by even the Spaniards themselves, at
this time, and by all other Christian nations of Europe, as a mere butchery, a bloody and
unnatural piece of cruelty, unjustifiable either to God or man; and such, as for which the
very name of a Spaniard is reckoned to be frightful and terrible to all people of humanity
or of Christian compassion; as if the kingdom of Spain were particularly eminent for the
product of a race of men who were without principles of tenderness, or the common
bowels of pity to the miserable, which is reckoned to be a mark of generous temper in the
mind.
These considerations really put me to a pause, and to a kind of a full stop; and I began
by little and little to be off of my design, and to conclude I had taken wrong measures in
my resolutions to attack the savages; that it was not my business to meddle with them
unless they first attacked me; and this it was my business, if possible, to prevent; but that
if I were discovered and attacked, then I knew my duty.
On the other hand, I argued with myself that this really was the way not to deliver
myself, but entirely to ruin and destroy myself; for unless I was sure to kill every one that
not only should be on shore at that time, but that should ever come on shore afterwards, if
but one of them escaped to tell their country people what had happened, they would come
over again by thousands to revenge the death of their fellows, and I should only bring
upon myself a certain destruction, which at present I had no manner of occasion for.
Upon the whole I concluded that neither in principle or in policy I ought one way or
other to concern myself in this affair. That my business was by all possible means to
conceal myself from them and not to leave the least signal to them to guess by, that there
were any living creatures upon the island; I mean of human shape.
Religion joined in with this prudential, and I was convinced now, many ways, that I was
perfectly out of my duty, when I was laying all my bloody schemes for the destruction of
innocent creatures, I mean innocent as to me. As to the crimes they were guilty of towards
one another, I had nothing to do with them; they were national, and I ought to leave them
to the justice of God, who is the Governor of nations, and knows how by national
punishments to make a just retribution for national offences; and to bring public
judgments upon those who offend in a public manner, by such ways as best please Him.
This appeared so clear to me now that nothing was a greater satisfaction to me than that
I had not been suffered to do a thing which I now saw so much reason to believe would
have been no less a sin than that of willful murder, if I had committed it; and I gave most
humble thanks on my knees to God, that had thus delivered me from blood-guiltiness;
beseeching Him to grant me the protection of His Providence, that I might not fall into the
hands of the barbarians; or that I might not lay my hands upon them, unless I had a more
clear call from Heaven to do it, in defence of my own life.
 I Seldom Go from My Cell
IN THIS disposition I continued for near a year after this; and so far was I from desiring
an occasion for falling upon these wretches, that in all that time I never once went up the
hill to see whether there were any of them in sight, or to know whether any of them had
been on shore there or not, that I might not be tempted to renew any of my contrivances
against them, or be provoked by any advantage which might present itself to fall upon
them; only this I did, I went and removed my boat, which I had on the other side the
island, and carried it down to the east end of the whole island, where I ran it into a little
cove which I found under some high rocks, and where I knew, by reason of the currents,
the savages durst not, at least would not, come with their boats upon any account
whatsoever.
I SELDOM GO FROM MY CELL
With my boat I carried away everything that I had left there belonging to her, though
not necessary for the bare going thither, viz., a mast and sail which I had made for her, and
a thing like an anchor, but indeed which could not be called either anchor or grappling;
however, it was the best I could make of its kind. All these I removed, that there might not
be the least shadow of any discovery, or any appearance of any boat or of any human
habitation upon the island.
Besides this, I kept myself, as I said, more retired than ever, and seldom went from my
cell, other than upon my constant employment, viz., to milk my she-goats and manage my
little flock in the wood; which, as it was quite on the other part of the island, was quite out
of danger; for certain it is that these savage people who sometimes haunted this island
never came with any thoughts of finding anything here; and consequently never wandered
off from the coast; and I doubt not but they might have been several times on shore, after
my apprehensions of them had made me cautious, as well as before; and indeed, I looked
back with some horror upon the thoughts of what my condition would have been, if I had
chopped6 upon them and been discovered before that, when naked and unarmed, except
with one gun, and that loaden often only with small shot, I walked everywhere, peeping
and peeping about the island to see what I could get; what a surprise should I have been in,
if, when I discovered the print of a man’s foot, I had instead of that seen fifteen or twenty
savages and found them pursuing me, and by the swiftness of their running, no possibility
of my escaping them!
The thoughts of this sometimes sunk my very soul within me, and distressed my mind
so much that I could not soon recover it, to think what I should have done, and how I not
only should not have had presence of mind enough to do what I might have done; much
less what now, after so much consideration and preparation, I might be able to do. Indeed,
after serious thinking of these things, I would be very melancholy, and sometimes it would
last a great while; but I resolved it at last all into thankfulness to that Providence which
had delivered me from so many unseen dangers and had kept me from those mischiefs
which I could no way have been the agent in delivering myself from, because I had not the
least notion of any such thing depending, or the least supposition of it being possible.
 This renewed a contemplation which often had come to my thoughts in former time,
when first I began to see the merciful dispositions of Heaven in the dangers we run
through in this life. How wonderfully we are delivered, when we know nothing of it. How
when we are in (a quandary, as we call it), a doubt or hesitation, whether to go this way, or
that way, a secret hint shalldirect us this way, when we intended to go that way; nay, when
sense, our own inclination, and perhaps business has called to go the other way, yet a
strange impression upon the mind, from we know not what springs, and by we know not
what power, shall overrule us to go this way; and it shall afterwards appear that had we
gone that way which we should have gone, and even to our imagination ought to have
gone, we should have been ruined and lost. Upon these, and many like reflections, I
afterwards made it a certain rule with me that whenever I found those secret hints, or
pressings of my mind, to doing or not doing anything that presented, or to going this way
or that way, I never failed to obey the secret dictate; though I knew no other reason for it
than that such a pressure, or such a hint, hung upon my mind. I could give many examples
of the success of this conduct in the course of my life; but more especially in the latter part
of my inhabiting this unhappy island; besides many occasions which it is very likely I
might have taken notice of, if I had seen with the same eyes then that I saw with now. But
’tis never too late to be wise; and I cannot but advise all considering men, whose lives are
attended with such extraordinary incidents as mine, or even though not so extraordinary,
not to slight such secret intimations of Providence, let them come from what invisible
intelligence they will, that I shall not discuss, and perhaps cannot account for; but
certainly they are a proof of the converse of spirits and the secret communication between
those embodied and those unembodied; and such a proof as can never be withstood. Of
which I shall have occasion to give some very remarkable instances in the remainder of
my solitary residence in this dismal place.
I believe the reader of this will not think strange if I confess that these anxieties, these
constant dangers I lived in, and the concern that was now upon me, put an end to all
invention and to all the contrivances that I had laid for my future accommodations and
conveniences. I had the care of my safety more now upon my hands than that of my food.
I cared not to drive a nail or chop a stick of wood now, for fear the noise I should make
should be heard; much less would I fire a gun, for the same reason; and above all, I was
intolerably uneasy at making any fire, lest the smoke, which is visible at a great distance
in the day, should betray me; and for this reason I removed that part of my business which
required fire, such as burning of pots and pipes, etc., into my new apartment in the woods,
where after I had been some time, I found, to my unspeakable consolation, a mere natural
cave in the earth, which went in a vast way, and where, I dare say, no savage, had he been
at the mouth of it, would be so hardy as to venture in, nor indeed would any man else, but
one who, like me, wanted nothing so much as a safe retreat.
The mouth of this hollow was at the bottom of a great rock, where, by mere accident (I
would say, if I did not see abundant reason to ascribe all such things now to Providence), I
was cutting down some thick branches of trees to make charcoal; and before I go on, I
must observe the reason of my making this charcoal, which was thus:
I was afraid of making a smoke about my habitation, as I said before; and yet I could
not live there without baking my bread, cooking my meat, etc.; so I contrived to burn
some wood here, as I had seen done in England, under turf, till it became chark, or dry
coal; and then putting the fire out, I preserved the coal to carry home and perform the
other services which fire was wanting for at home, without danger of smoke.
But this by the by. While I was cutting down some wood here, I perceived that behind a
very thick branch of low brushwood, or underwood, there was a kind of hollow place; I
was curious to look into it, and getting with difficulty into the mouth of it, I found it was
pretty large, that is to say, sufficient for me to stand upright in it, and perhaps another with
me; but I must confess to you, I made more haste out than I did in, when looking farther
into the place, and which was perfectly dark, I saw two broad shining eyes of some
creature, whether devil or man I knew not, which twinkled like two stars, the dim light
from the cave’s mouth shining directly in and making the reflection.
However, after some pause, I recovered myself, and began to call myself a thousand
fools, and tell myself that he that was afraid to see the Devil was not fit to live twenty
years in an island all alone; and that I durst to believe there was nothing in this cave that
was more frightful than myself; upon this, plucking up my courage, I took up a great
firebrand, and in I rushed again, with the stick flaming in my hand; I had not gone three
steps in but I was almost as much frighted as I was before; for I heard a very loud sigh,
like that of a man in some pain, and it was followed by a broken noise, as if of words half
expressed, and then a deep sigh again. I stepped back, and was indeed struck with such a
surprise that it put me into a cold sweat; and if I had had a hat on my head, I will not
answer for it that my hair might not have lifted it off. But still plucking up my spirits as
well as I could, and encouraging myself a little with considering that the power and
presence of God was everywhere and was able to protect me, upon this I stepped forward
again, and by the light of the firebrand, holding it up a little over my head, I saw lying on
the ground a most monstrous, frightful old he-goat, just making his will, as we say, and
gasping for life, and dying indeed of mere old age.
I stirred him a little to see if I could get him out, and he essayed to get up, but was not
able to raise himself; and I thought with myself, he might even lie there; for if he had
frighted me so, he would certainly fright any of the savages, if any of them should be so
hardy as to come in there while he had any life in him.
I was now recovered from my surprise and began to look round me, when I found the
cave was but very small, that is to say, it might be about twelve foot over, but in no
manner of shape, either round or square, no hands having ever been employed in making it
but those of mere nature. I observed also that there was a place at the farther side of it that
went in farther but was so low that it required me to creep upon my hands and knees to go
into it, and whither I went I knew not; so having no candle, I gave it over for some time;
but resolved to come again the next day, provided with candles and a tinderbox, which I
had made of the lock of one of the muskets, with some wildfire in the pan.
Accordingly, the next day I came provided with six large candles of my own making,
for I made very good candles now of goat’s tallow; and going into this low place, I was
obliged to creep upon all fours, as I have said, almost ten yards; which, by the way, I
thought was a venture bold enough, considering that I knew not how far it might go, nor
what was beyond it. When I was got through the strait, I found the roof rose higher up, I
believe near twenty foot; but never was such a glorious sight seen in the island, I dare say,
as it was to look round the sides and roof of this vault, or cave; the walls reflected a
hundred thousand lights to me from my two candles; what it was in the rock, whether
diamonds, or any other precious stones, or gold, which I rather supposed it to be, I knew
not.
The place I was in was a most delightful cavity or grotto of its kind, as could be
expected, though perfectly dark; the floor was dry and level and had a sort of small loose
gravel upon it, so that there was no nauseous or venomous creature to be seen, neither was
there any damp or wet on the sides or roof. The only difficulty in it was the entrance,
which, however, as it was a place of security, and such a retreat as I wanted, I thought that
was a convenience; so that I was really rejoiced at the discovery and resolved, without any
delay, to bring some of those things which I was most anxious about to this place;
particularly, I resolved to bring hither my magazine of powder, and all my spare arms,
viz., two fowling pieces (for I had three in all) and three muskets (for of them I had eight
in all); so I kept at my castle only five, which stood ready mounted, like pieces of cannon,
on my outmost fence; and were ready also to take out upon any expedition.
Upon this occasion of removing my ammunition, I took occasion to open the barrel of
powder which I took up out of the sea, and which had been wet; and I found that the water
had penetrated about three or four inches into the powder on every side, which, caking and
growing hard, had preserved the inside like a kernel in a shell; so that I had near sixty
pound of very good powder in the centre of the cask; and this was an agreeable discovery
to me at that time; so I carried all away thither, never keeping above two or three pound of
powder with me in my castle, for fear of a surprise of any kind. I also carried thither all the
lead I had left for bullets.
I fancied myself now like one of the ancient giants, which were said to live in caves and
holes in the rocks, where none could come at them; for I persuaded myself, while I was
here, if five hundred savages were to hunt me, they could never find me out; or if they did,
they would not venture to attack me here.
The old goat which I found expiring died in the mouth of the cave the next day after I
made this discovery; and I found it much easier to dig a great hole there and throw him in
and cover him with earth than to drag him out; so I interred him there, to prevent offence
to my nose.
I was now in my twenty-third year of residence in this island and was so naturalized to
the place and to the manner of living that could I have but enjoyed the certainty that no
savages would come to the place to disturb me, I could have been content to have
capitulated for spending the rest of my time there, even to the last moment, till I had laid
me down and died, like the old goat in the cave. I had also arrived to some little diversions
and amusements, which made the time pass more pleasantly with me a great deal than it
did before; as, first, I had taught my Poll, as I noted before, to speak; and he did it so
familiarly, and talked so articulately and plain, that it was very pleasant to me; and he
lived with me no less than six and twenty years. How long he might live afterwards I
know not; though I know they have a notion in Brazil that they live a hundred years;
perhaps poor Poll may be alive there still, calling after poor Robin Crusoe to this day. I
wish no Englishman the ill luck to come there and hear him; but if he did, he would
certainly believe it was the Devil. My dog was a very pleasant and loving companion to
me for no less than sixteen years of my time, and then died of mere old age; as for my
cats, they multiplied, as I have observed, to that degree, that I was obliged to shoot several
of them at first to keep them from devouring me and all I had; but at length, when the two
old ones I brought with me were gone, and after some time continually driving them from
me and letting them have no provision with me, they all ran wild into the woods, except
two or three favourites, which I kept tame, and whose young, when they had any, I always
drowned; and these were part of my family. Besides these, I always kept two or three
household kids about me, which I taught to feed out of my hand; and I had two more
parrots, which talked pretty well, and would all call ‘‘Robin Crusoe,’’ but none like my
first; nor indeed did I take the pains with any of them that I had done with him. I had also
several tame seafowls, whose names I know not, which I caught upon the shore, and cut
their wings; and the little stakes which I had planted before my castle wall being now
grown up to a good thick grove, these fowls all lived among these low trees and bred
there, which was very agreeable to me; so that, as I said above, I began to be very well
contented with the life I led, if it might but have been secured from the dread of the
savages.
But it was otherwise directed; and it may not be amiss for all people who shall meet
with my story to make this just observation from it, viz., how frequently, in the course of
our lives, the evil which in itself we seek most to shun, and which, when we are fallen
into, is the most dreadful to us, is oftentimes the very means or door of our deliverance, by
which alone we can be raised again from the affliction we are fallen into. I could give
many examples of this in the course of my unaccountable life; but in nothing was it more
particularly remarkable than in the circumstances of my last years of solitary residence in
this island.
It was now the month of December, as I said above, in my twenty-third year; and this,
being the southern solstice, for winter I cannot call it, was the particular time of my
harvest, and required my being pretty much abroad in the fields; when, going out pretty
early in the morning, even before it was thorough daylight, I was surprised with seeing a
light of some fire upon the shore, at a distance from me of about two miles, towards the
end of the island, where I had observed some savages had been, as before, but not on the
other side; but to my great affliction, it was on my side of the island.
I was indeed terribly surprised at the sight, and stopped short within my grove, not
daring to go out, lest I might be surprised; and yet I had no more peace within, from the
apprehensions I had that if these savages, in rambling over the island, should find my corn
standing, or cut, or any of my works and improvements, they would immediately conclude
that there were people in the place, and would then never give over till they had found me
out. In this extremity I went back directly to my castle, pulled up the ladder after me, and
made all things without look as wild and natural as I could.
 Then I prepared myself within, putting myself in a posture of defence; I loaded all my
cannon, as I called them; that is to say, my muskets, which were mounted upon my new
fortification, and all my pistols, and resolved to defend myself to the last gasp, not
forgetting seriously to commend myself to the Divine protection, and earnestly to pray to
God to deliver me out of the hands of the barbarians; and in this posture I continued about
two hours; but began to be mighty impatient for intelligence abroad, for I had no spies to
send out.
After sitting a while longer and musing what I should do in this case, I was not able to
bear sitting in ignorance any longer; so setting up my ladder to the side of the hill, where
there was a flat place, as I observed before, and then pulling the ladder up after me, I set it
up again and mounted to the top of the hill; and pulling out my perspective-glass, which I
had taken on purpose, I laid me down flat on my belly on the ground and began to look for
the place. I presently found there was no less than nine naked savages sitting round a small
fire they had made, not to warm them, for they had no need of that, the weather being
extreme hot; but, as I suppose, to dress some of their barbarous diet of human flesh, which
they had brought with them, whether alive or dead I could not know.
They had two canoes with them, which they had hauled up upon the shore; and as it was
then tide of ebb, they seemed to me to wait for the return of the flood to go away again; it
is not easy to imagine what confusion this sight put me into, especially seeing them come
on my side the island, and so near me too; but when I observed their coming must be
always with the current of the ebb, I began afterwards to be more sedate in my mind,
being satisfied that I might go abroad with safety all the time of the tide of flood, if they
were not on shore before. And having made this observation, I went abroad about my
harvest work with the more composure.
As I expected, so it proved; for as soon as the tide made to the westward, I saw them all
take boat, and row (or paddle, as we call it) all away. I should have observed that, for an
hour and more before they went off, they went to dancing, and I could easily discern their
postures and gestures by my glasses. I could not perceive, by my nicest observation, but
that they were stark naked and had not the least covering upon them; but whether they
were men or women, that I could not distinguish.
As soon as I saw them shipped and gone, I took two guns upon my shoulders and two
pistols at my girdle and my great sword by my side, without a scabbard, and with all the
speed I was able to make I went away to the hill where I had discovered the first
appearance of all; and as soon as I got thither, which was not less than two hours (for I
could not go apace, being so loaden with arms as I was), I perceived there had been three
canoes more of savages on that place; and looking out farther, I saw they were all at sea
together, making over for the main.
This was a dreadful sight to me, especially when, going down to the shore, I could see
the marks of horror which the dismal work they had been about had left behind it, viz., the
blood, the bones, and part of the flesh of human bodies, eaten and devoured by those
wretches, with merriment and sport. I was so filled with indignation at the sight that I
began now to premeditate the destruction of the next that I saw there, let them be who or
how many soever.
It seemed evident to me that the visits which they thus made to this island are not very
frequent; for it was above fifteen months before any more of them came on shore there
again; that is to say, I neither saw them, or any footsteps, or signals of them, in all that
time; for as to the rainy seasons, then they are sure not to come abroad, at least not so far;
yet all this while I lived uncomfortably, by reason of the constant apprehensions I was in
of their coming upon me by surprise; from whence I observe that the expectation of evil is
more bitter than the suffering; especially if there is no room to shake off that expectation,
or those apprehensions.
During all this time, I was in the murdering humour, and took up most of my hours,
which should have been better employed, in contriving how to circumvent and fall upon
them the very next time I should see them; especially if they should be divided, as they
were the last time, into two parties; nor did I consider at all that if I killed one party,
suppose ten or a dozen, I was still the next day, or week, or month, to kill another, and so
another, even ad infinitum, till I should be at length no less a murderer than they were in
being man-eaters, and perhaps much more so.
I spent my days now in great perplexity and anxiety of mind, expecting that I should
one day or other fall into the hands of these merciless creatures; and if I did at any time
venture abroad, it was not without looking round me with the greatest care and caution
imaginable; and now I found to my great comfort how happy it was that I provided for a
tame flock or herd of goats; for I durst not upon any account fire my gun, especially near
that side of the island where they usually came, lest I should alarm the savages; and if they
had fled from me now, I was sure to have them come back again, with perhaps two or
three hundred canoes with them, in a few days, and then I knew what to expect.
However, I wore out a year and three months more before I ever saw any more of these
savages, and then I found them again, as I shall soon observe. It is true, they might have
been there once or twice; but either they made no stay, or at least I did not hear them; but
in the month of May, as near as I could calculate, and in my four and twentieth year, I had
a very strange encounter with them, of which in its place.
 I See the Wreck of a Ship
THE perturbation of my mind, during this fifteen or sixteen months’ interval, was very
great; I slept unquiet, dreamed always frightful dreams, and often started out of my sleep
in the night. In the day great troubles overwhelmed my mind, and in the night I dreamed
often of killing the savages, and of the reasons why I might justify the doing of it; but to
waive all this for a while; it was in the middle of May, on the sixteenth day, I think, as well
as my poor wooden calendar would reckon; for I marked all upon the post still; I say, it
was the sixteenth of May that it blew a very great storm of wind all day, with a great deal
of lightning and thunder, and a very foul night it was after it; I know not what was the
particular occasion of it; but as I was reading in the Bible, and taken up with very serious
thoughts about my present condition, I was surprised with a noise of a gun, as I thought,
fired at sea.
This was, to be sure, a surprise of a quite different nature from any I had met with
before; for the notions this put into my thoughts were quite of another kind. I started up in
the greatest haste imaginable, and in a trice clapped my ladder to the middle place of the
rock, and pulled it after me, and mounting it the second time, got to the top of the hill the
very moment that a flash of fire bade me listen for a second gun, which accordingly, in
about half a minute I heard, and by the sound knew that it was from that part of the sea
where I was driven down the current in my boat.
I immediately considered that this must be some ship in distress, and that they had some
comrade, or some other ship in company, and fired these guns for signals of distress and to
obtain help. I had this presence of mind at that minute, as to think that, though I could not
help them, it may be they might help me; so I brought together all the dry wood I could
get at hand, and making a good handsome pile, I set it on fire upon the hill; the wood was
dry and blazed freely; and though the wind blew very hard, yet it burned fairly out, that I
was certain, if there was any such thing as a ship, they must needs see it, and no doubt
they did, for as soon as ever my fire blazed up, I heard another gun, and after that several
others, all from the same quarter; I plied my fire all night long, till day broke; and when it
was broad day, and the air cleared up, I saw something at a great distance at sea, full east
of the island, whether a sail or a hull I could not distinguish, no, not with my glasses, the
distance was so great, and the weather still something hazy also; at least it was so out at
sea.
I looked frequently at it all that day, and soon perceived that it did not move; so I
presently concluded that it was a ship at an anchor; and being eager, you may be sure, to
be satisfied, I took my gun in my hand, and ran towards the southeast side of the island, to
the rocks where I had formerly been carried away with the current, and getting up there,
the weather by this time being perfectly clear, I could plainly see, to my great sorrow, the
wreck of a ship cast away in the night upon those concealed rocks which I found when I
was out in my boat; and which rocks, as they checked the violence of the stream, and
made a kind of counterstream or eddy, were the occasion of my recovering from the most
desperate, hopeless condition that ever I had been in, in all my life.
Thus what is one man’s safety is another man’s destruction; for it seems these men,
whoever they were, being out of their knowledge, and the rocks being wholly under water,
had been driven upon them in the night, the wind blowing hard at east and east-northeast.
Had they seen the island, as I must necessarily suppose they did not, they must, as I
thought, have endeavoured to have saved themselves on shore by the help of their boat;
but their firing of guns for help, especially when they saw, as I imagined, my fire, filled
me with many thoughts. First I imagined that upon seeing my light, they might have put
themselves into their boat and have endeavoured to make the shore; but that the sea going
very high, they might have been cast away; other times I imagined that they might have
lost their boat before, as might be the case many ways; as particularly by the breaking of
the sea upon their ship, which many times obliges men to stave or take in pieces their boat,
and sometimes to throw it overboard with their own hands. Other times I imagined they
had some other ship or ships in company, who, upon the signals of distress they had made,
had taken them up and carried them off. Other whiles I fancied they were all gone off to
sea in their boat, and being hurried away by the current that I had been formerly in, were
carried out into the great ocean, where there was nothing but misery and perishing; and
that perhaps they might by this time think of starving and of being in a condition to eat
one another. condition I was in, I could do no more than look on upon the misery of the
poor men, and pity them, which had still this good effect on my side, that it gave me more
and more cause to give thanks to God, who had so happily and comfortably provided for
me in my desolate condition; and that of two ships’ companies who were now cast away
upon this part of the world, not one life should be spared but mine. I learned here again to
observe that it is very rare that the providence of God casts us into any condition of life so
low, or any misery so great, but we may see something or other to be thankful for; and
may see others in worse circumstances than our own.
Such certainly was the case of these men, of whom I could not so much as see room to
suppose any of them were saved; nothing could make it rational, so much as to wish or
expect that they did not all perish there, except the possibility only of their being taken up
by another ship in company; and this was but mere possibility indeed; for I saw not the
least signal or appearance of any such thing.
I cannot explain by any possible energy of words what a strange longing or hankering
of desires I felt in my soul upon this sight, breaking out sometimes thus: “O that there had
been but one or two, nay, or but one soul, saved out of this ship, to have escaped to me,
that I might but have had one companion, one fellow creature to have spoken to me and to
have conversed with!’’ In all the time of my solitary life, I never felt so earnest, so strong a
desire after the society of my fellow creatures, or so deep a regret at the want of it.
There are some secret moving springs in the affections, which when they are set a-going
by some object in view, or be it some object, though not in view, yet rendered present to
the mind by the power of imagination, that motion carries out the soul by its impetuosity
to such violent, eager embracings of the object, that the absence of it is insupportable.
Such were these earnest wishings, that but one man had been saved! “O that it had been
but one!’’ I believe I repeated the words, “O that it had been but one!’’ a thousand times;
and the desires were so moved by it that when I spoke the words my hands would clinch
together and my fingers press the palms of my hands, that if I had had any soft thing in my
hand, it would have crushed it involuntarily; and my teeth in my head would strike
together and set against one another so strong that for some time I could not part them
again.
Let the naturalists explain these things, and the reason and manner of them; all I can say
to them is to describe the fact, which was even surprising to me when I found it; though I
knew not from what it should proceed, it was doubtless the effect of ardent wishes and of
strong ideas formed in my mind, realizing the comfort which the conversation of one of
my fellow Christians would have been to me.
But it was not to be; either their fate or mine, or both, forbade it; for till the last year of
my being on this island, I never knew whether any were saved out of that ship or no; and
had only the affliction some days after to see the corpse of a drowned boy come on shore
at the end of the island which was next the shipwreck. He had on no clothes but a
seaman’s waistcoat, a pair of open-kneed linen drawers, and a blue linen shirt; but nothing
to direct me so much as to guess what nation he was of. He had nothing in his pocket but
two pieces of eight and a tobacco pipe; the last was to me of ten times more value than the
first.
It was now calm, and I had a great mind to venture out in my boat to this wreck, not
doubting but I might find something on board that might be useful to me; but that did not
altogether press me so much as the possibility that there might be yet some living creature
on board, whose life I might not only save but might, by saving that life, comfort my own
to the last degree; and this thought clung so to my heart that I could not be quiet night or
day, but I must venture out in my boat on board this wreck; and committing the rest to
God’s providence, I thought the impression was so strong upon my mind that it could not
be resisted, that it must come from some invisible direction, and that I should be wanting
to myself if I did not go.
Under the power of this impression, I hastened back to my castle, prepared everything
for my voyage, took a quantity of bread, a great pot for fresh water, a compass to steer by,
a bottle of rum (for I had still a great deal of that left), a basket full of raisins. And thus
loading myself with everything necessary, I went down to my boat, got the water out of
her, and got her afloat, loaded all my cargo in her, and then went home again for more; my
second cargo was a great bag full of rice, the umbrella to set up over my head for shade,
another large pot full of fresh water, and about two dozen of my small loaves, or barley
cakes, more than before, with a bottle of goat’s milk, and a cheese; all which, with great
labour and sweat, I brought to my boat; and praying to God to direct my voyage, I put out,
and rowing or paddling the canoe along the shore, I came at last to the utmost point of the
island on that side, viz., northeast. And now I was to launch out into the ocean, and either
to venture, or not to venture. I looked on the rapid currents which ran constantly on both
sides of the island, at a distance, and which were very terrible to me, from the
remembrance of the hazard I had been in before, and my heart began to fail me; for I
foresaw that if I was driven into either of those currents, I should be carried a vast way out
to sea, and perhaps out of my reach or sight of the island again; and that then, as my boat
was but small, if any little gale or wind should rise, I should be inevitably lost.
These thoughts so oppressed my mind that I began to give over my enterprise, and
having hauled my boat into a little creek on the shore, I stepped out and sat me down upon
a little rising bit of ground, very pensive and anxious, between fear and desire about my
voyage; when, as I was musing, I could perceive that the tide was turned and the flood
came on, upon which my going was for so many hours impracticable; upon this, presently
it occurred to me that I should go up to the highest piece of ground I could find, and
observe, if I could, how the sets of the tide or currents lay, when the flood came in, that I
might judge whether, if I was driven one way out, I might not expect to be driven another
way home, with the same rapidness of the currents. This thought was no sooner in my
head, but I cast my eye upon a little hill, which sufficiently overlooked the sea both ways,
and from whence I had a clear view of the currents, or sets of the tide, and which way I
was to guide myself in my return; here I found, that as the current of the ebb set out close
by the south point of the island, so the current of the flood set in close by the shore of the
north side, and that I had nothing to do but to keep to the north of the island in my return,
and I should do well enough.
Encouraged with this observation, I resolved the next morning to set out with the first of
the tide; and reposing myself for the night in the canoe, under the great watch coat I
mentioned, I launched out. I made first a little out to sea full north, till I began to feel the
benefit of the current, which set eastward, and which carried me at a great rate, and yet did
not so hurry me as the southern side current had done before, and so as to take from me all
government of the boat; but having a strong steerage with my paddle, I went at a great
rate, directly for the wreck, and in less than two hours I came up to it.
It was a dismal sight to look at. The ship, which by its building was Spanish, stuck fast,
jammed in between two rocks; all the stern and quarter of her was beaten to pieces with
the sea; and as her forecastle, which stuck in the rocks, had run on with great violence, her
mainmast and foremast were brought by the board; that is to say, broken short off; but her
bowsprit was sound, and the head and bow appeared firm. When I came close to her, a dog
appeared upon her, who, seeing me coming, yelped and cried; and as soon as I called him,
jumped into the sea to come to me, and I took him into the boat; but found him almost
dead for hunger and thirst. I gave him a cake of my bread, and he ate it like a ravenous
wolf that had been starving a fortnight in the snow. I then gave the poor creature some
fresh water, with which, if I would have let him, he would have burst himself.
After this I went on board; but the first sight I met with was two men drowned in the
cook-room, or forecastle of the ship, with their arms fast about one another. I concluded,
as is indeed probable, that when the ship struck, it being in a storm, the sea broke so high
and so continually over her that the men were not able to bear it and were strangled with
the constant rushing in of the water, as much as if they had been under water. Besides the
dog, there was nothing left in the ship that had life, nor any goods that I could see, but
what were spoiled by the water. There were some casks of liquor, whether wine or brandy,
I knew not, which lay lower in the hold; and which, the water being ebbed out, I could see;
but they were too big to meddle with. I saw several chests, which I believed belonged to
some of the seamen, and I got two of them into the boat, without examining what was in
them.
Had the stern of the ship been fixed, and the forepart broken off, I am persuaded I might
have made a good voyage; for by what I found in these two chests, I had room to suppose
the ship had a great deal of wealth on board; and if I may guess by the course she steered,
she must have been bound from Buenos Aires, or the Rio de la Plata, in the south part of
America, beyond Brazil, to Havana, in the Gulf of Mexico, and so perhaps to Spain. She
had, no doubt, a great treasure in her; but of no use at that time to anybody; and what
became of the rest of her people, I then knew not.
I found, besides these chests, a little cask full of liquor, of about twenty gallons, which I
got into my boat with much difficulty; there were several muskets in a cabin and a great
powder horn, with about four pounds of powder in it; as for the muskets, I had no occasion
for them, so I left them, but took the powder horn. I took a fire shovel and tongs, which I
wanted extremely; as also two little brass kettles, a copper pot to make chocolate, and a
gridiron; and with this cargo and the dog I came away, the tide beginning to make home
again; and the same evening, about an hour within night, I reached the island again, weary
and fatigued to the last degree.
I reposed that night in the boat, and in the morning I resolved to harbour what I had
gotten in my new cave, not to carry it home to my castle. After refreshing myself, I got all
my cargo on shore, and began to examine the particulars. The cask of liquor I found to be
a kind of rum, but not such as we had at Brazil; and in a word, not at all good; but when I
came to open the chests, I found several things of great use to me. For example, I found in
one a fine case of bottles, of an extraordinary kind, and filled with cordial waters, fine and
very good; the bottles held about three pints each, and were tipped with silver. I found two
pots of very good succades, or sweetmeats, so fastened also on top that the salt water had
not hurt them; and two more of the same, which the water had spoiled. I found some very
good shirts, which were very welcome to me, and about a dozen and a half of linen white
handkerchiefs and coloured neckcloths; the former were also very welcome, being
exceeding refreshing to wipe my face in a hot day; besides this, when I came to the till in
the chests, I found there were three great bags of pieces of eight, which held about eleven
hundred pieces in all; and in one of them, wrapped up in a paper, six doubloons of gold
and some small bars or wedges of gold; I suppose they might all weigh near a pound.
The other chest I found had some clothes in it, but of little value; but by the
circumstances it must have belonged to the gunner’s mate, though there was no powder in
it, but about two pound of fine glazed powder, in three small flasks, kept, I suppose, for
charging their fowling pieces on occasion. Upon the whole, I got very little by this voyage
that was of any use to me; for as to the money, I had no manner of occasion for it. ’Twas
to me as the dirt under my feet; and I would have given it all for three or four pair of
English shoes and stockings, which were things I greatly wanted but had not had on my
feet now for many years. I had, indeed, gotten two pair of shoes now, which I took off of
the feet of the two drowned men whom I saw in the wreck; and I found two pair more in
one of the chests, which were very welcome to me; but they were not like our English
shoes, either for ease or service, being rather what we call pumps than shoes. I found in
this seaman’s chest about fifty pieces of eight in royals but no gold; I suppose this
belonged to a poorer man than the other, which seemed to belong to some officer.
Well, however, I lugged this money home to my cave and laid it up, as I had done that
before which I brought from our own ship; but it was great pity, as I said, that the other
part of this ship had not come to my share, for I am satisfied I might have loaded my
canoe several times over with money, which, if I had ever escaped to England, would have
lain here safe enough till I might have come again and fetched it.
Having now brought all my things on shore and secured them, I went back to my boat
and rowed or paddled her along the shore to her old harbour, where I laid her up, and
made the best of my way to my old habitation, where I found everything safe and quiet; so
I began to repose myself, live after my old fashion, and take care of my family affairs;
and, for a while, I lived easy enough; only that I was more vigilant than I used to be,
looked out oftener, and did not go abroad so much; and if at any time I did stir with any
freedom, it was always to the east part of the island, where I was pretty well satisfied the
savages never came, and where I could go without so many precautions and such a load of
arms and ammunition as I always carried with me if I went the other way.
 I Hear the First Sound of a Man’s Voice
I LIVED in this condition near two years more; but my unlucky head, that was always to
let me know it was born to make my body miserable, was all this two years filled with
projects and designs how, if it were possible, I might get away from this island; for
sometimes I was for making another voyage to the wreck, though my reason told me that
there was nothing left there worth the hazard of my voyage, sometimes for a ramble one
way, sometimes another; and I believe verily, if I had had the boat that I went from Sallee
in, I should have ventured to sea, bound anywhere, I knew not whither.
I had been in all my circumstances a memento to those who are touched with the
general plague of mankind, whence, for aught I know, one half of their miseries flow; I
mean, that of not being satisfied with the station wherein God and Nature hath placed
them; for not to look back upon my primitive condition, and the excellent advice of my
father, the opposition to which was, as I may call it, my original sin, my subsequent
mistakes of the same kind had been the means of my coming into this miserable condition;
for had that Providence, which so happily had seated me at Brazil as a planter, blessed me
with confined desires, and I could have been contented to have gone on gradually, I might
have been by this time, I mean in the time of my being in this island, one of the most
considerable planters in Brazil; nay, I am persuaded, that by the improvements I had made
in that little time I lived there and the increase I should probably have made if I had
stayed, I might have been worth a hundred thousand moidores; and what business had I to
leave a settled fortune, a well-stocked plantation, improving and increasing, to turn
supercargo to Guinea, to fetch Negroes, when patience and time would have so increased
our stock at home that we could have bought them at our own door from those whose
business it was to fetch them? And though it had cost us something more, yet the
difference of that price was by no means worth saving at so great a hazard.
But as this is ordinarily the fate of young heads, so reflection upon the folly of it is as
ordinarily the exercise of more years, or of the dear-bought experience of time; and so it
was with me now; and yet so deep had the mistake taken root in my temper that I could
not satisfy myself in my station, but was continually poring upon the means and
possibility of my escape from this place; and that I may with the greater pleasure to the
reader bring on the remaining part of my story, it may not be improper to give some
account of my first conceptions on the subject of this foolish scheme for my escape; and
how, and upon what foundation, I acted.
I am now to be supposed retired into my castle, after my late voyage to the wreck, my
frigate laid up and secured under water as usual, and my condition restored to what it was
before. I had more wealth, indeed, than I had before, but was not at all the richer; for I had
no more use for it than the Indians of Peru had before the Spaniards came there.
It was one of the nights in the rainy season in March, the four and twentieth year of my
first setting foot in this island of solitariness. I was lying in my bed, or hammock, awake,
very well in health, had no pain, no distemper, no uneasiness of body, no, nor any
uneasiness of mind, more than ordinary; but could by no means close my eyes; that is, so
as to sleep; no, not a wink all night long, otherwise than as follows:
 It is as impossible as needless to set down the innumerable crowd of thoughts that
whirled through that great thoroughfare of the brain, the memory, in this night’s time. I ran
over the whole history of my life in miniature, or by abridgment, as I may call it, to my
coming to this island; and also of the part of my life since I came to this island. In my
reflections upon the state of my case since I came on shore on this island, I was comparing
the happy posture of my affairs in the first years of my habitation here, compared to the
life of anxiety, fear, and care, which I had lived ever since I had seen the print of a foot in
the sand; not that I did not believe the savages had frequented the island even all the
while, and might have been several hundreds of them at times on shore there; but I had
never known it, and was incapable of any apprehensions about it; my satisfaction was
perfect, though my danger was the same; and I was as happy in not knowing my danger as
if I had never really been exposed to it. This furnished my thoughts with many very
profitable reflections, and particularly this one, how infinitely good that Providence is
which has provided in its government of mankind such narrow bounds to his sight and
knowledge of things; and though he walks in the midst of so many thousand dangers, the
sight of which, if discovered to him, would distract his mind and sink his spirits, he is kept
serene and calm by having the events of things hid from his eyes, and knowing nothing of
the dangers which surround him.
After these thoughts had for some time entertained me, I came to reflect seriously upon
the real danger I had been in for so many years in this very island; and how I had walked
about in the greatest security and with all possible tranquillity, even when perhaps nothing
but a brow of a hill, a great tree, or the casual approach of night, had been between me and
the worst kind of destruction, viz., that of falling into the hands of cannibals and savages,
who would have seized on me with the same view as I did of a goat or a turtle; and have
thought it no more a crime to kill and devour me than I did of a pigeon or a curlew. I
should injustly slander myself if I should say I was not sincerely thankful to my great
Preserver, to whose singular protection I acknowledged, with great humility, that all these
unknown deliverances were due; and without which I must inevitably have fallen into
their merciless hands.
When these thoughts were over, my head was for some time taken up in considering the
nature of these wretched creatures, I mean the savages; and how it came to pass in the
world that the wise Governor of all things should give up any of His creatures to such
inhumanity; nay, to something so much below even brutality itself as to devour its own
kind; but as this ended in some (at that time fruitless) speculations, it occurred to me to
inquire what part of the world these wretches lived in; how far off the coast was from
whence they came; what they ventured over so far from home for; what kind of boats they
had; and why I might not order myself and my business so that I might be as able to go
over thither as they were to come to me.
I never so much as troubled myself to consider what I should do with myself when I
came thither; what would become of me, if I fell into the hands of the savages; or how I
should escape from them, if they attempted me; no, nor so much as how it was possible for
me to reach the coast and not be attempted by some or other of them, without any
possibility of delivering myself; and if I should not fall into their hands, what I should do
for provision, or whither I should bend my course; none of these thoughts, I say, so much
as came in my way; but my mind was wholly bent upon the notion of my passing over in
my boat to the mainland. I looked back upon my present condition as the most miserable
that could possibly be; that I was not able to throw myself into anything but death that
could be called worse; that if I reached the shore of the main, I might perhaps meet with
relief, or I might coast along, as I did on the shore of Africa, till I came to some inhabited
country, and where I might find some relief; and after all, perhaps I might fall in with
some Christian ship that might take me in; and if the worse came to the worst, I could but
die, which would put an end to all these miseries at once. Pray note, all this was the fruit
of a disturbed mind, an impatient temper, made, as it were, desperate by the long
continuance of my troubles and the disappointments I had met in the wreck I had been on
board of, and where I had been so near the obtaining what I so earnestly longed for, viz.,
somebody to speak to and to learn some knowledge from of the place where I was and of
the probable means of my deliverance; I say, I was agitated wholly by these thoughts. All
my calm of mind in my resignation to Providence, and waiting the issue of the
dispositions of Heaven, seemed to be suspended; and I had, as it were, no power to turn
my thoughts to anything but to the project of a voyage to the main, which came upon me
with such force and such an impetuosity of desire that it was not to be resisted.
When this had agitated my thoughts for two hours or more, with such violence that it set
my very blood into a ferment, and my pulse beat as high as if I had been in a fever merely
with the extraordinary fervour of my mind about it; nature, as if I had been fatigued and
exhausted with the very thought of it, threw me into a sound sleep. One would have
thought I should have dreamed of it; but I did not, nor of anything relating to it; but I
dreamed that as I was going out in the morning as usual from my castle, I saw upon the
shore two canoes and eleven savages coming to land, and that they brought with them
another savage, whom they were going to kill, in order to eat him; when on a sudden, the
savage that they were going to kill jumped away, and ran for his life; and I thought in my
sleep that he came running into my little thick grove, before my fortification, to hide
himself; and that I, seeing him alone and not perceiving that the other sought him that
way, showed myself to him, and smiling upon him, encouraged him; that he kneeled down
to me, seeming to pray me to assist him; upon which I showed my ladder, made him go
up, and carried him into my cave, and he became my servant; and that as soon as I had
gotten this man, I said to myself, ‘‘Now I may certainly venture to the mainland; for this
fellow will serve me as a pilot, and will tell me what to do, and whither to go for
provisions; and whither not to go for fear of being devoured; what places to venture into,
and what to escape.’’ I waked with this thought, and was under such inexpressible
impressions of joy at the prospect of my escape in my dream that the disappointments
which I felt upon coming to myself and finding it was no more than a dream were equally
extravagant the other way, and threw me into a very great dejection of spirit.
Upon this, however, I made this conclusion, that my only way to go about an attempt
for an escape was, if possible, to get a savage into my possession; and, if possible, it
should be one of their prisoners, whom they had condemned to be eaten and should bring
hither to kill; but these thoughts still were attended with this difficulty, that it was
impossible to effect this without attacking a whole caravan of them and killing them all;
and this was not only a very desperate attempt, and might miscarry, but on the other hand,
I had greatly scrupled the law-fulness of it to me, and my heart trembled at the thoughts of
shedding so much blood, though it was for my deliverance. I need not repeat the
arguments which occurred to me against this, they being the same mentioned before. But
though I had other reasons to offer now, viz., that those men were enemies to my life and
would devour me if they could, that it was self-preservation in the highest degree to
deliver myself from this death of a life, and was acting in my own defence as much as if
they were actually assaulting me, and the like. I say, though these things argued for it, yet
the thoughts of shedding human blood for my deliverance were very terrible to me, and
such as I could by no means reconcile myself to a great while.
However, at last, after many secret disputes with myself and after great perplexities
about it (for all these arguments, one way and another, struggled in my head a long time),
the eager prevailing desire of deliverance at length mastered all the rest, and I resolved, if
possible, to get one of those savages into my hands, cost what it would. My next thing
then was to contrive how to do it; and this indeed was very difficult to resolve on. But as I
could pitch upon no probable means for it, so I resolved to put myself upon the watch, to
see them when they came on shore, and leave the rest to the event, taking such measures
as the opportunity should present, let be what would be.
With these resolutions in my thoughts, I set myself upon the scout, as often as possible,
and indeed so often till I was heartily tired of it; for it was above a year and half that I
waited, and for great part of that time went out to the west end and to the southwest corner
of the island almost every day, to see for canoes, but none appeared. This was very
discouraging, and began to trouble me much; though I cannot say that it did in this case as
it had done some time before that, viz., wear off the edge of my desire to the thing; but the
longer it seemed to be delayed, the more eager I was for it; in a word, I was not at first so
careful to shun the sight of these savages and avoid being seen by them as I was now
eager to be upon them.
Besides, I fancied myself able to manage one, nay, two or three savages, if I had them,
so as to make them entirely slaves to me, to do whatever I should direct them, and to
prevent their being able at any time to do me any hurt. It was a great while that I pleased
myself with this affair, but nothing still presented; all my fancies and schemes came to
nothing, for no savages came near me for a great while.
About a year and a half after I had entertained these notions and, by long musing, had as
it were resolved them all into nothing, for want of an occasion to put them in execution, I
was surprised one morning early with seeing no less than five canoes all on shore together
on my side of the island; and the people who belonged to them all landed, and out of my
sight. The number of them broke all my measures; for seeing so many and knowing that
they always came four, or six, or sometimes more, in a boat, I could not tell what to think
of it, or how to take my measures, to attack twenty or thirty men singlehanded; so I lay
still in my castle, perplexed and discomforted. However, I put myself into all the same
postures for an attack that I had formerly provided, and was just ready for action if
anything had presented; having waited a good while, listening to hear if they made any
noise, at length being very impatient, I set my guns at the foot of my ladder and clambered
up to the top of the hill by my two stages as usual, standing so, however, that my head did
not appear above the hill, so that they could not perceive me by any means; here I
observed, by the help of my perspective-glass, that they were no less than thirty in
number, that they had a fire kindled, that they had had meat dressed. How they had cooked
it, that I knew not, or what it was; but they were all dancing in I know not how many
barbarous gestures and figures, their own way, round the fire.
While I was thus looking on them, I perceived by my perspective two miserable
wretches dragged from the boats, where, it seems, they were laid by, and were now
brought out for the slaughter. I perceived one of them immediately fell, being knocked
down, I suppose, with a club or wooden sword, for that was their way, and two or three
others were at work immediately, cutting him open for their cookery, while the other
victim was left standing by himself, till they should be ready for him. In that very moment,
this poor wretch seeing himself a little at liberty, Nature inspired him with hopes of life,
and he started away from them, and ran with incredible swiftness along the sands directly
towards me, I mean towards that part of the coast where my habitation was.
I was dreadfully frighted (that I must acknowledge) when I perceived him to run my
way; and especially, when, as I thought, I saw him pursued by the whole body; and now I
expected that part of my dream was coming to pass, and that he would certainly take
shelter in my grove; but I could not depend by any means upon my dream for the rest of it,
viz., that the other savages would not pursue him thither, and find him there. However, I
kept my station, and my spirits began to recover when I found that there was not above
three men that followed him; and still more was I encouraged when I found that he
outstripped them exceedingly in running and gained ground of them; so that if he could
but hold it for half an hour, I saw easily he would fairly get away from them all.
There was between them and my castle the creek which I mentioned often at the first
part of my story, when I landed my cargoes out of the ship; and this I saw plainly he must
necessarily swim over, or the poor wretch would be taken there. But when the savage
escaping came thither, he made nothing of it, though the tide was then up; but plunging in,
swam through in about thirty strokes or thereabouts, landed, and ran on with exceeding
strength and swiftness; when the three persons came to the creek, I found that two of them
could swim, but the third could not, and that standing on the other side, he looked at the
other, but went no farther; and soon after went softly back again, which, as it happened,
was very well for him in the main.
I observed that the two who swam were yet more than twice as long swimming over the
creek as the fellow was that fled from them. It came now very warmly upon my thoughts,
and indeed irresistibly, that now was my time to get me a servant, and perhaps a
companion, or assistant; and that I was called plainly by Providence to save this poor
creature’s life; I immediately ran down the ladders with all possible expedition, fetched
my two guns, for they were both but at the foot of the ladders, as I observed above; and
getting up again, with the same haste, to the top of the hill, I crossed towards the sea; and
having a very short cut, and all down hill, clapped myself in the way between the pursuers
and the pursued, holloing aloud to him that fled, who, looking back, was at first perhaps as
much frighted at me as at them; but I beckoned with my hand to him to come back, and in
the meantime I slowly advanced towards the two that followed; then rushing at once upon
the foremost, I knocked him down with the stock of my piece; I was loath to fire, because
I would not have the rest hear; though at that distance, it would not have been easily
heard; and being out of sight of the smoke too, they would not have easily known what to
make of it. Having knocked this fellow down, the other who pursued him stopped, as if he
had been frighted; and I advanced apace towards him; but as I came nearer, I perceived
presently he had a bow and arrow, and was fitting it to shoot at me; so I was then
necessitated to shoot at him first; which I did, and killed him at the first shoot. The poor
savage who fled, but had stopped, though he saw both his enemies fallen and killed, as he
thought, yet was so frighted with the fire and noise of my piece, that he stood stock still
and neither came forward or went backward, though he seemed rather inclined to fly still
than to come on; I holloed again to him, and made signs to come forward, which he easily
understood, and came a little way, then stopped again, and then a little farther, and stopped
again; and I could then perceive that he stood trembling, as if he had been taken prisoner,
and had just been to be killed, as his two enemies were; I beckoned him again to come to
me, and gave him all the signs of encouragement that I could think of; and he came nearer
and nearer, kneeling down every ten or twelve steps in token of acknowledgement for my
saving his life; I smiled at him and looked pleasantly and beckoned to him to come still
nearer; at length he came close to me, and then he kneeled down again, kissed the ground,
and laid his head upon the ground, and taking me by the foot, set my foot upon his head:
this, it seems, was in token of swearing to be my slave forever. I took him up, and made
much of him, and encouraged him all I could. But there was more work to do yet, for I
perceived the savage whom I knocked down was not killed, but stunned with the blow,
and began to come to himself; so I pointed to him, and showing him the savage, that he
was not dead; upon this he spoke some words to me, and though I could not understand
them, yet I thought they were pleasant to hear, for they were the first sound of a man’s
voice that I had heard, my own excepted, for above twenty-five years. But there was no
time for such reflections now; the savage who was knocked down recovered himself so far
as to sit up upon the ground, and I perceived that my savage began to be afraid; but when I
saw that, I presented my other piece at the man as if I would shoot him; upon this my
savage, for so I call him now, made a motion to me to lend him my sword, which hung
naked in a belt by my side; so I did. He no sooner had it, but he runs to his enemy, and at
one blow cut off his head as cleverly, no executioner in Germany could have done it
sooner or better; which I thought very strange for one who I had reason to believe never
saw a sword in his life before, except their own wooden swords; however, it seems, as I
learned afterwards, they make their wooden swords so sharp, so heavy, and the wood is so
hard, that they will cut off heads even with them, ay, and arms, and that at one blow too.
When he had done this, he comes laughing to me in sign of triumph and brought me the
sword again, and with abundance of gestures which I did not understand, laid it down,
with the head of the savage that he had killed, just before me.
 But that which astonished him most was to know how I had killed the other Indian so
far off; so pointing to him, he made signs to me to let him go to him; so I bade him go, as
well as I could; when he came to him, he stood like one amazed, looking at him, turned
him first on one side, then on t’ other, looked at the wound the bullet had made, which, it
seems, was just in his breast, where it had made a hole, and no great quantity of blood had
followed, but he had bled inwardly, for he was quite dead. He took up his bow and arrows,
and came back; so I turned to go away and beckoned to him to follow me, making signs to
him that more might come after them.
Upon this he signed to me that he should bury them with sand, that they might not be
seen by the rest if they followed; and so I made signs again to him to do so; he fell to
work, and in an instant he had scraped a hole in the sand with his hands big enough to
bury the first in, and then dragged him into it and covered him and did so also by the
other; I believe he had buried them both in a quarter of an hour; then calling him away, I
carried him, not to my castle, but quite away to my cave, on the farther part of the island;
so I did not let my dream come to pass in that part, viz., that he came into my grove for
shelter.
Here I gave him bread and a bunch of raisins to eat, and a draught of water, which I
found he was indeed in great distress for, by his running; and having refreshed him, I
made signs for him to go lie down and sleep, pointing to a place where I had laid a great
parcel of rice straw, and a blanket upon it, which I used to sleep upon myself sometimes;
so the poor creature lay down and went to sleep.
 I Call Him Friday
HE WAS a comely, handsome fellow, perfectly well made, with straight strong limbs, not
too large, tall and well-shaped, and, as I reckon, about twenty-six years of age. He had a
very good countenance, not a fierce and surly aspect, but seemed to have something very
manly in his face, and yet he had all the sweetness and softness of an European in his
countenance too, especially when he smiled. His hair was long and black, not curled like
wool; his forehead very high and large; and a great vivacity and sparkling sharpness in his
eyes. The colour of his skin was not quite black, but very tawny; and yet not of an ugly
yellow, nauseous tawny, as the Brazilians and Virginians, and other natives of America
are; but of a bright kind of a dun olive colour that had in it something very agreeable,
though not very easy to describe. His face was round and plump; his nose small, not flat
like the Negroes’, a very good mouth, thin lips, and his fine teeth well set, and white as
ivory. After he had slumbered, rather than slept, about half an hour, he waked again, and
comes out of the cave to me, for I had been milking my goats, which I had in the enclosure
just by. When he espied me, he came running to me, laying himself down again upon the
ground, with all the possible signs of an humble, thankful disposition, making a many
antic gestures to show it. At last he lays his head flat upon the ground, close to my foot,
and sets my other foot upon his head, as he had done before; and after this, made all the
signs to me of subjection, servitude, and submission imaginable, to let me know how he
would serve me as long as he lived; I understood him in many things and let him know I
was very well pleased with him; in a little time I began to speak to him and teach him to
speak to me; and first, I made him know his name should be Friday, which was the day I
saved his life; I called him so for the memory of the time; I likewise taught him to say
‘‘Master,’’ and then let him know that was to be my name; I likewise taught him to say
‘‘yes’’ and ‘‘no’’ and to know the meaning of them; I gave him some milk in an earthen
pot and let him see me drink it before him and sop my bread in it; and I gave him a cake of
bread to do the like, which he quickly complied with, and made signs that it was very
good for him.
I kept there with him all that night, but as soon as it was day, I beckoned to him to come
with me, and let him know I would give him some clothes, at which he seemed very glad,
for he was stark naked. As we went by the place where he had buried the two men, he
pointed exactly to the place, and showed me the marks that he had made to find them
again, making signs to me that we should dig them up again and eat them; at this I
appeared very angry, expressed my abhorrence of it, made as if I would vomit at the
thoughts of it, and beckoned with my hand to him to come away, which he did
immediately, with great submission. I then led him up to the top of the hill, to see if his
enemies were gone; and pulling out my glass, I looked, and saw plainly the place where
they had been, but no appearance of them or of their canoes; so that it was plain they were
gone, and had left their two comrades behind them, without any search after them.
But I was not content with this discovery, but having now more courage, and
consequently more curiosity, I took my man Friday with me, giving him the sword in his
hand, with the bow and arrows at his back, which I found he could use very dexterously,
making him carry one gun for me, and I two for myself, and away we marched to the
place where these creatures had been; for I had a mind now to get some fuller intelligence
of them. When I came to the place, my very blood ran chill in my veins, and my heart
sunk within me at the horror of the spectacle. Indeed, it was a dreadful sight, at least it was
so to me, though Friday made nothing of it. The place was covered with human bones, the
ground dyed with their blood, great pieces of flesh left here and there, half eaten, mangled
and scorched; and in short, all the tokens of the triumphant feast they had been making
there, after a victory over their enemies. I saw three skulls, five hands, and the bones of
three or four legs and feet, and abundance of other parts of the bodies; and Friday, by his
signs, made me understand that they brought over four prisoners to feast upon; that three
of them were eaten up, and that he, pointing to himself, was the fourth; that there had been
a great battle between them and their next king, whose subjects it seems he had been one
of; and that they had taken a great number of prisoners, all which were carried to several
places by those that had taken them in the fight, in order to feast upon them, as was done
here by these wretches upon those they brought hither.
I caused Friday to gather all the skulls, bones, flesh, and whatever remained, and lay
them together on a heap, and make a great fire upon it and burn them all to ashes. I found
Friday had still a hankering stomach after some of the flesh, and was still a cannibal in his
nature; but I discovered7 so much abhorrence at the very thoughts of it, and at the least
appearance of it, that he durst not discover it; for I had, by some means, let him know that
I would kill him if he offered it.
When we had done this, we came back to our castle, and there I fell to work for my man
Friday; and first of all I gave him a pair of linen drawers, which I had out of the poor
gunner’s chest I mentioned, and which I found in the wreck; and which, with a little
alteration, fitted him very well; then I made him a jerkin of goat’s skin, as well as my skill
would allow; and I was now grown a tolerable good tailor; and I gave him a cap, which I
had made of a hare-skin, very convenient and fashionable enough; and thus he was
clothed, for the present, tolerably well, and was mighty well pleased to see himself almost
as well clothed as his master. It istrue, he went awkwardly in these things at first; wearing
the drawers was very awkward to him, and the sleeves of the waistcoat galled his
shoulders and the inside of his arms; but a little easing them, where he complained they
hurt him, and using himself to them, at length he took to them very well.
The next day after I came home to my hutch with him, I began to consider where I
should lodge him; and that I might do well for him, and yet be perfectly easy myself, I
made a little tent for him in the vacant place between my two fortifications, in the inside
of the last and in the outside of the first. And as there was a door or entrance there into my
cave, I made a formal framed door-case, and a door to it of boards, and set it up in the
passage, a little within the entrance; and causing the door to open on the inside, I barred it
up in the night, taking in my ladders too; so that Friday could no way come at me in the
inside of my innermost wall without making so much noise in getting over that it must
needs waken me; for my first wall had now a complete roof over it of long poles, covering
all my tent and leaning up to the side of the hill, which was again laid across with smaller
sticks instead of laths, and then thatched over a great thickness with the rice straw, which
was strong like reeds; and at the hole or place which was left to go in or out by the ladder I
had placed a kind of trapdoor, which, if it had been attempted on the outside, would not
have opened at all, but would have fallen down and made a great noise; and as to
weapons, I took them all into my side every night.
But I needed none of all this precaution; for never man had a more faithful, loving,
sincere servant than Friday was to me; without passions, sullenness, or designs, perfectly
obliged and engaged; his very affections were tied to me, like those of a child to a father;
and I dare say he would have sacrificed his life for the saving mine upon any occasion
whatsoever; the many testimonies he gave me of this put it out of doubt and soon
convinced me that I needed to use no precautions as to my safety on his account.
This frequently gave me occasion to observe, and that with wonder, that however it had
pleased God, in His providence, and in the government of the works of His hands, to take
from so great a part of the world of His creatures the best uses to which their faculties and
the powers of their souls are adapted; yet that He has bestowed upon them the same
powers, the same reason, the same affections, the same sentiments of kindness and
obligation, the same passions and resentments of wrongs, the same sense of gratitude,
sincerity, fidelity, and all the capacities of doing good and receiving good that He has
given to us; and that when He pleases to offer to them occasions of exerting these, they are
as ready, nay, more ready to apply them to the right uses for which they were bestowed
than we are. And this made me very melancholy sometimes, in reflecting, as the several
occasions presented, how mean a use we make of all these, even though we have these
powers enlightened by the great lamp of instruction, the Spirit of God, and by the
knowledge of His Word, added to our understanding; and why it has pleased God to hide
the like saving knowledge from so many millions of souls, who (if I might judge by this
poor savage) would make a much better use of it than we did.
From hence I sometimes was led too far to invade the sovereignty of Providence and, as
it were, arraign the justice of so arbitrary a disposition of things that should hide that light
from some and reveal it to others, and yet expect a like duty from both. But I shut it up
and checked my thoughts with this conclusion, first, that we did not know by what light
and law these should be condemned; but that, as God was necessarily, and by the nature of
His being, infinitely holy and just, so it could not be but that if these creatures were all
sentenced to absence from Himself, it was on account of sinning against that light which,
as the Scripture says, was a law to themselves, and by such rules as their consciences
would acknowledge to be just, though the foundation was not discovered to us. And
secondly, that still, as we are all the clay in the hand of the Potter, no vessel could say to
Him, ‘‘Why hast Thou formed me thus?’’
But to return to my new companion: I was greatly delighted with him, and made it my
business to teach him everything that was proper to make him useful, handy, and helpful;
but especially to make him speak and understand me when I spoke; and he was the aptest
scholar that ever was, and particularly was so merry, so constantly diligent, and so pleased
when he could but understand me or make me understand him, that it was very pleasant to
me to talk to him; and now my life began to be so easy that I began to say to myself that
could I but have been safe from more savages, I cared not if I was never to remove from
the place while I lived.
After I had been two or three days returned to my castle, I thought that, in order to bring
Friday off from his horrid way of feeding and from the relish of a cannibal’s stomach, I
ought to let him taste other flesh; so I took him out with me one morning to the woods. I
went, indeed, intending to kill a kid out of my own flock and bring it home and dress it.
But as I was going, I saw a she-goat lying down in the shade, and two young kids sitting
by her; I caught hold of Friday. ‘‘Hold,’’ says I, ‘‘stand still’’; and made signs to him not to
stir; immediately I presented my piece, shot and killed one of the kids. The poor creature,
who had at a distance, indeed, seen me kill the savage, his enemy, but did not know or
could imagine how it was done, was sensibly surprised, trembled and shook, and looked
so amazed that I thought he would have sunk down. He did not see the kid I had shot at, or
perceive I had killed it, but ripped up his waistcoat to feel if he was not wounded, and, as I
found presently, thought I was resolved to kill him; for he came and kneeled down to me
and, embracing my knees, said a great many things I did not understand; but I could easily
see that the meaning was to pray me not to kill him.
I soon found a way to convince him that I would do him no harm and, taking him up by
the hand, laughed at him and, pointing to the kid which I had killed, beckoned to him to
run and fetch it, which he did; and while he was wondering and looking to see how the
creature was killed, I loaded my gun again, and by and by I saw a great fowl, like a hawk,
sit upon a tree within shot; so, to let Friday understand a little what I would do, I called
him to me again, pointing at the fowl, which was indeed a parrot, though I thought it had
been a hawk; I say, pointing to the parrot, and to my gun, and to the ground under the
parrot, to let him see I would make it fall, I made him understand that I would shoot and
kill that bird; accordingly I fired and bade him look, and immediately he saw the parrot
fall; he stood like one frighted again, notwithstanding all I had said to him; and I found he
was the more amazed because he did not see me put anything into the gun; but thought
that there must be some wonderful fund of death and destruction in that thing, able to kill
man, beast, bird, or anything near or far off; and the astonishment this created in him was
such as could not wear off for a long time; and I believe, if I would have let him, he would
have worshipped me and my gun. As for the gun itself, he would not so much as touch it
for several days after; but would speak to it, and talk to it as if it had answered him, when
he was by himself; which, as I afterwards learned of him, was to desire it not to kill him.
Well, after his astonishment was a little over at this, I pointed to him to run and fetch the
bird I had shot, which he did, but stayed some time; for the parrot, not being quite dead,
was fluttered away a good way off from the place where she fell; however, he found her,
took her up, and brought her to me; and as I had perceived his ignorance about the gun
before, I took this advantage to charge the gun again, and not let him see me do it, that I
might be ready for any other mark that might present; but nothing more offered at that
time; so I brought home the kid, and the same evening I took the skin off and cut it out as
well as I could; and having a pot for that purpose, I boiled, or stewed, some of the flesh,
and made some very good broth; and after I had begun to eat some, I gave some to my
man, who seemed very glad of it, and liked it very well; but that which was strangest to
him was to see me eat salt with it; he made a sign to me that the salt was not good to eat,
and putting a little into his own mouth, he seemed to nauseate it, and would spit and
sputter at it, washing his mouth with fresh water after it; on the other hand, I took some
meat in my mouth without salt, and I pretended to spit and sputter for want of salt, as fast
as he had done at the salt; but it would not do, he would never care for salt with his meat,
or in his broth; at least, not a great while, and then but a very little.
Having thus fed him with boiled meat and broth, I was resolved to feast him the next
day with roasting a piece of the kid; this I did by hanging it before the fire in a string, as I
had seen many people do in England, setting two poles up, one on each side the fire, and
one across on the top, and tying the string to the cross stick, letting the meat turn
continually. This Friday admired very much; but when he came to taste the flesh, he took
so many ways to tell me how well he liked it that I could not but understand him; and at
last he told me he would never eat man’s flesh any more, which I was very glad to hear.
The next day I set him to work to beating some corn out, and sifting it in the manner I
used to do, as I observed before; and he soon understood how to do it as well as I,
especially after he had seen what the meaning of it was, and that it was to make bread of;
for after that I let him see me make my bread, and bake it too, and in a little time Friday
was able to do all the work for me, as well as I could do it myself.
I began now to consider that, having two mouths to feed instead of one, I must provide
more ground for my harvest and plant a larger quantity of corn than I used to do; so I
marked out a larger piece of land, and began the fence in the same manner as before, in
which Friday not only worked very willingly and very hard, but did it very cheerfully; and
I told him what it was for, that it was for corn to make more bread, because he was now
with me, and that I might have enough for him and myself too. He appeared very sensible
of that part, and let me know that he thought I had much more labour upon me on his
account than I had for myself; and that he would work the harder for me, if I would tell
him what to do.
 We Make Another Canoe
THIS was the pleasantest year of all the life I led in this place; Friday began to talk pretty
well, and understand the names of almost everything I had occasion to call for, and of
every place I had to send him to, and talk a great deal to me; so that, in short, I began now
to have some use for my tongue again, which indeed I had very little occasion for before;
that is to say, about speech. Besides the pleasure of talking to him, I had a singular
satisfaction in the fellow himself; his simple, unfeigned honesty appeared to me more and
more every day, and I began really to love the creature; and on his side, I believe he loved
me more than it was possible for him ever to love anything before.
I had a mind once to try if he had any hankering inclination to his own country again,
and having learned him English so well that he could answer me almost any questions, I
asked him whether the nation that he belonged to never conquered in battle. At which he
smiled, and said, ‘‘Yes, yes, we always fight the better’’; that is, he meant, always get the
better in fight; and so we began the following discourse: ‘‘You always fight the better,’’
said I; ‘‘how came you to be taken prisoner then, Friday?’’
FRIDAY: My nation beat much, for all that.
MASTER: How beat? If your nation beat them, how came you to be taken?
FRIDAY: They more many than my nation in the place where me was; they take one,
two, three, and me; my nation overbeat them in the yonder place, where me no was; there
my nation take one, two, great thousand.
MASTER: But why did not your side recover you from the hands of your enemies then?
FRIDAY: They run one, two, three, and me, and make go in the canoe; my nation have
no canoe that time.
MASTER: Well, Friday, and what does your nation do with the men they take? Do they
carry them away, and eat them, as these did?
FRIDAY: Yes, my nation eat mans too, eat all up.
MASTER: Where do they carry them?
FRIDAY: Go to other place, where they think.
MASTER: Do they come hither?
FRIDAY: Yes, yes, they come hither; come other else place.
MASTER: Have you been here with them?
FRIDAY: Yes, I been here. [Points to the northwest side of the island, which, it seems,
was their side.]
By this I understood that my man Friday had formerly been among the savages who
used to come on shore on the farther part of the island, on the said man-eating occasions
that he was now brought for; and some time after, when I took the courage to carry him to
that side, being the same I formerly mentioned, he presently knew the place and told me
he was there once when they ate up twenty men, two women, and one child; he could not
tell twenty in English, but he numbered them by laying so many stones in a row and
pointing to me to tell them over.
I have told this passage because it introduces what follows; that after I had had this
discourse with him, I asked him how far it was from our island to the shore, and whether
the canoes were not often lost; he told me there was no danger, no canoes ever lost; but
that after a little way out to the sea, there was a current, and a wind, always one way in the
morning, the other in the afternoon.
This I understood to be no more than the sets of the tide, as going out or coming in; but
I afterwards understood it was occasioned by the great draft and reflux of the mighty river
Orinoco, in the mouth, or the gulf, of which river, as I found afterwards, our island lay;
and this land which I perceived to the west and northwest was the great island Trinidad, on
the north point of the mouth of the river. I asked Friday a thousand questions about the
country, the inhabitants, the sea, the coast, and what nations were near; he told me all he
knew, with the greatest openness imaginable; I asked him the names of the several nations
of his sort of people, but could get no other name than Caribs; from whence I easily
understood that these were the Caribbees, which our maps place on the part of America
which reaches from the mouth of the river Orinoco to Guiana, and onwards to Santa
Marta. He told me that up a great way beyond the moon, that was, beyond the setting of
the moon, which must be west from their country, there dwelt white bearded men, like me,
and pointed to my great whiskers, which I mentioned before; and they had killed ‘‘much
mans,’’ that was his word; by all which I understood he meant the Spaniards, whose
cruelties in America had been spread over the whole countries and were remembered by
all the nations from father to son.
I inquired if he could tell me how I might come from this island and get among those
white men; he told me, ‘‘Yes, yes, I might go in two canoe’’; I could not understand what
he meant, or make him describe to me what he meant by ‘‘two canoe,’’ till at last, with
great difficulty, I found he meant it must be in a large great boat, as big as two canoes.
This part of Friday’s discourse began to relish with me very well; and from this time I
entertained some hopes that one time or other I might find an opportunity to make my
escape from this place and that this poor savage might be a means to help me to do it.
During the long time that Friday had now been with me, and that he began to speak to
me and understand me, I was not wanting8 to lay a foundation of religious knowledge in
his mind; particularly, I asked him one time, who made him. The poor creature did not
understand me at all, but thought I had asked who was his father; but I took it by another
handle, and asked him who made the sea, the ground we walked on, and thehills and
woods; he told me it was one old Benamuckee, that lived beyond all. He could describe
nothing of this great person but that he was very old; much older, he said, than the sea or
the land, than the moon or the stars. I asked him then, if this old person had made all
things, why did not all things worship him? He looked very grave, and with a perfect look
of innocence, said All things said O! to him. I asked him if the people who die in his
country went away anywhere; he said yes, they all went to Benamuckee; then I asked him
whether these they eat up went thither too. He said yes.
From these things I began to instruct him in the knowledge of the true God. I told him
that the great Maker of all things lived up there, pointing up towards Heaven. That He
governs the world by the same Power and Providence by which He made it. That He was
omnipotent, could do everything for us, give everything to us, take everything from us;
and thus by degrees I opened his eyes. He listened with great attention, and received with
pleasure the notion of Jesus Christ being sent to redeem us, and of the manner of making
our prayers to God, and His being able to hear us, even into Heaven; he told me one day
that if our God could hear us up beyond the sun, He must needs be a greater God than
their Benamuckee, who lived but a little way off, and yet could not hear till they went up
to the great mountains where he dwelt, to speak to him; I asked him if he ever went thither
to speak to him; he said no; they never went that were young men; none went thither but
the old men, whom he called their Oowokakee, that is, as I made him explain it to me,
their religious, or clergy, and that they went to say O (so he called saying prayers) , and
then came back and told them what Benamuckee said. By this I observed that there is
priestcraft even amongst the most blinded, ignorant pagans in the world, and the policy of
making a secret religion, in order to preserve the veneration of the people to the clergy, is
not only to be found in the Roman, but perhaps among all religions in the world, even
among the most brutish and barbarous savages.
I endeavoured to clear up this fraud to my man Friday, and told him that the pretence of
their old men going up the mountains to say O to their god Benamuckee was a cheat, and
their bringing word from thence what he said was much more so; that if they met with any
answer, or spoke with anyone there, it must be with an evil spirit. And then I entered into a
long discourse with him about the Devil, the original of him, his rebellion against God, his
enmity to man, the reason of it, his setting himself up in the dark parts of the world to be
worshipped instead of God, and as God; and the many stratagems he made use of to
delude mankind to their ruin; how he had a secret access to our passions and to our
affections, to adapt his snares so to our inclinations as to cause us even to be our own
tempters and to run upon our destruction by our own choice.
I found it was not easy to imprint right notions in his mind about the Devil, as it was
about the being of a God. Nature assisted all my arguments to evidence to him even the
necessity of a great First Cause and overruling, governing Power, a secret directing
Providence, and of the equity and justice of paying homage to Him that made us, and the
like. But there appeared nothing of all this in the notion of an evil spirit, of his original, his
being, his nature, and above all, of his inclination to do evil, and to draw us in to do so
too; and the poor creature puzzled me once in such a manner, by a question merely natural
and innocent, that I scarce knew what to say to him. I had been talking a great deal to him
of the power of God, His omnipotence, His dreadful aversion to sin, His being a
consuming fire to the workers of iniquity; how, as He had made us all, He could destroy us
and all the world in a moment; and he listened with great seriousness to me all the while.
After this, I had been telling him how the Devil was God’s enemy in the hearts of men,
and used all his malice and skill to defeat the good designs of Providence, and to ruin the
kingdom of Christ in the world, and the like. ‘‘Well,’’ says Friday, ‘‘but you say God is so
strong, so great; is He not much strong, much might as the Devil?’’ ‘‘Yes, yes,’’ says I,
‘‘Friday, God is stronger than the Devil, God is above the Devil, and therefore we pray to
God to tread him down under our feet, and enable us to resist his temptations and quench
his fiery darts.’’ ‘‘But,’’ says he again, ‘‘if God much strong, much might as the Devil, why
God no kill the Devil, so make him no more do wicked?’’
I was strangely surprised at his question, and after all, though I was now an old man, yet
I was but a young doctor, and ill enough qualified for a casuist, or a solver of difficulties.
And at first I could not tell what to say; so I pretended not to hear him, and asked him
what he said. But he was too earnest for an answer to forget his question; so that he
repeated it in the very same broken words as above. By this time I had recovered myself a
little, and I said, ‘‘God will at last punish him severely, he is reserved for the judgment,
and is to be cast into the bottomless pit, to dwell with everlasting fire.’’ This did not satisfy
Friday, but he returns upon me, repeating my words, ‘‘ ‘Reserve at last,’ me no understand;
but why not kill the Devil now, not kill great ago?’’ ‘‘You may as well ask me,’’ said I,
‘‘why God does not kill you and I, when we do wicked things here that offend Him. We
are preserved to repent and be pardoned.’’ He muses awhile at this. ‘‘Well, well,’’ says he,
mighty affectionately, ‘‘that well; so you, I, Devil, all wicked, all preserve, repent, God
pardon all.’’ Here I was run down again by him to the last degree, and it was a testimony
to me how the mere notions of nature, though they will guide reasonable creatures to the
knowledge of a God, and of a worship or homage due to the supreme being of God, as the
consequence of our nature; yet nothing but Divine revelation can form the knowledge of
Jesus Christ, and of a redemption purchased for us, of a Mediator of the new covenant,
and of an Intercessor at the footstool of God’s throne; I say, nothing but a revelation from
Heaven can form these in the soul; and that therefore the Gospel of our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ, I mean, the Word of God and the Spirit of God, promised for the guide and
sanctifier of His people, are the absolutely necessary instructors of the souls of men, in the
saving knowledge of God, and the means of salvation.
I therefore diverted the present discourse between me and my man, rising up hastily, as
upon some sudden occasion of going out; then sending him for something a good way off,
I seriously prayed to God that He would enable me to instruct savingly this poor savage,
assisting by His Spirit the heart of the poor ignorant creature to receive the light of the
knowledge of God in Christ, reconciling him to Himself, and would guide me to speak so
to him from the Word of God as his conscience might be convinced, his eyes opened, and
his soul saved. When he came again to me, I entered into a long discourse with him upon
the subject of the redemption of man by the Saviour of the world, and of the doctrine of
the Gospel preached from Heaven, viz., of repentance towards God, and faith in our
blessed Lord Jesus. I then explained to him, as well as I could, why our blessed Redeemer
took not on Him the nature of angels but the seed of Abraham, and how for that reason the
fallen angels had no share in the redemption; that He came only to the lost sheep of the
House of Israel, and the like.
I had, God knows, more sincerity than knowledge in all the methods I took for this poor
creature’s instruction, and must acknowledge what I believe all that act upon the same
principle will find, that in laying things open to him, I really informed and instructed
myself in many things that either I did not know or had not fully considered before, but
which occurred naturally to my mind upon my searching into them for the information of
this poor savage; and I had more affection in my inquiry after things upon this occasion
than ever I felt before; so that whether this poor wild wretch was the better for me or no, I
had great reason to be thankful that ever he came to me. My grief sat lighter upon me, my
habitation grew comfortable to me beyond measure; and when I reflected that in this
solitary life which I had been confined to, I had not only been moved myself to look up to
Heaven and to seek to the Hand that had brought me there, but was now to be made an
instrument under Providence to save the life and, for aught I knew, the soul of a poor
savage, and bring him to the true knowledge of religion, and of the Christian doctrine, that
he might know Christ Jesus, to know whom is life eternal; I say, when I reflected upon all
these things, a secret joy ran through every part of my soul, and I frequently rejoiced that
ever I was brought to this place, which I had so often thought the most dreadful of all
afflictions that could possibly have befallen me.
In this thankful frame I continued all the remainder of my time, and the conversation
which employed the hours between Friday and I was such as made the three years which
we lived there together perfectly and completely happy, if any such thing as complete
happiness can be formed in a sublunary state. The savage was now a good Christian, a
much better than I; though I have reason to hope, and bless God for it, that we were
equally penitent, and comforted, restored penitents; we had here the Word of God to read
and no farther off from His Spirit to instruct than if we had been in England.
I always applied myself to reading the Scripture to let him know, as well as I could, the
meaning of what I read; and he again, by his serious inquiries and questions, made me, as
I said before, a much better scholar in the Scripture knowledge than I should ever have
been by my own private mere reading. Another thing I cannot refrain from observing here
also, from experience in this retired part of my life, viz., how infinite and inexpressible a
blessing it is that the knowledge of God and of the doctrine of salvation by Christ Jesus is
so plainly laid down in the Word of God, so easy to be received and understood, that as the
bare reading the Scripture made me capable of understanding enough of my duty to carry
me directly on to the great work of sincere repentance for my sins, and laying hold of a
Saviour for life and salvation, to a stated reformation in practice, and obedience to all
God’s commands, and this without any teacher or instructor (I mean, human), so the same
plain instruction sufficiently served to the enlightening this savage creature and bringing
him to be such a Christian as I have known few equal to him in my life.
As to all the disputes, wranglings, strife, and contention which has happened in the
world about religion, whether niceties in doctrines, or schemes of church government,
they were all perfectly useless to us; as, for aught I can yet see, they have been to all the
rest in the world. We had the sure guide to Heaven, viz., the Word of God; and we had,
blessed be God, comfortable views of the Spirit of God, teaching and instructing us by His
Word, leading us into all truth, and making us both willing and obedient to the instruction
of His Word; and I cannot see the least use that the greatest knowledge of the disputed
points in religion, which have made such confusions in the world, would have been to us,
if we could have obtained it; but I must go on with the historical part of things, and take
every part in its order.
After Friday and I became more intimately acquainted, and that he could understand
almost all I said to him and speak fluently, though in broken English, to me, I acquainted
him with my own story, or at least so much of it as related to my coming into the place,
how I had lived there, and how long. I let him into the mystery, for such it was to him, of
gunpowder and bullet, and taught him how to shoot. I gave him a knife, which he was
wonderfully delighted with, and I made him a belt, with a frog hanging to it, such as in
England we wear hangers in; and in the frog, instead of a hanger, I gave him a hatchet,
which was not only as good a weapon, in some cases, but much more useful upon other
occasions.
I described to him the country of Europe, and particularly England, which I came from;
how we lived, how we worshipped God, how we behaved to one another; and how we
traded in ships to all parts of the world. I gave him an account of the wreck which I had
been on board of, and showed him as near as I could the place where she lay; but she was
all beaten in pieces before, and gone.
I showed him the ruins of our boat, which we lost when we escaped, and which I could
not stir with my whole strength then, but was now fallen almost all to pieces. Upon seeing
this boat, Friday stood musing a great while, and said nothing; I asked him what it was he
studied upon; at last says he, ‘‘Me see such boat like come to place at my nation.’’
I did not understand him a good while; but at last, when I had examined further into it, I
understood by him that a boat, such as that had been, came on shore upon the country
where he lived; that is, as he explained it, was driven thither by stress of weather. I
presently imagined that some European ship must have been cast away upon their coast,
and the boat might get loose and drive ashore; but was so dull that I never once thought of
men making escape from a wreck thither, much less whence they might come; so I only
inquired after a description of the boat.
Friday described the boat to me well enough, but brought me better to understand him
when he added with some warmth, ‘‘We save the white mans from drown.’’ Then I
presently asked him if there were any white mans, as he called them, in the boat. ‘‘Yes,’’
he said, ‘‘the boat full of white mans.’’ I asked him how many; he told upon his fingers
seventeen. I asked him then what became of them; he told me, ‘‘They live, they dwell at
my nation.’’
This put new thoughts into my head; for I presently imagined that these might be the
men belonging to the ship that was cast away in sight of my island, as I now call it; and
who, after the ship was struck on the rock and they saw her inevitably lost, had saved
themselves in their boat and were landed upon that wild shore among the savages.
Upon this I inquired of him more critically what was become of them. He assured me
they lived still there; that they had been there about four years; that the savages let them
alone, and gave them victuals to live. I asked him how it came to pass they did not kill
them and eat them. He said, ‘‘No, they make brother with them’’; that is, as I understood
him, a truce. And then he added, ‘‘They no eat mans but when make the war fight’’; that is
to say, they never eat any men but such as come to fight with them and are taken in battle.
It was after this some considerable time that being on the top of the hill, at the east side
of the island, from whence, as I have said, I had in a clear day discovered the main, or
continent of America, Friday, the weather being very serene, looks very earnestly towards
the mainland, and in a kind of surprise falls a-jumping and dancing, and calls out to me,
for I was at some distance from him. I asked him what was the matter. “O joy!’’ says he,
“O glad! There see my country, there my nation!’’
I observed an extraordinary sense of pleasure appeared in his face, and his eyes
sparkled, and his countenance discovered a strange eagerness, as if he had a mind to be in
his own country again; and this observation of mine put a great many thoughts into me,
which made me at first not so easy about my new man Friday as I was before; and I made
no doubt but that if Friday could get back to his own nation again, he would not only
forget all his religion but all his obligation to me; and would be forward enough to give his
countrymen an account of me, and come back, perhaps with a hundred or two of them, and
make a feast upon me, at which he might be as merry as he used to be with those of his
enemies, when they were taken in war.
But I wronged the poor honest creature very much, for which I was very sorry
afterwards. However, as my jealousy increased, and held me some weeks, I was a little
more circumspect, and not so familiar and kind to him as before; in which I was certainly
in the wrong too, the honest grateful creature having no thought about it but what
consisted with the best principles, both as a religious Christian and as a grateful friend, as
appeared afterwards to my full satisfaction.
While my jealousy of him lasted, you may be sure I was every day pumping him to see
if he would discover any of the new thoughts which I suspected were in him; but I found
everything he said was so honest and so innocent that I could find nothing to nourish my
suspicion; and in spite of all my uneasiness he made me at last entirely his own again; nor
did he in the least perceive that I was uneasy, and therefore I could not suspect him of
deceit.
One day, walking up the same hill, but the weather being hazy at sea so that we could
not see the continent, I called to him, and said, ‘‘Friday, do not you wish yourself in your
own country, your own nation?’’ ‘‘Yes,’’ he said, ‘‘I be much O glad to be at my nation.’’
‘‘What would you do there?’’ said I. ‘‘Would you turn wild again, eat men’s flesh again,
and be a savage as you were before?’’ He looked full of concern, and shaking his head,
said, ‘‘No, no, Friday tell them to live good, tell them to pray God, tell them to eat corn
bread, cattle flesh, milk, no eat man again.’’ ‘‘Why then,’’ said I to him, ‘‘they will kill
you.’’ He looked grave at that, and then said, ‘‘No, they no kill me, they willing love
learn.’’ He meant by this, they would be willing to learn. He added, they learned much of
the bearded mans that come in the boat. Then I asked him if he would go back to them. He
smiled at that and told me he could not swim so far. I told him I would make a canoe for
him. He told me he would go, if I would go with him. ‘‘I go!’’ says I. ‘‘Why, they will eat
me if I come there.’’ ‘‘No, no,’’ says he, ‘‘me make they no eat you; me make they much
love you.’’ He meant he would tell them how I had killed his enemies and saved his life,
and so he would make them love me; then he told me as well as he could how kind they
were to seventeen white men, or bearded men, as he called them, who came on shore there
in distress.
From this time, I confess, I had a mind to venture over, and see if I could possibly join
with these bearded men, who, I made no doubt, were Spaniards or Portuguese; not
doubting but, if I could, we might find some method to escape from thence, being upon
the continent, and a good company together, better than I could from an island forty miles
off the shore, and alone without help. So after some days I took Friday to work again, by
way of discourse, and told him I would give him a boat to go back to his own nation; and
accordingly I carried him to my frigate, which lay on the other side of the island, and
having cleared it of water, for I always kept it sunk in the water, I brought it out, showed it
him, and we both went into it.
I found he was a most dexterous fellow at managing it, would make it go almost as
swift and fast again as I could; so when he was in, I said to him, ‘‘Well, now, Friday, shall
we go to your nation?’’ He looked very dull at my saying so, which, it seems, was because
he thought the boat too small to go so far. I told him then I had a bigger; so the next day I
went to the place where the first boat lay which I had made, but which I could not get into
the water. He said that was big enough; but then, as I had taken no care of it, and it had
lain two or three and twenty years there, the sun had split and dried it, that it was in a
manner rotten. Friday told me such a boat would do very well and would carry ‘‘much
talking.
Upon the whole, I was by this time so fixed upon my design of going over with him to
the continent, that I told him we would go and make one as big as that, and he should go
home in it. He answered not one word, but looked very grave and sad. I asked him what
was the matter with him; he asked me again thus, ‘‘Why you angry mad with Friday, what
me done?’’ I asked him what he meant; I told him I was not angry with him at all. ‘‘No
angry! no angry!’’ says he, repeating the words several times, ‘‘Why send Friday home
away to my nation? ’’ ‘‘Why,’’ says I, ‘‘Friday, did you not say you wished you were
there?’’ ‘‘Yes, yes,’’ says he, ‘‘wish be both there, no wish Friday there, no Master there.’’
In a word, he would not think of going there without me. ‘‘I go there, Friday!’’ says I.
‘‘What shall I do there?’’ He turned very quick upon me at this: ‘‘You do great deal much
good,’’ says he, ‘‘you teach wild mans be good sober tame mans; you tell them know God,
pray God, and live new life.’’ ‘‘Alas, Friday,’’ says I, ‘‘thou knowest not what thou sayest.
I am but an ignorant man myself.’’ ‘‘Yes, yes,’’ says he, ‘‘you teachee me good, you
teachee them good.’’ ‘‘No, no, Friday,’’ says I, ‘‘you shall go without me, leave me here to
live by myself, as I did before.’’ He looked confused again at that word, and running to
one of the hatchets which he used to wear, he takes it up hastily, and gives it to me. ‘‘What
must I do with this?’’ says I to him. ‘‘You take kill Friday,’’ says he. ‘‘What must I kill you
for?’’ said I again. He returns very quick, ‘‘What you send Friday away for? Take kill
Friday, no send Friday away.’’ This he spoke so earnestly that I saw tears stand in his eyes.
In a word, I so plainly discovered the utmost affection in him to me, and a firm resolution
in him, that I told him then, and often after, that I would never send him away from me, if
he was willing to stay with me.
Upon the whole, as I found by all his discourse a settled affection to me, and that
nothing should part him from me, so I found all the foundation of his desire to go to his
own country was laid in his ardent affection to the people, and his hopes of my doing them
good; a thing, which as I had no notion of myself, so I had not the least thought or
intention or desire of undertaking it. But still I found a strong inclination to my attempting
an escape, as above, founded on the supposition gathered from the discourse, viz., that
there were seventeen bearded men there; and therefore, without any more delay, I went to
work with Friday to find out a great tree proper to fell, and make a large piragua or canoe
to undertake the voyage. There were trees enough in the island to have built a little fleet,
not of piraguas and canoes, but even of good large vessels. But the main thing I looked at
was to get one so near the water that we might launch it when it was made, to avoid the
mistake I committed at first.
At last, Friday pitched upon a tree, for I found he knew much better than I what kind of
wood was fittest for it; nor can I tell, to this day, what wood to call the tree we cut down,
except that it was very like the tree we call fustic, or between that and the Nicaragua
wood, for it was much of the same colour and smell. Friday was for burning the hollow or
cavity of this tree out, to make it for a boat. But I showed him how rather to cut it out with
tools, which after I showed him how to use, he did very handily; and in about a month’s
hard labour, we finished it and made it very handsome, especially when with our axes,
which I showed him how to handle, we cut and hewed the outside into the true shape of a
boat; after this, however, it cost us near a fortnight’s time to get her along, as it were, inch
by inch, upon great rollers into the water. But when she was in, she would have carried
twenty men with great ease.
When she was in the water, and though she was so big, it amazed me to see with what
dexterity and how swift my man Friday would manage her, turn her, and paddle her along;
so I asked him if he would, and if we might venture over in her. ‘‘Yes,’’ he said, ‘‘he
venture over in her very well, though great blow wind.’’ However, I had a further design
that he knew nothing of, and that was to make a mast and sail, and to fit her with an
anchor and cable. As to a mast, that was easy enough to get; so I pitched upon a straight
young cedar tree, which I found near the place, and which there was great plenty of in the
island; and I set Friday to work to cut it down, and gave him directions how to shape and
order it. But as to the sail, that was my particular care; I knew I had old sails, or rather
pieces of old sails, enough; but as I had had them now twenty-six years by me and had not
been very careful to preserve them, not imagining that I should ever have this kind of use
for them, I did not doubt but they were all rotten; and indeed most of them were so;
however, I found two pieces which appeared pretty good, and with these I went to work,
and with a great deal of pains, and awkward tedious stitching (you may be sure) for want
of needles, I at length made a three-cornered ugly thing, like what we call in England a
shoulder-of-mutton sail, to go with a boom at bottom, and a little short sprit at the top,
such as usually our ships’ longboats sail with, and such as I best knew how to manage;
because it was such a one as I had to the boat in which I made my escape from Barbary, as
related in the first part of my story.
 I was near two months performing this last work, viz., rigging and fitting my mast and
sails; for I finished them very complete, making a small stay, and a sail, or foresail to it, to
assist, if we should turn to windward; and which was more than all, I fixed a rudder to the
stern of her, to steer with; and though I was but a bungling ship-wright, yet as I knew the
usefulness and even necessity of such a thing, I applied myself with so much pains to do it
that at last I brought it to pass, though considering the many dull contrivances I had for it
that failed, I think it cost me almost as much labour as making the boat.
After all this was done too, I had my man Friday to teach as to what belonged to the
navigation of my boat; for though he knew very well how to paddle a canoe, he knew
nothing what belonged to a sail and a rudder, and was the most amazed when he saw me
work the boat to and again in the sea by the rudder, and how the sail jibed, and filled this
way or that way, as the course we sailed changed; I say, when he saw this, he stood like
one astonished and amazed. However, with a little use I made all these things familiar to
him; and he became an expert sailor, except that as to the compass, I could make him
understand very little of that. On the other hand, as there was very little cloudy weather,
and seldom or never any fogs in those parts, there was the less occasion for a compass,
seeing the stars were always to be seen by night and the shore by day, except in the rainy
seasons, and then nobody cared to stir abroad, either by land or sea.
I was now entered on the seven and twentieth year of my captivity in this place; though
the three last years that I had this creature with me ought rather to be left out of the
account, my habitation being quite of another kind than in all the rest of the time. I kept
the anniversary of my landing here with the same thankfulness to God for His mercies as
at first; and if I had such cause of acknowledgement at first, I had much more so now,
having such additional testimonies of the care of Providence over me, and the great hopes
I had of being effectually and speedily delivered; for I had an invincible impression upon
my thoughts that my deliverance was at hand, and that I should not be another year in this
place. However, I went on with my husbandry, digging, planting, fencing, as usual; I
gathered and cured my grapes, and did every necessary thing, as before.
The rainy season was in the meantime upon me, when I kept more within doors than at
other times; so I had stowed our new vessel as secure as we could, bringing her up into the
creek, where, as I said in the beginning, I landed my rafts from the ship and, hauling her
up to the shore, at high-water mark, I made my man Friday dig a little dock, just big
enough to hold her, and just deep enough to give her water enough to float in; and then
when the tide was out, we made a strong dam across the end of it, to keep the water out;
and so she lay dry, as to the tide, from the sea; and to keep the rain off, we laid a great
many boughs of trees so thick that she was as well thatched as a house; and thus we
waited for the months of November and December, in which I designed to make my
adventure.
 We March Out Against the Cannibals
WHEN the settled season began to come in, as the thought of my design returned with the
fair weather, I was preparing daily for the voyage; and the first thing I did was to lay by a
certain quantity of provisions, being the stores for our voyage; and intended, in a week or
a fortnight’s time, to open the dock and launch out our boat. I was busy one morning upon
something of this kind, when I called to Friday, and bade him go to the seashore and see if
he could find a turtle, or tortoise, a thing which we generally got once a week, for the sake
of the eggs as well as the flesh. Friday had not been long gone when he came running back
and flew over my outer wall, or fence, like one that felt not the ground, or the steps he set
his feet on; and before I had time to speak to him, he cries out to me, “O Master! O
Master! O sorrow! O bad!’’ ‘‘What’s the matter, Friday?’’ says I. “O yonder, there,’’ says
he, ‘‘one, two, three canoe! one, two, three!’’ By his way of speaking, I concluded there
were six; but on inquiry I found it was but three. ‘‘Well, Friday,’’ says I, ‘‘do not be
frighted’’; so I heartened him up as well as I could. However, I saw the poor fellow was
most terribly scared; for nothing ran in his head but that they were come to look for him,
and would cut him in pieces and eat him; and the poor fellow trembled so, that I scarce
knew what to do with him. I comforted him as well as I could, and told him I was in as
much danger as he, and that they would eat me as well as him; ‘‘But,’’ says I, ‘‘Friday, we
must resolve to fight them; can you fight, Friday?’’ ‘‘Me shoot,’’ says he, ‘‘but there come
many great number.’’ ‘‘No matter for that,’’ said I again, ‘‘our guns will fright them that
we do not kill’’; so I asked him, whether if I resolved to defend him, he would defend me,
and stand by me, and do just as I bade him. He said, ‘‘Me die when you bid die, Master’’;
so I went and fetched a good dram of rum, and gave him; for I had been so good a
husband of my rum, that I had a great deal left. When he had drunk it, I made him take the
two fowling pieces, which we always carried, and load them with large swan-shot, as big
as small pistol bullets; then I took four muskets, and loaded them with two slugs and five
small bullets each; and my two pistols I loaded with a brace of bullets each. I hung my
great sword, as usual, naked by my side, and gave Friday his hatchet.
When I had thus prepared myself, I took my perspective -glass and went up to the side
of the hill, to see what I could discover; and I found quickly, by my glass, that there were
one-and-twenty savages, three prisoners, and three canoes; and that their whole business
seemed to be the triumphant banquet upon these three human bodies (a barbarous feast
indeed), but nothing else more than, as I had observed, was usual with them.
I observed also that they were landed, not where they had done when Friday made his
escape, but nearer to my creek, where the shore was low, and where a thick wood came
close almost down to the sea. This, with the abhorrence of the inhuman errand these
wretches came about, filled me with such indignation that I came down again to Friday
and told him I was resolved to go down to them, and kill them all; and asked him if he
would stand by me. He was now gotten over his fright, and his spirits being a little raised
with the dram I had given him, he was very cheerful, and told me, as before, he would die
when I bade die.
In this fit of fury, I took first and divided the arms which I had charged, as before,
between us; I gave Friday one pistol to stick in his girdle, and three guns upon his
shoulder; and I took one pistol, and the other three myself; and in this posture we marched
out. I took a small bottle of rum in my pocket and gave Friday a large bag with more
powder and bullet; and as to orders, I charged him to keep close behind me, and not to stir,
or shoot, or do anything, till I bade him; and in the meantime not to speak a word. In this
posture I fetched a compass to my right hand of near a mile, as well to get over the creek,
as to get into the wood; so that I might come within shot of them before I should be
discovered, which I had seen by my glass it was easy to do.
While I was making this march, my former thoughts returning, I began to abate my
resolution; I do not mean that I entertained any fear of their number; for as they were
naked, unarmed wretches, ’tis certain I was superior to them; nay, though I had been
alone; but it occurred to my thoughts what call, what occasion, much less what necessity, I
was in to go and dip my hands in blood, to attack people who had neither done or intended
me any wrong; who, as to me, were innocent and whose barbarous customs were their
own disaster, being in them a token indeed of God’s having left them, with the other
nations of that part of the world, to such stupidity and to such inhuman courses; but did
not call me to take upon me to be a judge of their actions, much less an executioneer of
His Justice; that whenever He thought fit, He would take the cause into His own hands,
and by national vengeance punish them as a people for national crimes; but that, in the
meantime, it was none of my business; that it was true, Friday might justify it, because he
was a declared enemy, and in a state of war with those very particular people; and it was
lawful for him to attack them; but I could not say the same with respect to me. These
things were so warmly pressed upon my thoughts all the way as I went that I resolved I
would only go and place myself near them, that I might observe their barbarous feast and
that I would act then as God should direct; but that unless something offered that was
more a call to me than yet I knew of, I would not meddle with them.
With this resolution I entered the wood, and, with all possible wariness and silence
(Friday following close at my heels) I marched till I came to the skirt of the wood, on the
side which was next to them; only that one corner of the wood lay between me and them;
here I called softly to Friday, and showing him a great tree, which was just at the corner of
the wood, I bade him go to the tree, and bring me word if he could see there plainly what
they were doing; he did so, and came immediately back to me and told me they might be
plainly viewed there; that they were all about their fire, eating the flesh of one of their
prisoners; and that another lay bound upon the sand, a little from them, which he said they
would kill next; and which fired all the very soul within me. He told me it was not one of
their nation, but one of the bearded men, whom he had told me of, that came to their
country in the boat. I was filled with horror at the very naming the white bearded man,
and, going to the tree, I saw plainly by my glass a white man who lay upon the beach of
the sea, with his hands and his feet tied with flags, or things like rushes, and that he was a
European and had clothes on.
There was another tree, and a little thicket beyond it, about fifty yards nearer to them
than the place where I was, which, by going a little way about, I saw I might come at
undiscovered, and that then I should be within half shot of them; so I withheld my passion,
though I was indeed enraged to the highest degree, and going back about twenty paces, I
got behind some bushes, which held all the way, till I came to the other tree; and then I
came to the little rising ground, which gave me a full view of them, at the distance of
about eighty yards.
I had now not a moment to lose; for nineteen of the dreadful wretches sat upon the
ground, all close huddled together, and had just sent the other two to butcher the poor
Christian and bring him, perhaps limb by limb, to their fire, and they were stooped down
to untie the bands at his feet. I turned to Friday. ‘‘Now, Friday,’’ said I, ‘‘do as I bid thee.’’
Friday said he would. ‘‘Then, Friday, ’’ says I, ‘‘do exactly as you see me do; fail in
nothing. ’’ So I set down one of the muskets and the fowling piece upon the ground, and
Friday did the like by his; and with the other musket I took my aim at the savages, bidding
him do the like; then asking him if he was ready, he said, ‘‘Yes.’’ ‘‘Then fire at them,’’ said
I; and the same moment I fired also.
Friday took his aim so much better than I that on the side that he shot he killed two of
them and wounded three more; and on my side, I killed one and wounded two. They were,
you may be sure, in a dreadful consternation; and all of them who were not hurt jumped
up upon their feet, but did not immediately know which way to run or which way to look;
for they knew not from whence their destruction came. Friday kept his eyes close upon
me, that, as I had bade him, he might observe what I did; so, as soon as the first shot was
made, I threw down the piece, and took up the fowling piece, and Friday did the like; he
sees me cock and present; he did the same again. ‘‘Are you ready, Friday?’’ said I. ‘‘Yes,’’
says he. ‘‘Let fly, then,’’ says I, ‘‘in the name of God!’’ and with that I fired again among
the amazed wretches, and so did Friday; and as our pieces were now loaden with what I
called swan-shot, or small pistol bullets, we found only two drop; but so many were
wounded that they ran about yelling and screaming like mad creatures, all bloody, and
miserably wounded most of them; whereof three more fell quickly after, though not quite
dead.
‘‘Now, Friday,’’ says I, laying down the discharged pieces and taking up the musket,
which was yet loaden, ‘‘follow me,’’ says I, which he did, with a great deal of courage;
upon which I rushed out of the wood and showed myself, and Friday close at my foot; as
soon as I perceived they saw me, I shouted as loud as I could and bade Friday do so too;
and running as fast as I could, which, by the way, was not very fast, being loaden with
arms as I was, I made directly towards the poor victim, who was, as I said, lying upon the
beach, or shore, between the place where they sat and the sea; the two butchers, who were
just going to work with him, had left him at the surprise of our first fire and fled in a
terrible fright to the seaside and had jumped into a canoe, and three more of the rest made
the same way; I turned to Friday and bade him step forwards and fire at them. He
understood me immediately, and running about forty yards to be near them, he shot at
them, and I thought he had killed them all, for I saw them all fall of a heap into the boat;
though I saw two of them up again quickly. However, he killed two of them and wounded
the third, so that he lay down in the bottom of the boat, as if he had been dead.
While my man Friday fired at them, I pulled out my knife and cut the flags that bound
the poor victim; and, loosing his hands and feet, I lifted him up and asked him in the
Portuguese tongue what he was. He answered in Latin, ‘‘Christianus’’; but was so weak
and faint that he could scarce stand or speak; I took my bottle out of my pocket and gave it
him, making signs that he should drink, which he did; and I gave him a piece of bread,
which he ate; then I asked him what countryman he was. And he said ‘‘Espagniole’’; and
being a little recovered, let me know by all the signs he could possibly make how much he
was in my debt for his deliverance. ‘‘Seignior,’’ said I, with as much Spanish as I could
make up, ‘‘we will talk afterwards, but we must fight now; if you have any strength left,
take this pistol and sword and lay about you.’’ He took them very thankfully, and no
sooner had he the arms in his hands, but as if they had put new vigour into him, he flew
upon his murderers like a fury, and had cut two of them in pieces in an instant; for the
truth is, as the whole was a surprise to them, so the poor creatures were so much frighted
with the noise of our pieces that they fell down for mere amazement and fear and had no
more power to attempt their own escape than their flesh had to resist our shot; and that
was the case of those five that Friday shot at in the boat; for as three of them fell with the
hurt they received, so the other two fell with the fright.
I kept my piece in my hand still, without firing, being willing to keep my charge ready,
because I had given the Spaniard my pistol and sword; so I called to Friday and bade him
run up to the tree from whence we first fired, and fetch the arms which lay there that had
been discharged, which he did with great swiftness; and then giving him my musket, I sat
down myself to load all the rest again, and bade them come to me when they wanted.
While I was loading these pieces, there happened a fierce engagement between the
Spaniard and one of the savages, who made at him with one of their great wooden swords,
the same weapon that was to have killed him before, if I had not prevented it. The
Spaniard, who was as bold and as brave as could be imagined, though weak, had fought
this Indian a good while, and had cut him two great wounds on his head; but the savage
being a stout lusty fellow, closing in with him, had thrown him down, being faint, and was
wringing my sword out of his hand, when the Spaniard, though undermost, wisely quitting
the sword, drew the pistol from his girdle, shot the savage through the body, and killed
him upon the spot, before I, who was running to help him, could come near him.
Friday, being now left to his liberty, pursued the flying wretches with no weapon in his
hand but his hatchet; and with that he dispatched those three, who, as I said before, were
wounded at first and fallen, and all the rest he could come up with; and the Spaniard
coming to me for a gun, I gave him one of the fowling pieces, with which he pursued two
of the savages, and wounded them both; but as he was not able to run, they both got from
him into the wood, where Friday pursued them and killed one of them; but the other was
too nimble for him and though he was wounded, yet had plunged himself into the sea, and
swam with all his might off to those two who were left in the canoe, which three in the
canoe, with one wounded, who we know not whether he died or no, were all that escaped
our hands of one-and-twenty. The account of the rest is as follows:
 Those that were in the canoe worked hard to get out of gunshot; and though Friday
made two or three shot at them, I did not find that he hit any of them. Friday would fain
have had me take one of their canoes and pursue them; and indeed I was very anxious
about their escape, lest, carrying the news home to their people, they should come back
perhaps with two or three hundred of their canoes and devour us by mere multitude; so I
consented to pursue them by sea, and running to one of their canoes, I jumped in and bade
Friday follow me; but when I was in the canoe, I was surprised to find another poor
creature lie there alive, bound hand and foot, as the Spaniard was, for the slaughter, and
almost dead with fear, not knowing what the matter was; for he had not been able to look
up over the side of the boat, he was tied so hard, neck and heels, and had been tied so long
that he had really but little life in him.
I immediately cut the twisted flags, or rushes, which they had bound him with, and
would have helped him up; but he could not stand or speak, but groaned most piteously,
believing, it seems, still that he was only unbound in order to be killed.
When Friday came to him, I bade him speak to him and tell him of his deliverance, and
pulling out my bottle, made him give the poor wretch a dram, which, with the news of his
being delivered, revived him, and he sat up in the boat; but when Friday came to hear him
speak, and looked in his face, it would have moved anyone to tears, to have seen how
Friday kissed him, embraced him, hugged him, cried, laughed, holloed, jumped about,
danced, sang, then cried again, wrung his hands, beat his own face and head, and then
sang and jumped about again, like a distracted creature. It was a good while before I could
make him speak to me, or tell me what was the matter; but when he came a little to
himself he told me that it was his father.
It is not easy for me to express how it moved me to see what ecstasy and filial affection
had worked in this poor savage, at the sight of his father and of his being delivered from
death; nor indeed can I describe half the extravagances of his affection after this; for he
went into the boat and out of the boat a great many times. When he went in to him, he
would sit down by him, open his breast, and hold his father’s head close to his bosom, half
an hour together, to nourish it; then he took his arms and ankles, which were numbed and
stiff with the binding, and chafed and rubbed them with his hands; and I, perceiving what
the case was, gave him some rum out of my bottle to rub them with, which did them a
great deal of good. with the other savages, who were now gotten almost out of sight; and it
was happy for us that we did not; for it blew so hard within two hours after, and before
they could be gotten a quarter of their way, and continued blowing so hard all night, and
that from the northwest, which was against them, that I could not suppose their boat could
live, or that they ever reached to their own coast.
But to return to Friday; he was so busy about his father that I could not find in my heart
to take him off for some time. But after I thought he could leave him a little, I called him
to me, and he came jumping and laughing, and pleased to the highest extreme; then I
asked him if he had given his father any bread. He shook his head and said, ‘‘None; ugly
dog eat all up self.’’ So I gave him a cake of bread out of a little pouch I carried on
purpose; I also gave him a dram for himself, but he would not taste it but carried it to his
father. I had in my pocket also two or three bunches of my raisins, so I gave him a handful
of them for his father. He had no sooner given his father these raisins but I saw him come
out of the boat and run away, as if he had been bewitched, he ran at such a rate; for he was
the swiftest fellow of his foot that ever I saw; I say, he ran at such a rate that he was out of
sight, as it were, in an instant; and though I called, and holloed, too, after him, it was all
one, away he went, and in a quarter of an hour I saw him come back again, though not so
fast as he went; and as he came nearer, I found his pace was slacker because he had
something in his hand.
When he came up to me, I found he had been quite home for an earthen jug or pot to
bring his father some fresh water, and that he had got two more cakes or loaves of bread.
The bread he gave me, but the water he carried to his father. However, as I was very
thirsty too, I took a little sup of it. This water revived his father more than all the rum or
spirits I had given him, for he was just fainting with thirst.
When his father had drunk, I called to him to know if there was any water left; he said
‘‘Yes’’; and I bade him give it to the poor Spaniard, who was in as much want of it as his
father; and I sent one of the cakes that Friday brought to the Spaniard too, who was indeed
very weak, and was reposing himself upon a green place under the shade of a tree, and
whose limbs were also very stiff, and very much swelled with the rude bandage he had
been tied with. When I saw that, upon Friday’s coming to him with the water, he sat up
and drank, and took the bread and began to eat, I went to him and gave him a handful of
raisins; he looked up in my face with all the tokens of gratitude and thankfulness that
could appear in any countenance, but was so weak, notwithstanding he had so exerted
himself in the fight that he could not stand up upon his feet; he tried to do it two or three
times, but was really not able, his ankles were so swelled and so painful to him; so I bade
him sit still, and caused Friday to rub his ankles and bathe them with rum, as he had done
his father’s.
I observed the poor affectionate creature, every two minutes or perhaps less, all the
while he was here, turned his head about to see if his father was in the same place and
posture as he left him sitting; and at last he found he was not to be seen; at which he
started up, and without speaking a word, flew with that swiftness to him, that one could
scarce perceive his feet to touch the ground as he went. But when he came, he only found
he had laid himself down to ease his limbs; so Friday came back to me presently, and I
then spoke to the Spaniard to let Friday help him up if he could and lead him to the boat,
and then he should carry him to our dwelling, where I would take care of him. But Friday,
a lusty strong fellow, took the Spaniard quite up upon his back and carried him away to
the boat and set him down softly upon the side, or gunnel, of the canoe, with his feet in the
inside of it, and then lifted him quite in and set him close to his father, and presently
stepping out again, launched the boat off, and paddled it along the shore faster than I could
walk, though the wind blew pretty hard too; so he brought them both safe into our creek;
and leaving them in the boat, runs away to fetch the other canoe. As he passed me, I spoke
to him, and asked him whither he went; he told me, ‘‘Go fetch more boat’’; so away he
went, like the wind; for sure never man or horse ran like him, and he had the other canoe
in the creek almost as soon as I got to it by land; so he wafted me over, and then went to
help our new guests out of the boat, which he did; but they were neither of them able to
walk; so that poor Friday knew not what to do.
To remedy this, I went to work in my thought, and calling to Friday to bid them sit
down on the bank while he came to me, I soon made a kind of hand-barrow to lay them
on, and Friday and I carried them up both together upon it between us. But when we got
them to the outside of our wall, or fortification, we were at a worse loss than before; for it
was impossible to get them over, and I was resolved not to break it down. So I set to work
again; and Friday and I, in about two hours’ time, made a very handsome tent, covered
with old sails, and above that with boughs of trees, being in the space without our outward
fence, and between that and the grove of young wood which I had planted. And here we
made them two beds of such things as I had, viz., of good rice straw, with blankets laid
upon it to lie on, and another to cover them, on each bed.
My island was now peopled, and I thought myself very rich in subjects; and it was a
merry reflection, which I frequently made, how like a king I looked. First of all, the whole
country was my own mere property, so that I had an undoubted right of dominion.
Secondly, my people were perfectly subjected. I was absolute lord and lawgiver; they all
owed their lives to me, and were ready to lay down their lives, if there had been occasion
of it, for me. It was remarkable, too, we had but three subjects, and they were of three
different religions. My man Friday was a Protestant, his father was a pagan and a cannibal,
and the Spaniard was a Papist. However, I allowed liberty of conscience throughout my
dominions. But this is by the way.
 We Plan a Voyage to the Colonies of America
AS SOON as I had secured my two weak rescued prisoners, and given them shelter and a
place to rest them upon, I began to think of making some provision for them. And the first
thing I did, I ordered Friday to take a yearling goat, betwixt a kid and a goat, out of my
particular flock, to be killed; when I cut off the hinder quarter, and chopping it into small
pieces, I set Friday to work to boiling and stewing, and made them a very good dish, I
assure you, of flesh and broth, having put some barley and rice also into the broth; and as I
cooked it without doors, for I made no fire within my inner wall, so I carried it all into the
new tent; and having set a table there for them, I sat down and ate my own dinner also
with them, and, as well as I could, cheered them and encouraged them; Friday being my
interpreter, especially to his father, and indeed to the Spaniard too; for the Spaniard spoke
the language of the savages pretty well.
After we had dined, or rather supped, I ordered Friday to take one of the canoes, and go
and fetch our muskets and other firearms, which for want of time we had left upon the
place of battle; and the next day I ordered him to go and bury the dead bodies of the
savages, which lay open to the sun, and would presently be offensive; and I also ordered
him to bury the horrid remains of their barbarous feast, which I knew were pretty much,
and which I could not think of doing myself; nay, I could not bear to see them, if I went
that way. All of which he punctually performed, and defaced the very appearance of the
savages being there; so that when I went again I could scarce know where it was,
otherwise than by the corner of the wood pointing to the place.
I then began to enter into a little conversation with my two new subjects; and first I set
Friday to inquire of his father what he thought of the escape of the savages in that canoe,
and whether we might expect a return of them with a power too great for us to resist. His
first opinion was that the savages in the boat never could live out the storm which blew
that night they went off, but must of necessity be drowned or driven south to those other
shores, where they were as sure to be devoured as they were to be drowned if they were
cast away; but as to what they would do if they came safe on shore, he said he knew not;
but it was his opinion that they were so dreadfully frighted with the manner of their being
attacked, the noise and the fire, that he believed they would tell their people they were all
killed by thunder and lightning, not by the hand of man, and that the two which appeared,
viz., Friday and me, were two heavenly spirits or furies come down to destroy them, and
not men with weapons. This he said he knew, because he heard them all cry out so in their
language to one another, for it was impossible to them to conceive that a man could dart
fire and speak thunder and kill at a distance without lifting up the hand, as was done now.
And this old savage was in the right; for, as I understood since by other hands, the savages
never attempted to go over to the island afterwards; they were so terrified with the
accounts given by those four men (for it seems they did escape the sea) that they believed
whoever went to that enchanted island would be destroyed with fire from the gods.
This, however, I knew not, and therefore was under continual apprehensions for a good
while, and kept always upon my guard, me and all my army; for as we were now four of
us, I would have ventured upon a hundred of them fairly in the open field at any time.
 In a little time, however, no more canoes appearing, the fear of their coming wore off,
and I began to take my former thoughts of a voyage to the main into consideration; being
likewise assured by Friday’s father that I might depend upon good usage from their nation
on his account, if I would go.
But my thoughts were a little suspended when I had a serious discourse with the
Spaniard, and when I understood that there were sixteen more of his countrymen and
Portuguese, who, having been cast away and made their escape to that side, lived there at
peace indeed with the savages, but were very sore put to it for necessaries, and indeed for
life. I asked him all the particulars of their voyage, and found they were a Spanish ship
bound from the Rio de la Plata to Havana, being directed to leave their loading there,
which was chiefly hides and silver, and to bring back what European goods they could
meet with there; that they had five Portuguese seamen on board, whom they took out of
another wreck; that five of their own men were drowned when the first ship was lost, and
that these escaped through infinite dangers and hazards, and arrived, almost starved, on
the cannibal coast, where they expected to have been devoured every moment.
He told me they had some arms with them, but they were perfectly useless, for that they
had neither powder or ball, the washing of the sea having spoiled all their powder but a
little, which they used at their first landing to provide themselves some food.
I asked him what he thought would become of them there, and if they had formed no
design of making any escape. He said they had many consultations about it, but that
having neither vessel, or tools to build one, or provisions of any kind, their councils
always ended in tears and despair.
I asked him how he thought they would receive a proposal from me, which might tend
towards an escape; and whether, if they were all here, it might not be done. I told him with
freedom, I feared mostly their treachery and ill usage of me, if I put my life in their hands;
for that gratitude was no inherent virtue in the nature of man; nor did men always square
their dealings by the obligations they had received so much as they did by the advantages
they expected. I told him it would be very hard that I should be the instrument of their
deliverance and that they should afterwards make me their prisoner in New Spain, where
an Englishman was certain to be made a sacrifice, what necessity or what accident soever
brought him thither. And that I had rather be delivered up to the savages and be devoured
alive than fall into the merciless claws of the priests and be carried into the Inquisition. I
added that otherwise I was persuaded, if they were all here, we might, with so many
hands, build a bark large enough to carry us all away, either to Brazil southward, or to the
islands or Spanish coast northward. But that if in requital they should, when I had put
weapons into their hands, carry me by force among their own people, I might be ill used
for my kindness to them, and make my case worse than it was before.
He answered with a great deal of candour and ingenuity that their condition was so
miserable, and they were so sensible of it, that he believed they would abhor the thought
of using any man unkindly that should contribute to their deliverance; and that, if I
pleased, he would go to them with the old man and discourse with them about it, and
return again and bring me their answer. That he would make conditions with them upon
their solemn oath, that they should be absolutely under my leading, as their commander
and captain; and that they should swear upon the Holy Sacraments and the Gospel to be
true to me and to go to such Christian country as that I should agree to, and no other; and
to be directed wholly and absolutely by my orders, till they were landed safely in such
country as I intended; and that he would bring a contract from them, under their hands, for
that purpose.
Then he told me he would first swear to me himself that he would never stir from me as
long as he lived, till I gave him orders; and that he would take my side to the last drop of
his blood, if there should happen the least breach of faith among his countrymen.
He told me they were all of them very civil honest men, and they were under the
greatest distress imaginable, having neither weapons or clothes, nor any food, but at the
mercy and discretion of the savages; out of all hopes of ever returning to their own
country; and that he was sure, if I would undertake their relief, they would live and die by
me.
Upon these assurances, I resolved to venture to relieve them, if possible, and to send the
old savage and this Spaniard over to them to treat. But when we had gotten all things in a
readiness to go, the Spaniard himself started an objection, which had so much prudence in
it on one hand, and so much sincerity on the other hand, that I could not but be very well
satisfied in it; and, by his advice, put off the deliverance of his comrades for at least half a
year. The case was thus:
He had been with us now about a month, during which time I had let him see in what
manner I had provided, with the assistance of Providence, for my support; and he saw
evidently what stock of corn and rice I had laid up; which, as it was more than sufficient
for myself, so it was not sufficient, at least without good husbandry, for my family, now it
was increased to number four. But much less would it be sufficient, if his countrymen,
who were, as he said, fourteen still alive, should come over. And least of all would it be
sufficient to victual our vessel, if we should build one, for a voyage to any of the Christian
colonies of America. So he told me he thought it would be more advisable to let him and
the two others dig and cultivate some more land, as much as I could spare seed to sow;
and that we should wait another harvest, that we might have a supply of corn for his
countrymen when they should come; for want might be a temptation to them to disagree,
or not to think themselves delivered, otherwise than out of one difficulty into another.
‘‘You know,’’ says he, ‘‘the Children of Israel, though they rejoiced at first for their being
delivered out of Egypt, yet rebelled even against God Himself that delivered them, when
they came to want bread in the wilderness.’’
His caution was so seasonable, and his advice so good, that I could not but be very well
pleased with his proposal, as well as I was satisfied with his fidelity. So we fell to digging,
all four of us, as well as the wooden tools we were furnished with permitted; and in about
a month’s time, by the end of which it was seed time, we had gotten as much land cured
and trimmed up as we sowed twenty-two bushels of barley on, and sixteen jars of rice,
which was, in short, all the seed we had to spare; nor indeed did we leave ourselves barley
sufficient for our own food for the six months that we had to expect our crop, that is to
say, reckoning from the time we set our seed aside for sowing; for it is not to be supposed
it is six months in the ground in the country.
Having now society enough, and our number being sufficient to put us out of fear of the
savages, if they had come, unless their number had been very great, we went freely all
over the island, wherever we found occasion; and as here we had our escape or
deliverance upon our thoughts, it was impossible, at least for me, to have the means of it
out of mine; to this purpose, I marked out several trees which I thought fit for our work,
and I set Friday and his father to cutting them down; and then I caused the Spaniard, to
whom I imparted my thought on that affair, to oversee and direct their work. I showed
them with what indefatigable pains I had hewed a large tree into single planks, and I
caused them to do the like, till they had made about a dozen large planks of good oak, near
two foot broad, thirty-five foot long, and from two inches to four inches thick. What
prodigious labour it took up, anyone may imagine.
At the same time I contrived to increase my little flock of tame goats as much as I
could; and to this purpose I made Friday and the Spaniard go out one day, and myself with
Friday the next day, for we took our turns. And by this means we got above twenty young
kids to breed up with the rest; for whenever we shot the dam, we saved the kids, and
added them to our flock. But above all, the season for curing the grapes coming on, I
caused such a prodigious quantity to be hung up in the sun, that I believe, had we been at
Alicante, where the raisins of the sun are cured, we could have filled sixty or eighty
barrels; and these, with our bread, were a great part of our food, and very good living too,
I assure you; for it is an exceeding nourishing food.
It was now harvest, and our crop in good order; it was not the most plentiful increase I
had seen in the island, but, however, it was enough to answer our end; for from our
twenty-two bushels of barley we brought in and thrashed out above 220 bushels; and the
like in proportion of the rice, which was store enough for our food to the next harvest,
though all the sixteen Spaniards had been on shore with me; or if we had been ready for a
voyage, it would very plentifully have victualed our ship, to have carried us to any part of
the world, that is to say, of America.
When we had thus housed and secured our magazine of corn, we fell to work to make
more wicker-work, viz., great baskets in which we kept it; and the Spaniard was very
handy and dexterous at this part, and often blamed me that I did not make some things for
defence, of this kind of work; but I saw no need of it.
And now having a full supply of food for all the guests I expected, I gave the Spaniard
leave to go over to the main, to see what he could do with those he had left behind him
there. I gave him a strict charge in writing not to bring any man with him who would not
first swear in the presence of himself and of the old savage that he would no way injure,
fight with, or attack the person he should find in the island, who was so kind to send for
them in order to their deliverance; but that they would stand by and defend him against all
such attempts, and wherever they went, would be entirely under and subjected to his
commands; and that this should be put in writing and signed with their hands. How we
were to have this done, when I knew they had neither pen nor ink, that, indeed, was a
question which we never asked.
Under these instructions, the Spaniard and the old savage (the father of Friday) went
away in one of the canoes which they might be said to come in, or rather were brought in,
when they came as prisoners to be devoured by the savages.
I gave each of them a musket with a firelock on it, and about eight charges of powder
and ball, charging them to be very good husbands of both and not to use either of them but
upon urgent occasion.
This was a cheerful work, being the first measures used by me in view of my
deliverance for now twenty-seven years and some days. I gave them provisions of bread
and of dry grapes sufficient for themselves for many days, and sufficient for all their
countrymen for about eight days’ time; and wishing them a good voyage, I saw them go,
agreeing with them about a signal they should hang out at their return, by which I should
know them again when they came back, at a distance, before they came on shore.
They went away with a fair gale on the day that the moon was at full; by my account, in
the month of October; but as for an exact reckoning of days, after I had once lost it, I
could never recover it again; nor had I kept even the number of years so punctually as to
be sure that I was right, though as it proved, when I afterwards examined my account, I
found I had kept a true reckoning of years.
 We Quell a Mutiny
IT WAS no less than eight days I had waited for them, when a strange and unforeseen
accident intervened, of which the like has not perhaps been heard in history. I was fast
asleep in my hutch one morning, when my man Friday came running in to me and called
aloud, ‘‘Master, master, they are come, they are come!’’
I jumped up, and regardless of danger I went out, as soon as I could get my clothes on,
through my little grove, which, by the way, was by this time grown to be a very thick
wood; I say, regardless of danger, I went without my arms, which was not my custom to
do. But I was surprised when, turning my eyes to the sea, I presently saw a boat at about a
league and half’s distance, standing in for the shore, with a shoulder-of-mutton sail, as
they call it, and the wind blowing pretty fair to bring them in; also I observed presently
that they did not come from that side which the shore lay on, but from the southermost end
of the island. Upon this I called Friday in, and bid him lie close, for these were not the
people we looked for, and that we might not know yet whether they were friends or
enemies.
In the next place, I went in to fetch my perspective-glass, to see what I could make of
them; and having taken the ladder out, I climbed up to the top of the hill, as I used to do
when I was apprehensive of anything, and to take my view the plainer without being
discovered.
I had scarce set my foot on the hill, when my eye plainly discovered a ship lying at an
anchor at about two leagues and a half’s distance from me, south-southeast, but not above
a league and a half from the shore. By my observation it appeared plainly to be an English
ship, and the boat appeared to be an English longboat.
I cannot express the confusion I was in, though the joy of seeing a ship, and one whom I
had reason to believe was manned by my own countrymen, and consequently friends, was
such as I cannot describe; but yet I had some secret doubts hung about me, I cannot tell
from whence they came, bidding me keep upon my guard. In the first place, it occurred to
me to consider what business an English ship could have in that part of the world, since it
was not the way to or from any part of the world where the English had any traffic; and I
knew there had been no storms to drive them in there, as in distress; and that if they were
English really, it was most probable that they were here upon no good design; and that I
had better continue as I was than fall into the hands of thieves and murderers.
Let no man despise the secret hints and notices of danger, which sometimes are given
him, when he may think there is no possibility of its being real. That such hints and
notices are given us, I believe few that have made any observations of things can deny;
that they are certain discoveries of an invisible world, and a converse of spirits, we cannot
doubt; and if the tendency of them seems to be to warn us of danger, why should we not
suppose they are from some friendly agent (whether supreme, or inferior and subordinate,
is not the question) and that they are given for our good?
The present question abundantly confirms me in the justice of this reasoning; for had I
not been made cautious by this secret admonition, come it from whence it will, I had been
undone inevitably, and in a far worse condition than before, as you will see presently.
I had not kept myself long in this posture but I saw the boat draw near the shore, as if
they looked for a creek to thrust in at for the convenience of landing; however, as they did
not come quite far enough, they did not see the little inlet where I formerly landed my
rafts, but ran their boat on shore upon the beach, at about half a mile from me, which was
very happy for me; for otherwise they would have landed just, as I may say, at my door,
and would soon have beaten me out of my castle and perhaps have plundered me of all I
had.
When they were on shore, I was fully satisfied that they were Englishmen, at least most
of them; one or two I thought were Dutch, but it did not prove so. There were in all eleven
men, whereof three of them, I found, were unarmed, and, as I thought, bound; and when
the first four or five of them were jumped on shore, they took those three out of the boat as
prisoners. One of the three I could perceive using the most passionate gestures of entreaty,
affliction, and despair, even to a kind of extravagance; the other two, I could perceive,
lifted up their hands sometimes, and appeared concerned indeed, but not to such a degree
as the first.
I was perfectly confounded at the sight, and knew not what the meaning of it should be.
Friday called out to me in English, as well as he could, “O master! you see English mans
eat prisoner as well as savage mans.’’ ‘‘Why,’’ says I, ‘‘Friday, do you think they are a-
going to eat them then?’’ ‘‘Yes,’’ says Friday, ‘‘they will eat them.’’ ‘‘No, no,’’ says I,
‘‘Friday, I am afraid they will murder them, indeed, but you may be sure they will not eat
them.’’
All this while I had no thought of what the matter really was, but stood trembling with
the horror of the sight, expecting every moment when the three prisoners should be killed;
nay, once I saw one of the villains lift up his arm with a great cutlass (as the seamen call
it), or sword, to strike one of the poor men; and I expected to see him fall every moment,
at which all the blood in my body seemed to run chill in my veins.
I wished heartily now for my Spaniard, and the savage that was gone with him; or that I
had any way to have come undiscovered within shot of them, that I might have rescued the
three men; for I saw no firearms they had among them; but it fell out to my mind another
way.
After I had observed the outrageous usage of the three men by the insolent seamen, I
observed the fellows run scattering about the land, as if they wanted to see the country. I
observed that the three other men had liberty to go also where they pleased; but they sat
down all three upon the ground, very pensive, and looked like men in despair.
This put me in mind of the first time when I came on shore, and began to look about
me, how I gave myself over for lost, how wildly I looked round me, what dreadful
apprehensions I had, and how I lodged in the tree all night for fear of being devoured by
wild beasts.
As I knew nothing that night of the supply I was to receive by the providential driving
of the ship nearer the land by the storms and tide, by which I have since been so long
nourished and supported; so these three poor desolate men knew nothing how certain of
deliverance and supply they were, how near it was to them, and how effectually and really
they were in a condition of safety at the same time that they thought themselves lost and
their case desperate.
So little do we see before us in the world, and so much reason have we to depend
cheerfully upon the great Maker of the world, that He does not leave His creatures so
absolutely destitute but that in the worst circumstances they have always something to be
thankful for, and sometimes are nearer their deliverance than they imagine; nay, are even
brought to their deliverance by the means by which they seem to be brought to their
destruction.
It was just at the top of high water when these people came on shore, and while partly
they stood parleying with the prisoners they brought, and partly while they rambled about
to see what kind of a place they were in, they had carelessly stayed till the tide was spent,
and the water was ebbed considerably away, leaving their boat aground.
They had left two men in the boat, who, as I found afterwards, having drunk a little too
much brandy, fell asleep; however, one of them waking sooner than the other, and finding
the boat too fast aground for him to stir it, holloed for the rest, who were straggling about,
upon which they all soon came to the boat; but it was past all their strength to launch her,
the boat being very heavy, and the shore on that side being a soft oozy sand, almost like a
quicksand.
In this condition, like true seamen, who are perhaps the least of all mankind given to
forethought, they gave it over, and away they strolled about the country again; and I heard
one of them say aloud to another (calling them off from the boat), ‘‘Why, let her alone,
Jack, can’t ye? she’ll float next tide’’; by which I was fully confirmed in the main inquiry
of what countrymen they were.
All this while I kept myself very close, not once daring to stir out of my castle, any
farther than to my place of observation near the top of the hill; and very glad I was to think
how well it was fortified. I knew it was no less than ten hours before the boat could be on
float again, and by that time it would be dark, and I might be at more liberty to see their
motions, and to hear their discourse, if they had any.
In the meantime I fitted myself up for a battle, as before; though with more caution,
knowing I had to do with another kind of enemy than I had at first. I ordered Friday also,
whom I had made an excellent marksman with his gun, to load himself with arms. I took
myself two fowling pieces, and I gave him three muskets; my figure, indeed, was very
fierce; I had my formidable goatskin coat on, with the great cap I have mentioned, a naked
sword by my side, two pistols in my belt, and a gun upon each shoulder.
It was my design, as I said above, not to have made any attempt till it was dark. But
about two o’clock, being the heat of the day, I found that, in short, they were all gone
straggling into the woods and, as I thought, were laid down to sleep. The three poor
distressed men, too anxious for their condition to get any sleep, were, however, set down
under the shelter of a great tree, at about a quarter of a mile from me, and, as I thought, out
of sight of any of the rest.
Upon this I resolved to discover myself to them and learn something of their condition.
Immediately I marched in the figure as above, my man Friday at a good distance behind
me, as formidable for his arms as I, but not making quite so staring a spectre-like figure as
I did.
I came as near them undiscovered as I could, and then before any of them saw me, I
called aloud to them in Spanish, ‘‘What are ye, gentlemen?’’
They started up at the noise, but were ten times more confounded when they saw me,
and the uncouth figure that I made. They made no answer at all, but I thought I perceived
them just going to fly from me, when I spoke to them in English: ‘‘Gentlemen,’’ said I,
‘‘do not be surprised at me; perhaps you may have a friend near you, when you did not
expect it.’’ ‘‘He must be sent directly from Heaven then,’’ said one of them very gravely to
me, and pulling off his hat at the same time to me, ‘‘for our condition is past the help of
man.’’ ‘‘All help is from Heaven, sir,’’ said I. ‘‘But can you put a stranger in the way how
to help you, for you seem to me to be in some great distress? I saw you when you landed,
and when you seemed to make applications to the brutes that came with you, I saw one of
them lift up his sword to kill you.’’
The poor man, with tears running down his face, and trembling, looking like one
astonished, returned, ‘‘Am I talking to God, or man? Is it a real man, or an angel!’’ ‘‘Be in
no fear about that, sir,’’ said I; ‘‘if God had sent an angel to relieve you, he would have
come better clothed, and armed after another manner than you see me in; pray lay aside
your fears; I am a man, an Englishman, and disposed to assist you, you see; I have one
servant only; we have arms and ammunition; tell us freely, can we serve you?—What is
your case?’’
‘‘Our case,’’ said he, ‘‘sir, is too long to tell you, while our murderers are so near; but in
short, sir, I was commander of that ship; my men have mutinied against me, they have
been hardly prevailed on not to murder me, and at last have set me on shore in this
desolate place, with these two men with me, one my mate, the other a passenger, where we
expected to perish, believing the place to be uninhabited, and know not yet what to think
of it.’’
‘‘Where are those brutes, your enemies?’’ said I. ‘‘Do you know where they are gone?’’
‘‘There they lie, sir,’’ said he, pointing to a thicket of trees; ‘‘my heart trembles for fear
they have seen us and heard you speak; if they have, they will certainly murder us all.’’
‘‘Have they any firearms?’’ said I. He answered they had only two pieces, and one
which they left in the boat. ‘‘Well then,’’ said I, ‘‘leave the rest to me; I see they are all
asleep, it is an easy thing to kill them all; but shall we rather take them prisoners?’’ He told
me there were two desperate villains among them that it was scarce safe to show any
mercy to; but if they were secured, he believed all the rest would return to their duty. I
asked him which they were. He told me he could not at that distance describe them, but he
would obey my orders in anything I would direct. ‘‘Well,’’ says I, ‘‘let us retreat out of
their view or hearing, lest they awake, and we will resolve further’’; so they willingly
went back with me, till the woods covered us from them.
‘‘Look you, sir,’’ said I, ‘‘if I venture upon your deliverance, are you willing to make
two conditions with me?’’ He anticipated my proposals by telling me that both he and the
ship, if recovered, should be wholly directed and commanded by me in everything; and if
the ship was not recovered, he would live and die with me in what part of the world soever
I would send him; and the two other men said the same.
‘‘Well,’’ says I, ‘‘my conditions are but two. 1. That while you stay on this island with
me, you will not pretend to any authority here; and if I put arms into your hands, you will
upon all occasions give them up to me and do no prejudice to me or mine upon this island,
and in the meantime, be governed by my orders.
‘‘2. That if the ship is or may be recovered, you will carry me and my man to England
passage-free.’’
He gave me all the assurances that the invention and faith of man could devise that he
would comply with these most reasonable demands, and besides would owe his life to me
and acknowledge it upon all occasions as long as he lived.
‘‘Well then,’’ said I, ‘‘here are three muskets for you, with powder and ball; tell me next
what you think is proper to be done.’’ He showed all the testimony of his gratitude that he
was able, but offered to be wholly guided by me. I told him I thought it was hard
venturing anything; but the best method I could think of was to fire upon them at once, as
they lay; and if any was not killed at the first volley, and offered to submit, we might save
them, and so put it wholly upon God’s Providence to direct the shot.
He said very modestly that he was loath to kill them, if he could help it, but that those
two were incorrigible villains and had been the authors of all the mutiny in the ship, and if
they escaped, we should be undone still; for they would go on board and bring the whole
ship’s company, and destroy us all. ‘‘Well then,’’ says I, ‘‘necessity legitimates my advice;
for it is the only way to save our lives.’’ However, seeing him still cautious of shedding
blood, I told him they should go themselves, and manage as they found convenient.
In the middle of this discourse we heard some of them awake, and soon after, we saw
two of them on their feet. I asked him if either of them were of the men who he had said
were the heads of the mutiny. He said, ‘‘No.’’ ‘‘Well then,’’ said I, ‘‘you may let them
escape; and Providence seems to have wakened them on purpose to save themselves.
Now,’’ says I, ‘‘if the rest escape you, it is your fault.’’
Animated with this, he took the musket I had given him in his hand, and a pistol in his
belt, and his two comrades with him, with each man a piece in his hand. The two men who
were with him, going first, made some noise, at which one of the seamen, who was awake,
turned about, and seeing them coming cried out to the rest; but it was too late then, for the
moment he cried out they fired; I mean the two men, the captain wisely reserving his own
piece. They had so well aimed their shot at the men they knew that one of them was killed
on the spot, and the other very much wounded; but not being dead, he started up upon his
feet, and called eagerly for help to the other; but the captain, stepping to him, told him
’twas too late to cry for help, he should call upon God to forgive his villainy, and with that
word knocked him down with the stock of his musket, so that he never spoke more. There
were three more in the company, and one of them was also slightly wounded. By this time
I was come; and when they saw their danger, and that it was in vain to resist, they begged
for mercy. The captain told them he would spare their lives, if they would give him any
assurance of their abhorrence of the treachery they had been guilty of, and would swear to
be faithful to him in recovering the ship and afterwards in carrying her back to Jamaica,
from whence they came. They gave him all the protestations of their sincerity that could
be desired, and he was willing to believe them, and spare their lives, which I was not
against, only I obliged him to keep them bound hand and foot while they were upon the
island.
While this was doing, I sent Friday with the captain’s mate to the boat, with orders to
secure her and bring away the oars and sail, which they did; and by and by, three
straggling men, that were (happily for them) parted from the rest, came back upon hearing
the guns fired, and seeing their captain, who before was their prisoner, now their
conqueror, they submitted to be bound also; and so our victory was complete.
It now remained that the captain and I should inquire into one another’s circumstances.
I began first, and told him my whole history, which he heard with an attention even to
amazement; and particularly at the wonderful manner of my being furnished with
provisions and ammunition; and, indeed, as my story is a whole collection of wonders, it
affected him deeply; but when he reflected from thence upon himself, and how I seemed
to have been preserved there on purpose to save his life, the tears ran down his face, and
he could not speak a word more.
After this communication was at an end, I carried him and his two men into my
apartment, leading them in just where I came out, viz., at the top of the house, where I
refreshed them with such provisions as I had, and showed them all the contrivances I had
made during my long, long inhabiting that place.
All I showed them, all I said to them, was perfectly amazing; but above all, the captain
admired my fortification, and how perfectly I had concealed my retreat with a grove of
trees, which having been now planted near twenty years, and the trees growing much
faster than in England, was become a little wood, and so thick, that it was unpassable in
any part of it, but at that one side, where I had reserved my little winding passage into it. I
told him this was my castle and my residence, but that I had a seat in the country, as most
princes have, whither I could retreat upon occasion, and I would show him that too
another time; but at present our business was to consider how to recover the ship. He
agreed with me as to that; but told me he was perfectly at a loss what measures to take; for
that there were still six-and-twenty hands on board, who, having entered into a cursed
conspiracy, by which they had all forfeited their lives to the law, would be hardened in it
now by desperation; and would carry it on, knowing that if they were reduced, they should
be brought to the gallows as soon as they came to England or to any of the English
colonies; and that therefore there would be no attacking them with so small a number as
we were.
I mused for some time upon what he said, and found it was a very rational conclusion;
and that therefore something was to be resolved on very speedily, as well to draw the men
on board into some snare for their surprise, as to prevent their landing upon us, and
destroying us; upon this it presently occurred to me that in a little while the ship’s crew,
wondering what was become of their comrades and of the boat, would certainly come on
shore in their other boat to see for them, and that then perhaps they might come armed and
be too strong for us; this he allowed was rational.
Upon this, I told him the first thing we had to do was to stave the boat, which lay upon
the beach, so that they might not carry her off; and taking everything out of her, leave her
so far useless as not to be fit to swim; accordingly we went on board, took the arms which
were left on board out of her, and whatever else we found there, which was a bottle of
brandy, and another of rum, a few biscuit cakes, a horn of powder, and a great lump of
sugar in a piece of canvas; the sugar was five or six pounds; all which was very welcome
to me, especially the brandy and sugar, of which I had had none left for many years.
When we had carried all these things on shore (the oars, mast, sail, and rudder of the
boat were carried away before, as above), we knocked a great hole in her bottom, that if
they had come strong enough to master us, yet they could not carry off the boat.
Indeed, it was not much in my thoughts that we could be able to recover the ship; but
my view was that if they went away without the boat, I did not much question to make her
fit again to carry us away to the Leeward Islands and call upon our friends, the Spaniards,
in my way, for I had them still in my thoughts.
While we were thus preparing our designs, and had first by main strength heaved the
boat up upon the beach, so high that the tide would not fleet her off at high-water mark,
and besides had broke a hole in her bottom too big to be quickly stopped, and were sat
down musing what we should do, we heard the ship fire a gun and saw her make a waft
with her ancient as a signal for the boat to come on board; but no boat stirred; and they
fired several times, making other signals for the boat.
At last, when all their signals and firings proved fruitless, and they found the boat did
not stir, we saw them, by the help of my glasses, hoist another boat out, and row towards
the shore; and we found, as they approached, that there was no less than ten men in her,
and that they had firearms with them.
As the ship lay almost two leagues from the shore, we had a full view of them as they
came, and a plain sight of the men, even of their faces, because the tide having set them a
little to the east of the other boat, they rowed up under shore, to come to the same place
where the other had landed, and where the boat lay.
By this means, I say, we had a full view of them and the captain knew the persons and
characters of all the men in the boat, of whom he said that there were three very honest
fellows, who, he was sure, were led into this conspiracy by the rest, being overpowered
and frighted.
But that as for the boatswain, who, it seems, was the chief officer among them, and all
the rest, they were as outrageous as any of the ship’s crew, and were, no doubt, made
desperate in their new enterprise; and terribly apprehensive he was that they would be too
powerful for us.
I smiled at him and told him that men in our circumstances were past the operation of
fear. That seeing almost every condition that could be was better than that which we were
supposed to be in, we ought to expect that the consequence, whether death or life, would
be sure to be a deliverance. I asked him what he thought of the circumstances of my life,
and whether a deliverance were not worth venturing for. ‘‘And where, sir,’’ said I, ‘‘is your
belief of my being preserved here on purpose to save your life, which elevated you a little
while ago? For my part,’’ said I, ‘‘there seems to be but one thing amiss in all the
prospects of it.’’ ‘‘What’s that?’’ says he. ‘‘Why,’’ said I, ‘‘ ’tis that, as you say, there are
three or four honest fellows among them, which should be spared; had they been all of the
wicked part of the crew, I should have thought God’s Providence had signaled them out to
deliver them into your hands; for depend upon it, every man of them that comes ashore are
our own and shall die or live, as they behave to us.’’
As I spoke this with a raised voice and cheerful countenance, I found it greatly
encouraged him; so we set vigorously to our business. We had, upon the first appearance
of the boat’s coming from the ship, considered of separating our prisoners, and had indeed
secured them effectually.
Two of them, of whom the captain was less assured than ordinary, I sent with Friday
and one of the three (delivered men) to my cave, where they were remote enough, and out
of danger of being heard or discovered, or of finding their way out of the woods, if they
could have delivered themselves. Here they left them bound, but gave them provisions,
and promised them, if they continue there quietly, to give them their liberty in a day or
two; but that if they attempted their escape, they should be put to death without mercy.
They promised faithfully to bear their confinement with patience, and were very thankful
that they had such good usage as to have provisions and a light left them; for Friday gave
them candles (such as we made ourselves) for their comfort; and they did not know but
that he stood sentinel over them at the entrance.
The other prisoners had better usage; two of them were kept pinioned indeed, because
the captain was not free to trust them; but the other two were taken into my service upon
their captain’s recommendation and upon their solemnly engaging to live and die with us;
so with them and the three honest men we were seven men, well armed; and I made no
doubt we should be able to deal well enough with the ten that were a-coming, considering
that the captain had said there were three or four honest men among them also.
As soon as they got to the place where their other boat lay, they ran their boat into the
beach, and came all on shore, hauling the boat up after them, which I was glad to see; for I
was afraid they would rather have left the boat at an anchor, some distance from the shore,
with some hands in her to guard her; and so we should not be able to seize the boat.
Being on shore, the first thing they did, they ran all to their other boat; and it was easy
to see that they were under a great surprise to find her stripped, as above, of all that was in
her, and a great hole in her bottom.
After they had mused a while upon this, they set up two or three great shouts, holloing
with all their might, to try if they could make their companions hear; but all was to no
purpose. Then they came all close in a ring, and fired a volley of their small arms, which
indeed we heard, and the echoes made the woods ring; but it was all one; those in the cave
we were sure could not hear, and those in our keeping, though they heard it well enough,
yet durst give no answer to them.
They were so astonished at the surprise of this that, as they told us afterwards, they
resolved to go all on board again, to their ship, and let them know there that the men were
all murdered and the longboat staved; accordingly, they immediately launched their boat
again, and got all of them on board.
The captain was terribly amazed and even confounded at this, believing they would go
on board the ship again and set sail, giving their comrades for lost, and so he should still
lose the ship, which he was in hopes we should have recovered; but he was quickly as
much frighted the other way.
They had not been long put off with the boat but we perceived them all coming on shore
again; but with this new measure in their conduct, which it seems they consulted together
upon, viz., to leave three men in the boat, and the rest to go on shore, and go up into the
country to look for their fellows.
This was a great disappointment to us; for now we were at a loss what to do; for our
seizing those seven men on shore would be no advantage to us, if we let the boat escape;
because they would then row away to the ship, and then the rest of them would be sure to
weigh and set sail, and so our recovering the ship would be lost.
However, we had no remedy but to wait and see what the issue of things might present;
the seven men came on shore, and the three who remained in the boat put her off to a good
distance from the shore, and came to an anchor to wait for them; so that it was impossible
for us to come at them in the boat.
Those that came on shore kept close together, marching towards the top of the little hill
under which my habitation lay; and we could see them plainly, though they could not
perceive us. We could have been very glad they would have come nearer to us, so that we
might have fired at them, or that they would have gone farther off, that we might have
come abroad.
But when they were come to the brow of the hill, where they could see a great way into
the valleys and woods, which lay towards the northeast part, and where the island lay
lowest, they shouted and holloed till they were weary; and not caring, it seems, to venture
far from the shore, nor far from one another, they sat down together under a tree, to
consider of it. Had they thought fit to have gone to sleep there, as the other party of them
had done, they had done the job for us; but they were too full of apprehensions of danger
to venture to go to sleep, though they could not tell what the danger was they had to fear
neither.
The captain made a very just proposal to me, upon this consultation of theirs, viz., that
perhaps they would all fire a volley again, to endeavour to make their fellows hear, and
that we should all sally upon them, just at the juncture when their pieces were all
discharged, and they would certainly yield, and we should have them without bloodshed. I
liked the proposal, provided it was done while we were near enough to come up to them
before they could load their pieces again.
But this event did not happen, and we lay still a long time, very irresolute what course
to take; at length I told them there would be nothing to be done in my opinion till night;
and then, if they did not return to the boat, perhaps we might find a way to get between
them and the shore, and so might use some stratagem with them in the boat, to get them on
shore.
We waited a great while, though very impatient for their removing; and were very
uneasy, when, after long consultations, we saw them start all up and march down towards
the sea. It seems they had such dreadful apprehensions upon them of the danger of the
place that they resolved to go on board the ship again, give their companions over for lost,
and so go on with their intended voyage with the ship.
As soon as I perceived them go towards the shore, I imagined it to be as it really was,
that they had given over their search, and were for going back again; and the captain, as
soon as I told him my thoughts, was ready to sink at the apprehensions of it; but I
presently thought of a stratagem to fetch them back again, and which answered my end to
a tittle.
I ordered Friday and the captain’s mate to go over the little creek westward, towards the
place where the savages came on shore when Friday was rescued; and as soon as they
came to a little rising ground, at about half a mile’s distance, I bade them hollo as loud as
they could and wait till they found the seamen heard them; that as soon as ever they heard
the seamen answer them, they should return it again, and then keeping out of sight, take a
round, always answering when the other holloed, to draw them as far into the island and
among the woods as possible and then wheel about again to me, by such ways as I
directed them.
They were just going into the boat, when Friday and the mate holloed, and they
presently heard them, and answering, ran along the shore westward towards the voice they
heard, when they were presently stopped by the creek, where, the water being up, they
could not get over, and called for the boat to come up and set them over, as indeed I
expected.
When they had set themselves over, I observed that the boat being gone up a good way
into the creek, and, as it were, in a harbour within the land, they took one of the three men
out of her to go along with them, and left only two in the boat, having fastened her to the
stump of a little tree on the shore.
This was what I wished for, and immediately leaving Friday and the captain’s mate to
their business, I took the rest with me, and crossing the creek out of their sight, we
surprised the two men before they were aware, one of them lying on shore, and the other
being in the boat; the fellow on shore was between sleeping and waking, and going to start
up; the captain, who was foremost, ran in upon him, and knocked him down, and then
called out to him in the boat to yield, or he was a dead man.
 There needed very few arguments to persuade a single man to yield, when he saw five
men upon him and his comrade knocked down; besides, this was, it seems, one of the
three who were not so hearty in the mutiny as the rest of the crew, and therefore was easily
persuaded, not only to yield, but afterwards to join very sincerely with us.
In the meantime, Friday and the captain’s mate so well managed their business with the
rest that they drew them by holloing and answering from one hill to another, and from one
wood to another, till they not only heartily tired them but left them, where they were very
sure they could not reach back to the boat before it was dark; and indeed they were
heartily tired themselves also by the time they came back to us.
We had nothing now to do but to watch for them in the dark and to fall upon them, so as
to make sure work with them.
It was several hours after Friday came back to me before they came back to their boat;
and we could hear the foremost of them long before they came quite up, calling to those
behind to come along, and could also hear them answer and complain how lame and tired
they were and not able to come any faster, which was very welcome news to us.
At length they came up to the boat; but ’tis impossible to express their confusion, when
they found the boat fast aground in the creek, the tide ebbed out, and their two men gone.
We could hear them call to one another in a most lamentable manner, telling one another
they were gotten into an enchanted island; that either there were inhabitants in it, and they
should all be murdered, or else there were devils and spirits in it, and they should be all
carried away and devoured.
They holloed again, and called their two comrades by their names a great many times,
but no answer. After some time, we could see them, by the little light there was, run about,
wringing their hands like men in despair; and that sometimes they would go and sit down
in the boat to rest themselves, then come ashore again, and walk about again, and so the
same thing over again.
My men would fain have me give them leave to fall upon them at once in the dark; but I
was willing to take them at some advantage, so to spare them, and kill as few of them as I
could; and especially I was unwilling to hazard the killing any of our own men, knowing
the other were very well armed. I resolved to wait to see if they did not separate; and
therefore to make sure of them, I drew my ambuscade nearer, and ordered Friday and the
captain to creep upon their hands and feet, as close to the ground as they could, that they
might not be discovered, and get as near them as they could possibly before they offered
to fire.
They had not been long in that posture but that the boatswain, who was the principal
ringleader of the mutiny, and had now shown himself the most dejected and dispirited of
all the rest, came walking towards them, with two more of their crew; the captain was so
eager, as having this principal rogue so much in his power, that he could hardly have
patience to let him come so near as to be sure of him; for they only heard his tongue
before. But when they came nearer, the captain and Friday, starting up on their feet, let fly
at them.
 The boatswain was killed upon the spot; the next man was shot into the body, and fell
just by him, though he did not die till an hour or two after; and the third ran for it.
At the noise of the fire, I immediately advanced with my whole army, which was now
eight men, viz., myself generalissimo, Friday my lieutenant-general, the captain and his
two men, and the three prisoners of war, whom we had trusted with arms.
We came upon them indeed in the dark, so that they could not see our numbers; and I
made the man they had left in the boat, who was now one of us, call to them by name, to
try if I could bring them to a parley and so might perhaps reduce them to terms, which fell
out just as we desired. For indeed it was easy to think, as their condition then was, they
would be very willing to capitulate; so he calls out as loud as he could to one of them,
‘‘Tom Smith! Tom Smith!’’ Tom Smith answered immediately, ‘‘Who’s that? Robinson?’’
for it seems he knew his voice. T’ other answered, ‘‘Ay, ay; for God’s sake, Tom Smith,
throw down your arms and yield, or you are all dead men this moment.’’
‘‘Who must we yield to? Where are they?’’ says Smith again. ‘‘Here they are,’’ says he;
‘‘here’s our captain, and fifty men with him, have been hunting you this two hours; the
boatswain is killed, Will Frye is wounded, and I am a prisoner; and if you do not yield,
you are all lost.’’
‘‘Will they give us quarter then,’’ says Tom Smith, ‘‘and we will yield?’’ ‘‘I’ll go and
ask, if you promise to yield,’’ says Robinson; so he asked the captain, and the captain then
calls himself out, ‘‘You, Smith, you know my voice. If you lay down your arms
immediately and submit, you shall have your lives, all but Will Atkins.’’
Upon this Will Atkins cried out, ‘‘For God’s sake, Captain, give me quarter; what have I
done? They have been all as bad as I’’; which, by the way, was not true neither; for it
seems this Will Atkins was the first man that laid hold of the captain, when they first
mutinied, and used him barbarously, in tying his hands, and giving him injurious language.
However, the captain told him he must lay down his arms at discretion, and trust to the
governor’s mercy; by which he meant me, for they all called me governor.
In a word, they all laid down their arms and begged their lives; and I sent the man that
had parleyed with them and two more, who bound them all; and then my great army of
fifty men, which, particularly with those three, were all but eight, came up and seized
upon them all and upon their boat, only that I kept myself and one more out of sight, for
reasons of state.
Our next work was to repair the boat and to think of seizing the ship; and as for the
captain, now he had leisure to parley with them, he expostulated with them upon the
villainy of their practices with him, and at length upon the further wickedness of their
design, and how certainly it must bring them to misery and distress in the end, and perhaps
to the gallows.
They all appeared very penitent and begged hard for their lives; as for that, he told them
they were none of his prisoners, but the commander’s of the island; that they thought they
had set him on shore in a barren uninhabited island, but it had pleased God so to direct
them that the island was inhabited, and that the governor was an Englishman; that he
might hang them all there, if he pleased; but as he had given them all quarter, he supposed
he would send them to England, to be dealt with there as justice required, except Atkins,
who he was commanded by the governor to advise to prepare for death; for that he would
be hanged in the morning.
Though this was all a fiction of his own, yet it had its desired effect; Atkins fell upon
his knees to beg the captain to intercede with the governor for his life; and all the rest
begged of him, for God’s sake, that they might not be sent to England.
 We Seize the Ship
IT NOW occurred to me that the time of our deliverance was come, and that it would be a
most easy thing to bring these fellows in to be hearty in getting possession of the ship; so I
retired in the dark from them, that they might not see what kind of a governor they had,
and called the captain to me; when I called, as at a good distance, one of the men was
ordered to speak again and say to the captain, ‘‘Captain, the commander calls for you’’;
and presently the captain replied, ‘‘Tell his excellency, I am just a-coming.’’ This more
perfectly amused them, and they all believed that the commander was just by with his fifty
men.
Upon the captain’s coming to me, I told him my project for seizing the ship, which he
liked of wonderfully well, and resolved to put it in execution the next morning.
But in order to execute it with more art, and security of success, I told him we must
divide the prisoners, and that he should go and take Atkins and two more of the worst of
them, and send them pinioned to the cave where the others lay. This was committed to
Friday and the two men who came on shore with the captain.
They conveyed them to the cave, as to a prison; and it was indeed a dismal place,
especially to men in their condition.
The other I ordered to my bower, as I called it, of which I have given a full description;
and as it was fenced in, and they pinioned, the place was secure enough, considering they
were upon their behaviour.
To these in the morning I sent the captain, who was to enter into a parley with them, in a
word, to try them, and tell me, whether he thought they might be trusted or no, to go on
board and surprise the ship. He talked to them of the injury done him, of the condition
they were brought to; and that though the governor had given them quarter for their lives,
as to the present action, yet that if they were sent to England, they would all be hanged in
chains, to be sure; but that if they would join in so just an attempt as to recover the ship,
he would have the governor’s engagement for their pardon.
Anyone may guess how readily such a proposal would be accepted by men in their
condition; they fell down on their knees to the captain and promised with the deepest
imprecations that they would be faithful to him to the last drop, and that they should owe
their lives to him and would go with him all over the world; that they would own him for a
father to them as long as they lived.
‘‘Well,’’ says the captain, ‘‘I must go and tell the governor what you say, and see what I
can do to bring him to consent to it.’’ So he brought me an account of the temper he found
them in; and that he verily believed they would be faithful.
However, that we might be very secure, I told him he should go back again and choose
out five of them, and tell them they might see that he did not want9 men; that he would
take out those five to be his assistants, and that the governor would keep the other two and
the three that were sent prisoners to the castle (my cave) as hostages, for the fidelity of
those five; and that if they proved unfaithful in the execution, the five hostages should be
hanged in chains alive upon the shore.
This looked severe, and convinced them that the governor was in earnest; however, they
had no way left them but to accept it; and it was now the business of the prisoners, as
much as of the captain, to persuade the other five to do their duty.
Our strength was now thus ordered for the expedition. 1. The captain, his mate, and
passenger. 2. Then the two prisoners of the first gang, to whom, having their characters
from the captain, I had given their liberty,and trusted them with arms. 3. The other two,
whom I had kept till now in my bower, pinioned; but, upon the captain’s motion, had now
released. 4. These five released at last. So that they were twelve in all, besides five we
kept prisoners in the cave, and the two hostages.
I asked the captain if he was willing to venture with these hands on board the ship; for
as for me and my man Friday, I did not think it was proper for us to stir, having seven men
left behind, and it was employment enough for us to keep them asunder, and supply them
with victuals.
As to the five in the cave, I resolved to keep them fast; but Friday went in twice a day to
them, to supply them with necessaries; and I made the other two carry provisions to a
certain distance, where Friday was to take it.
When I showed myself to the two hostages, it was with the captain, who told them I was
the person the governor had ordered to look after them, and that it was the governor’s
pleasure they should not stir anywhere but by my direction; that if they did, they should be
fetched into the castle, and be laid in irons; so that as we never suffered them to see me as
governor, so I now appeared as another person, and spoke of the governor, the garrison,
the castle, and the like, upon all occasions.
The captain now had no difficulty before him, but to furnish his two boats, stop the
breach of one, and man them. He made his passenger captain of one, with four other men;
and himself and his mate and five more went in the other. And they contrived their
business very well, for they came up to the ship about midnight. As soon as they came
within call of the ship, he made Robinson hail them and tell them they had brought off the
men and the boat, but that it was a long time before they had found them, and the like;
holding them in a chat till they came to the ship’s side; when the captain and the mate,
entering first with their arms, immediately knocked down the second mate and carpenter
with the butt-end of their muskets. Being very faithfully seconded by their men, they
secured all the rest that were upon the main and quarter decks and began to fasten the
hatches to keep them down who were below, when the other boat and their men, entering
at the fore chains, secured the forecastle of the ship and the scuttle which went down into
the cook-room, making three men they found there prisoners.
When this was done, and all safe upon deck, the captain ordered the mate with three
men to break into the roundhouse, where the new rebel captain lay, and having taken the
alarm, was gotten up, and with two men and a boy had gotten firearms in their hands; and
when the mate with a crow split open the door, the new captain and his men fired boldly
among them and wounded the mate with a musket ball, which broke his arm, and
wounded two more of the men, but killed nobody.
The mate, calling for help, rushed, however, into the roundhouse, wounded as he was,
and with his pistol shot the new captain through the head, the bullet entering at his mouth,
and came out again behind one of his ears, so that he never spoke a word; upon which the
rest yielded, and the ship was taken effectually, without any more lives lost.
As soon as the ship was thus secured, the captain ordered seven guns to be fired, which
was the signal agreed upon with me, to give me notice of his success, which you may be
sure I was very glad to hear, having sat watching upon the shore for it till near two of the
clock in the morning.
Having thus heard the signal plainly, I laid me down; and it having been a day of great
fatigue to me, I slept very sound, till I was something surprised with the noise of a gun;
and presently starting up, I heard a man call me by the name of ‘‘Governor, Governor,’’
and presently I knew the captain’s voice, when, climbing up to the top of the hill, there he
stood, and pointing to the ship, he embraced me in his arms. ‘‘My dear friend and
deliverer, ’’ says he, ‘‘there’s your ship, for she is all yours, and so are we and all that
belong to her.’’ I cast my eyes to the ship, and there she rode within little more than half a
mile of the shore; for they had weighed her anchor as soon as they were masters of her;
and the weather being fair, had brought her to an anchor just against the mouth of the little
creek; and the tide being up, the captain had brought the pinnace in near the place where I
first landed my rafts, and so landed just at my door.
I was at first ready to sink down with the surprise. For I saw my deliverance indeed
visibly put into my hands, all things easy, and a large ship just ready to carry me away
whither I pleased to go. At first, for some time, I was not able to answer him one word;
but as he had taken me in his arms, I held fast by him or I should have fallen to the
ground.
He perceived the surprise, and immediately pulls a bottle out of his pocket, and gave me
a dram of cordial, which he had brought on purpose for me; after I drank it, I sat down
upon the ground; and though it brought me to myself, yet it was a good while before I
could speak a word to him.
All this while the poor man was in as great an ecstasy as I, only not under any surprise,
as I was; and he said a thousand kind tender things to me, to compose me and bring me to
myself; but such was the flood of joy in my breast that it put all my spirits into confusion;
at last it broke out into tears, and in a little while after I recovered my speech.
Then I took my turn and embraced him as my deliverer, and we rejoiced together. I told
him I looked upon him as a man sent from Heaven to deliver me, and that the whole
transaction seemed to be a chain of wonders; that such things as these were the testimonies
we had of a secret hand of Providence governing the world, and an evidence that the eyes
of an infinite Power could search into the remotest corner of the world, and send help to
the miserable whenever He pleased.
I forgot not to lift up my heart in thankfulness to Heaven; and what heart could forbear
to bless Him, who had not only in a miraculous manner provided for one in such a
wilderness and in such a desolate condition, but from whom every deliverance must
always be acknowledged to proceed!
When we had talked a while, the captain told me he had brought me some little
refreshment, such as the ship afforded, and such as the wretches that had been so long his
masters had not plundered him of. Upon this he called aloud to the boat, and bade his men
bring the things ashore that were for the governor; and indeed it was a present, as if I had
been one, not that was to be carried away along with them, but as if I had been to dwell
upon the island still and they were to go without me.
First, he had brought me a case of bottles full of excellent cordial waters, six large
bottles of Madeira wine; the bottles held two quarts apiece; two pound of excellent good
tobacco, twelve good pieces of the ship’s beef, and six pieces of pork, with a bag of peas,
and about a hundredweight of biscuit.
He brought me also a box of sugar, a box of flour, a bag full of lemons, and two bottles
of lime juice, and abundance of other things. But besides these, and what was a thousand
times more useful to me, he brought me six clean new shirts, six very good neckcloths,
two pair of gloves, one pair of shoes, a hat, and one pair of stockings, and a very good suit
of clothes of his own, which had been worn but very little. In a word, he clothed me from
head to foot.
It was a very kind and agreeable present, as anyone may imagine, to one in my
circumstances. But never was anything in the world of that kind so unpleasant, awkward,
and uneasy as it was to me to wear such clothes at their first putting on.
After these ceremonies passed, and after all his good things were brought into my little
apartment, we began to consult what was to be done with the prisoners we had; for it was
worth considering whether we might venture to take them away with us or no, especially
two of them, whom we knew to be incorrigible and refractory to the last degree; and the
captain said he knew they were such rogues that there was no obliging them, and if he did
carry them away, it must be in irons, as malefactors, to be delivered over to justice at the
first English colony he could come at; and I found that the captain himself was very
anxious about it.
Upon this, I told him that if he desired it, I durst undertake to bring the two men he
spoke of to make it their own request that he should leave them upon the island. ‘‘I should
be very glad of that,’’ says the captain, ‘‘with all my heart.’’
‘‘Well,’’ says I, ‘‘I will send for them up, and talk with them for you’’; so I caused
Friday and the two hostages, for they were now discharged, their comrades having
performed their promise; I say, I caused them to go to the cave and bring up the five men,
pinioned as they were, to the bower, and keep them there till I came.
After some time I came thither dressed in my new habit, and now I was called governor
again; being all met, and the captain with me, I caused the men to be brought before me,
and I told them I had had a full account of their villainous behaviour to the captain, and
how they had run away with the ship and were preparing to commit further robberies, but
that Providence had ensnared them in their own ways and that they were fallen into the pit
which they had digged for others.
I let them know that by my direction the ship had been seized, that she lay now in the
road, and they might see by and by that their new captain had received the reward of his
villainy; for that they might see him hanging at the yardarm.
That as to them, I wanted to know what they had to say, why I should not execute them
as pirates taken in the fact, as by my commission they could not doubt I had authority to
do.
One of them answered in the name of the rest that they had nothing to say but this, that
when they were taken, the captain promised them their lives, and they humbly implored
my mercy. But I told them I knew not what mercy to show them; for, as for myself, I had
resolved to quit the island with all my men, and had taken passage with the captain to go
for England. And as for the captain, he could not carry them to England other than as
prisoners in irons, to be tried for mutiny and running away with the ship; the consequence
of which, they must needs know, would be the gallows; so that I could not tell which was
best for them, unless they had a mind to take their fate in the island; if they desired that, I
did not care, as I had liberty to leave it; I had some inclination to give them their lives, if
they thought they could shift on shore.
They seemed very thankful for it, said they would much rather venture to stay there
than to be carried to England to be hanged; so I left it on that issue.
However, the captain seemed to make some difficulty of it, as if he durst not leave them
there. Upon this I seemed a little angry with the captain, and told him that they were my
prisoners, not his; and that seeing I had offered them so much favour, I would be as good
as my word; and that if he did not think fit to consent to it, I would set them at liberty, as I
found them; and if he did not like it, he might take them again if he could catch them.
Upon this they appeared very thankful, and I accordingly set them at liberty, and bade
them retire into the woods, to the place whence they came, and I would leave them some
firearms, some ammunition, and some directions how they should live very well, if they
thought fit.
Upon this I prepared to go on board the ship, but told the captain that I would stay that
night to prepare my things, and desired him to go on board in the meantime, and keep all
right in the ship, and send the boat on shore the next day for me; ordering him in the
meantime to cause the new captain who was killed to be hanged at the yardarm, that these
men might see him.
When the captain was gone, I sent for the men up to me to my apartment and entered
seriously into discourse with them of their circumstances. I told them I thought they had
made a right choice; that if the captain carried them away, they would certainly be hanged.
I showed them the new captain hanging at the yardarm of the ship, and told them they had
nothing less to expect.
When they had all declared their willingness to stay, I then told them I would let them
into the story of my living there, and put them into the way of making it easy to them.
Accordingly I gave them the whole history of the place and of my coming to it; showed
them my fortifications, the way I made my bread, planted my corn, cured my grapes; and
in a word, all that was necessary to make them easy. I told them the story also of the
sixteen Spaniards that were to be expected; for whom I left a letter, and made them
promise to treat them in common with themselves.
I left them my firearms, viz., five muskets, three fowling pieces, and three swords. I had
above a barrel and half of powder left; for after the first year or two I used but little, and
wasted none. I gave them a description of the way I managed the goats, and directions to
milk and fatten them, and to make both butter and cheese.
In a word, I gave them every part of my own story; and I told them I would prevail with
the captain to leave them two barrels of gunpowder more and some garden seeds, which I
told them I would have been very glad of; also I gave them the bag of peas which the
captain had brought me to eat, and bade them be sure to sow and increase them.
Having done all this, I left them the next day and went on board the ship. We prepared
immediately to sail, but did not weigh that night. The next morning early, two of the five
men came swimming to the ship’s side, and making a most lamentable complaint of the
other three, begged to be taken into the ship, for God’s sake, for they should be murdered,
and begged the captain to take them on board, though he hanged them immediately.
Upon this the captain pretended to have no power without me; but after some difficulty,
and after their solemn promises of amendment, they were taken on board, and were some
time after soundly whipped and pickled; after which, they proved very honest and quiet
fellows.
Some time after this, the boat was ordered on shore, the tide being up, with the things
promised to the men, to which the captain, at my intercession, caused their chests and
clothes to be added, which they took and were very thankful for; I also encouraged them
by telling them that if it lay in my way to send any vessel to take them in, I would not
forget them.
When I took leave of this island, I carried on board for relics the great goatskin cap I
had made, my umbrella, and one of my parrots; also I forgot not to take the money I
formerly mentioned, which had lain by me so long useless that it was grown rusty, or
tarnished, and could hardly pass for silver, till it had been a little rubbed and handled; as
also the money I found in the wreck of the Spanish ship.
And thus I left the island, the 19th of December, as I found by the ship’s account, in the
year 1686, after I had been upon it eight-and-twenty years, two months, and nineteen days;
being delivered from this second captivity the same day of the month that I first made my
escape in the barco-longo, from among the Moors of Sallee.
In this vessel, after a long voyage, I arrived in England, the 11th of June, in the year of
1687, having been thirty-and-five years absent.
When I came to England, I was as perfect a stranger to all the world as if I had never
been known there. My benefactor and faithful steward, whom I had left in trust with my
money, was alive, but had had great misfortunes in the world; was become a widow the
second time, and very low in the world. I made her easy as to what she owed me, assuring
her I would give her no trouble; but on the contrary, in gratitude to her former care and
faithfulness to me, I relieved her as my little stock would afford, which at that time would
indeed allow me to do but little for her; but I assured her I would never forget her former
kindness to me; nor did I forget her, when I had sufficient to help her, as shall be observed
in its place.
I went down afterwards into Yorkshire; but my father was dead, and my mother and all
the family extinct, except that I found two sisters, and two of the children of one of my
brothers; and as I had been long ago given over for dead, there had been no provision
made for me; so that, in a word, I found nothing to relieve or assist me; and that little
money I had would not do much for me as to settling in the world.
I met with one piece of gratitude indeed, which I did not expect; and this was that the
master of the ship, whom I had so happily delivered, and by the same means saved the
ship and cargo, having given a very handsome account to the owners of the manner how I
had saved the lives of the men and the ship, they invited me to meet them, and some other
merchants concerned, and all together made me a very handsome compliment upon the
subject, and a present of almost two hundred pounds sterling.
But after making several reflections upon the circumstances of my life, and how little
way this would go towards settling me in the world, I resolved to go to Lisbon and see if I
might not come by some information of the state of my plantation in Brazil, and of what
was become of my partner, who I had reason to suppose had some years now given me
over for dead.
With this view I took shipping for Lisbon, where I arrived in April following; my man
Friday accompanying me very honestly in all these ramblings, and proving a most faithful
servant upon all occasions.
 I Find My Wealth All About Me
WHEN I came to Lisbon, I found out, by inquiry, and to my particular satisfaction, my old
friend the captain of the ship, who first took me up at sea off of the shore of Africa. He
was now grown old and had left off the sea, having put his son, who was far from a young
man, into his ship; and who still used the Brazil trade. The old man did not know me, and,
indeed, I hardly knew him; but I soon brought him to my remembrance, and as soon
brought myself to his remembrance, when I told him who I was.
After some passionate expressions of the old acquaintance, I inquired, you may be sure,
after my plantation and my partner. The old man told me he had not been in Brazil for
about nine years; but that he could assure me that when he came away my partner was
living, but the trustees, whom I had joined with him to take cognizance of my part, were
both dead; that, however, he believed that I would have a very good account of the
improvement of the plantation; for that, upon the general belief of my being cast away and
drowned, my trustees had given in the account of the produce of my part of the plantation
to the procurator fiscal, who had appropriated it, in case I never came to claim it, one third
to the king, and two thirds to the monastery of St. Augustine, to be expended for the
benefit of the poor and for the conversion of the Indians to the Catholic faith; but that if I
appeared, or anyone for me, to claim the inheritance, it should be restored; only that the
improvement, or annual production, being distributed to charitable uses, could not be
restored; but he assured me that the steward of the king’s revenue (from lands) and the
proviedore, or steward of the monastery, had taken great care all along that the incumbent,
that is to say, my partner, gave every year a faithful account of the produce, of which they
received duly my moiety.
I asked him if he knew to what height of improvement he had brought the plantation,
and whether he thought it might be worth looking after; or whether, on my going thither, I
should meet with no obstruction to my possessing my just right in the moiety.
He told me he could not tell exactly to what degree the plantation was improved; but
this he knew, that my partner was growing exceeding rich upon the enjoying but one half
of it; and that, to the best of his remembrance, he had heard that the king’s third of my
part, which was, it seems, granted away to some other monastery, or religious house,
amounted to above two hundred moidores a year; that as to my being restored to a quiet
possession of it, there was no question to be made of that, my partner being alive to
witness my title, and my name being also enrolled in the register of the country; also he
told me that the survivors of my two trustees were very fair, honest people, and very
wealthy; and he believed I would not only have their assistance for putting me in
possession, but would find a very considerable sum of money in their hands for my
account, being the produce of the farm while their fathers held the trust, and before it was
given up as above, which, as he remembered, was for about twelve years.
I showed myself a little concerned and uneasy at this account and inquired of the old
captain how it came to pass that the trustees should thus dispose my effects, when he knew
that I had made my will and had made him, the Portuguese captain, my universal heir, etc.
 He told me that was true; but that as there was no proof of my being dead, he could not
act as executor until some certain account should come of my death; and that besides, he
was not willing to intermeddle with a thing so remote; that it was true he had registered
my will and put in his claim; and could he have given any account of my being dead or
alive, he would have acted by procuration, and taken possession of the ingenio (so they
called the sugar-house) and had given his son, who was now at Brazil, order to do it.
‘‘But,’’ says the old man, ‘‘I have one piece of news to tell you, which perhaps may not
be so acceptable to you as the rest, and that is, that believing you were lost, and all the
world believing so also, your partner and trustees did offer to account to me, in your name,
for six or eight of the first years of profits, which I received; but there being at the time,’’
says he, ‘‘great disbursements for increasing the works, building an ingenio, and buying
slaves, it did not amount to near so much as afterwards it produced. However,’’ says the
old man, ‘‘I shall give you a true account of what I have received in all, and how I have
disposed of it.’’
After a few days’ further conference with this ancient friend, he brought me an account
of the six first years’ income of my plantation, signed by my partner and the merchant
trustees, being always delivered in goods, viz., tobacco in roll, and sugar in chests, besides
rum, molasses, etc., which is the consequence of a sugar work; and I found by this
account, that every year the income considerably increased; but as above, the
disbursement being large, the sum at first was small. However, the old man let me see that
he was debtor to me 470 moidores of gold, besides 60 chests of sugar, and 15 double rolls
of tobacco, which were lost in his ship; he having been shipwrecked coming home to
Lisbon, about eleven years after my leaving the place.
The good man then began to complain of his misfortunes, and how he had been obliged
to make use of my money to recover his losses, and buy him a share in a new ship.
‘‘However, my old friend,’’ says he, ‘‘you shall not want a supply in your necessity; and as
soon as my son returns, you shall be fully satisfied.’’
Upon this, he pulls out an old pouch, and gives me 160 Portugal moidores in gold; and
giving me the writings of his title to the ship, which his son was gone to Brazil in, of
which he was a quarter part owner, and his son another, he puts them both into my hands
for security of the rest.
I was too much moved with the honesty and kindness of the poor man to be able to bear
this; and remembering what he had done for me, how he had taken me up at sea, and how
generously he had used me on all occasions, and particularly how sincere a friend he was
now to me, I could hardly refrain weeping at what he said to me. Therefore, first I asked
him, if his circumstances admitted him to spare so much money at that time, and if it
would not straiten him. He told me he could not say but it might straiten him a little; but,
however, it was my money, and I might want it more than he. and I could hardly refrain
from tears while he spoke. In short, I took 100 of the moidores and called for a pen and
ink to give him a receipt for them; then I returned him the rest, and told him if ever I had
possession of the plantation, I would return the other to him also, as indeed I afterwards
did; and that as to the bill of sale of his part in his son’s ship, I would not take it by any
means; but that if I wanted the money, I found he was honest enough to pay me; and if I
did not, but came to receive what he gave me reason to expect, I would never have a
penny more from him.
When this was passed, the old man began to ask me if he should put me into a method
to make my claim to my plantation. I told him I thought to go over to it myself. He said I
might do so if I pleased; but that if I did not, there were ways enough to secure my right,
and immediately to appropriate the profits to my use; and as there were ships in the river
of Lisbon just ready to go away to Brazil, he made me enter my name in a public register,
with his affidavit, affirming upon oath that I was alive, and that I was the same person
who took up the land for the planting the said plantation at first.
This being regularly attested by a notary, and a procuration affixed, he directed me to
send it, with a letter of his writing, to a merchant of his acquaintance at the place, and then
proposed my staying with him till an account came of the return.
Never anything was more honourable than the proceedings upon this procuration; for in
less than seven months I received a large packet from the survivors of my trustees, the
merchants for whose account I went to sea, in which were the following particular letters
and papers enclosed.
First, there was the account current of the produce of my farm, or plantation, from the
year when their fathers had balanced with my old Portugal captain, being for six years; the
balance appeared to be 1174 moidores in my favour.
Secondly, there was the account of four years more, while they kept the effects in their
hands, before the government claimed the administration, as being the effects of a person
not to be found, which they called civil death; and the balance of this, the value of the
plantation increasing, amounted to [38,892] crusadoes, which made 3241 moidores.
Thirdly, there was the Prior of the Augustines’ account, who had received the profits for
above fourteen years; but not being to account for what was disposed to the hospital, very
honestly declared he had 872 moidores not distributed, which he acknowledged to my
account; as to the king’s part, that refunded nothing.
There was a letter of my partner’s, congratulating me very affectionately upon my being
alive, giving me an account how the estate was improved, and what it produced a year,
with a particular of the number of squares or acres that it contained; how planted, how
many slaves there were upon it; and making two-and-twenty crosses for blessings, told me
he had said so many Ave Marias to thank the Blessed Virgin that I was alive; inviting me
very passionately to come over and take possession of my own; and in the meantime to
give him orders to whom he should deliver my effects, if I did not come myself;
concluding with a hearty tender of his friendship, and that of his family, and sent me, as a
present, seven fine leopards’ skins, which he had, it seems, received from Africa, by some
other ship which he had sent thither, and who, it seems, had made a better voyage than I.
He sent me also five chests of excellent sweetmeats, and an hundred pieces of gold
uncoined, not quite so large as moidores.
By the same fleet, my two merchant trustees shipped me 1200 chests of sugar, 800 rolls
of tobacco, and the rest of the whole account in gold.
I might well say now, indeed, that the latter end of Job was better than the beginning. It
is impossible to express here the flutterings of my very heart when I looked over these
letters, and especially when I found all my wealth about me; for as the Brazil ships come
all in fleets, the same ships which brought my letters brought my goods; and the effects
were safe in the river before the letters came to my hand. In a word, I turned pale, and
grew sick; and had not the old man run and fetched me a cordial, I believe the sudden
surprise of joy had overset Nature, and I had died upon the spot.
Nay, after that, I continued very ill, and was so some hours, till a physician being sent
for, and something of the real cause of my illness being known, he ordered me to be let
blood; after which I had relief and grew well. But I verily believe, if it had not been eased
by a vent given in that manner to the spirits, I should have died.
I was now master, all on a sudden, of above #5000 sterling in money, and had an estate,
as I might well call it, in Brazil, of above a thousand pounds a year, as sure as an estate of
lands in England. And in a word, I was in a condition which I scarce knew how to
understand, or how to compose myself for the enjoyment of it.
The first thing I did was to recompense my original benefactor, my good old captain,
who had been first charitable to me in my distress, kind to me in the beginning, and honest
to me at the end. I showed him all that was sent me; I told him that next to the Providence
of Heaven, which disposes all things, it was owing to him; and that it now lay on me to
reward him, which I would do a hundredfold. So I first returned to him the hundred
moidores I had received of him; then I sent for a notary, and caused him to draw up a
general release or discharge for the 470 moidores, which he had acknowledged he owed
me, in the fullest and firmest manner possible; after which, I caused a procuration to be
drawn, empowering him to be my receiver of the annual profits of my plantation, and
appointing my partner to account to him and make the returns by the usual fleets to him in
my name; and a clause in the end, being a grant of one hundred moidores a year to him,
during his life, out of the effects, and fifty moidores a year to his son after him, for his life.
And thus I requited my old man.
I was now to consider which way to steer my course next, and what to do with the estate
that Providence had thus put into my hands; and indeed, I had more care upon my head
now than I had in my silent state of life in the island, where I wanted nothing but what I
had, and had nothing but what I wanted; whereas I had now a great charge upon me, and
my business was how to secure it. I had ne’er a cave now to hide my money in, or a place
where it might lie without lock or key, till it grew mouldy and tarnished before anybody
would meddle with it. On the contrary, I knew not where to put it, or whom to trust with it.
My old patron, the captain, indeed was honest, and that was the only refuge I had.
In the next place, my interest in Brazil seemed to summon me thither, but now I could
not tell how to think of going thither till I had settled my affairs and left my effects in
some safe hands behind me. At first I thought of my old friend the widow, who I knew
was honest, and would be just to me; but then she was in years, and but poor, and for
aught I knew, might be in debt; so that in a word, I had no way but to go back to England
myself, and take my effects with me.
It was some months, however, before I resolved upon this; and therefore, as I had
rewarded the old captain fully, and to his satisfaction, who had been my former benefactor,
so I began to think of my poor widow, whose husband had been my first benefactor, and
she, while it was in her power, my faithful steward and instructor. So the first thing I did, I
got a merchant in Lisbon to write to his correspondent in London, not only to pay a bill,
but to go find her out and carry her in money a hundred pounds from me, and to talk with
her and comfort her in her poverty, by telling her she should, if I lived, have a further
supply. At the same time I sent my two sisters in the country each of them a hundred
pounds, they being, though not in want, yet not in very good circumstances; one having
been married and left a widow, and the other having a husband not so kind to her as he
should be.
But among all my relations, or acquaintances, I could not yet pitch upon one to whom I
durst commit the gross of my stock, that I might go away to Brazil and leave things safe
behind me; and this greatly perplexed me.
I had once a mind to have gone to Brazil, and have settled myself there; for I was, as it
were, naturalized to the place; but I had some little scruple in my mind about religion,
which insensibly drew me back, of which I shall say more presently. However, it was not
religion that kept me from going there for the present; and as I had made no scruple of
being openly of the religion of the country, all the while I was among them, so neither did
I yet; only that now and then having of late thought more of it than formerly, when I began
to think of living and dying among them, I began to regret my having professed myself a
Papist, and thought it might not be the best religion to die with.
But, as I have said, this was not the main thing that kept me from going to Brazil, but
that really I did not know with whom to leave my effects behind me; so I resolved at last
to go to England with it, where, if I arrived, I concluded I should make some
acquaintance, or find some relations that would be faithful to me; and accordingly I
prepared to go for England with all my wealth.
In order to prepare things for my going home, I first (the Brazil fleet being just going
away) resolved to give answers suitable to the just and faithful account of things I had
from thence; and first, to the Prior of St. Augustine I wrote a letter full of thanks for their
just dealings, and the offer of the 872 moidores which was indisposed of, which I desired
might be given, 500 to the monastery, and 372 to the poor, as the Prior should direct,
desiring the good padre’s prayers for me, and the like.
I wrote next a letter of thanks to my two trustees, with all the acknowledgement that so
much justice and honesty called for; as for sending them any present, they were far above
having any occasion of it.
Lastly, I wrote to my partner, acknowledging his industry in the improving the
plantation and his integrity in increasing the stock of the works, giving him instructions
for his future government of my part, according to the powers I had left with my old
patron, to whom I desired him to send whatever became due to me, till he should hear
from me more particularly; assuring him that it was my intention not only to come to him,
but to settle myself there for the remainder of my life. To this I added a very handsome
present of some Italian silks for his wife and two daughters, for such the captain’s son
informed me he had; with two pieces of fine English broadcloth, the best I could get in
Lisbon, five pieces of black baize, and some Flanders lace of a good value.
Having thus settled my affairs, sold my cargo, and turned all my effects into good bills
of exchange, my next difficulty was, which way to go to England. I had been accustomed
enough to the sea, and yet I had a strange aversion to going to England by sea at that time;
and though I could give no reason for it, yet the difficulty increased upon me so much, that
though I had once shipped my baggage in order to go, yet I altered my mind, and that not
once but two or three times.
It is true I had been very unfortunate by sea, and this might be one of the reasons. But
let no man slight the strong impulses of his own thoughts in cases of such moment. Two of
the ships which I had singled out to go in, I mean more particularly singled out than any
other, that is to say, so as in one of them to put my things on board and in the other to have
agreed with the captain; I say, two of these ships miscarried, viz., one was taken by the
Algerines, and the other was cast away on the Start, near Torbay, and all the people
drowned except three; so that in either of those vessels I had been made miserable; and in
which most, it was hard to say.
Having been thus harassed in my thoughts, my old pilot, to whom I communicated
everything, pressed me earnestly not to go by sea, but either to go by land to the Groyne,
and cross over the Bay of Biscay to Rochelle, from whence it was but an easy and safe
journey by land to Paris, and so to Calais and Dover; or to go up to Madrid, and so all the
way by land through France.
In a word, I was so prepossessed against my going by sea at all, except from Calais to
Dover, that I resolved to travel all the way by land; which, as I was not in haste, and did
not value the charge, was by much the pleasanter way; and to make it more so, my old
captain brought an English gentleman, the son of a merchant in Lisbon, who was willing
to travel with me. After which, we picked up two more English merchants also, and two
young Portuguese gentlemen, the last going to Paris only; so that we were in all six of us,
and five servants; the two merchants and the two Portuguese contenting themselves with
one servant between two, to save the charge; and as for me, I got an English sailor to
travel with me as a servant, besides my man Friday, who was too much a stranger to be
capable of supplying the place of a servant on the road.
 We Cross the Mountains
IN THIS manner I set out from Lisbon; and our company being all very well mounted and
armed, we made a little troop, whereof they did me the honour to call me captain, as well
because I was the oldest man as because I had two servants, and, indeed, was the original
of the whole journey.
As I have troubled you with none of my sea journals, so I shall trouble you now with
none of my land journal; but some adventures that happened to us in this tedious and
difficult journey I must not omit.
When we came to Madrid, we, being all of us strangers to Spain, were willing to stay
some time to see the court of Spain, and to see what was worth observing; but it being the
latter part of the summer, we hastened away, and set out from Madrid about the middle of
October. But when we came to the edge of Navarre, we were alarmed at several towns on
the way with an account that so much snow was fallen on the French side of the mountains
that several travellers were obliged to come back to Pampeluna, after having attempted, at
an extreme hazard, to pass on.
When we came to Pampeluna itself, we found it so indeed; and to me that had been
always used to a hot climate, and indeed to countries where we could scarce bear any
clothes on, the cold was insufferable; nor, indeed, was it more painful than it was
surprising to come but ten days before out of the Old Castile, where the weather was not
only warm, but very hot, and immediately to feel a wind from the Pyrenean mountains so
very keen, so severely cold, as to be intolerable and to endanger benumbing and perishing
of our fingers and toes.
Poor Friday was really frighted when he saw the mountains all covered with snow, and
felt cold weather, which he had never seen or felt before in his life.
To mend the matter, when we came to Pampeluna, it continued snowing with so much
violence, and so long, that the people said winter was come before its time, and the roads
which were difficult before were now quite impassable; for, in a word, the snow lay in
some places too thick for us to travel; and being not hard frozen, as is the case in northern
countries, there was no going without being in danger of being buried alive every step. We
stayed no less than twenty days at Pampeluna; when (seeing the winter coming on, and no
likelihood of its being better, for it was the severest winter all over Europe that had been
known in the memory of man) I proposed that we should all go away to Fontarabia, and
there take shipping for Bordeaux, which was a very little voyage.
But while we were considering this, there came in four French gentlemen, who, having
been stopped on the French side of the passes, as we were on the Spanish, had found out a
guide, who, traversing the country near the head of Languedoc, had brought them over the
mountains by such ways that they were not much incommoded with the snow; and where
they met with snow in any quantity, they said it was frozen hard enough to bear them and
their horses.
We sent for this guide, who told us he would undertake to carry us the same way with
no hazard from the snow, provided we were armed sufficiently to protect us from wild
beasts; for, he said, upon these great snows it was frequent for some wolves to show
themselves at the foot of the mountains, being made ravenous for want of food, the ground
being covered with snow. We told him we were well enough prepared for such creatures as
they were, if he would ensure us from a kind of two-legged wolves, which we were told
we were in most danger from, especially on the French side of the mountains.
He satisfied us there was no danger of that kind in the way that we were to go; so we
readily agreed to follow him, as did also twelve other gentlemen, with their servants, some
French, some Spanish, who, as I said, had attempted to go, and were obliged to come back
again.
Accordingly, we all set out from Pampeluna, with our guide, on the 15th of November;
and indeed, I was surprised when, instead of going forward, he came directly back with us,
on the same road that we came from Madrid, above twenty miles; when, being passed two
rivers, and come into the plain country, we found ourselves in a warm climate again,
where the country was pleasant, and no snow to be seen; but on a sudden, turning to the
left, he approached the mountains another way; and though it is true the hills and
precipices looked dreadful, yet he made so many tours, such meanders, and led us by such
winding ways, that we were insensibly past the height of the mountains without being
much encumbered with the snow; and all on a sudden he showed us the pleasant fruitful
provinces of Languedoc and Gascoigne, all green and flourishing, though indeed it was at
a great distance, and we had some rough way to pass yet.
We were a little uneasy, however, when we found it snowed one whole day and a night
so fast that we could not travel; but he bade us be easy, we should soon be past it all. We
found, indeed, that we began to descend every day, and to come more north than before;
and so, depending upon our guide, we went on.
It was about two hours before night, when our guide being something before us, and not
just in sight, out rushed three monstrous wolves, and after them a bear, out of a hollow
way, adjoining to a thick wood; two of the wolves flew upon the guide, and had he been
half a mile before us, he had been devoured indeed before we could have helped him. One
of them fastened upon his horse, and the other attacked the man with that violence that he
had not time, or not presence of mind enough, to draw his pistol, but holloed and cried out
to us most lustily; my man Friday being next to me, I bade him ride up and see what was
the matter; as soon as Friday came in sight of the man, he holloed as loud as the other, “O
master! O master!’’ but, like a bold fellow, rode directly up to the poor man and with his
pistol shot the wolf that attacked him into the head.
It was happy for the poor man that it was my man Friday; for he, having been used to
that kind of creature in his country, had no fear upon him, but went close up to him and
shot him, as above; whereas any of us would have fired at a farther distance, and have
perhaps either missed the wolf, or endangered shooting the man.
But it was enough to have terrified a bolder man than I, and indeed it alarmed all our
company, when, with the noise of Friday’s pistol, we heard on both sides the dismalest
howling of wolves, and the noise redoubled by the echo of the mountains, that it was to us
as if there had been a prodigious multitude of them; and perhaps, indeed, there was not
such a few as that we had no cause of apprehensions.
However, as Friday had killed this wolf, the other that had fastened upon the horse left
him immediately and fled; having happily fastened upon his head, where the bosses of the
bridle had stuck in his teeth, so that he had not done him much hurt. The man, indeed, was
most hurt; for the raging creature had bit him twice, once on the arm, and the other time a
little above his knee; and he was just as it were tumbling down by the disorder of his
horse, when Friday came up and shot the wolf.
It is easy to suppose that at the noise of Friday’s pistol we all mended our pace and rid
up as fast as the way (which was very difficult) would give us leave, to see what was the
matter; as soon as we came clear of the trees, which blinded us before, we saw clearly
what had been the case, and how Friday had disengaged the poor guide; though we did not
presently discern what kind of creature it was he had killed.
But never was a fight managed so hardily, and in such a surprising manner, as that
which followed between Friday and the bear, which gave us all (though at first we were
surprised and afraid for him) the greatest diversion imaginable. As the bear is a heavy,
clumsy creature, and does not gallop as the wolf does, who is swift and light, so he has
two particular qualities, which generally are the rule of his actions; first, as to men, who
are not his proper prey; I say, not his proper prey, because though I can’t say what
excessive hunger might do, which was now their case, the ground being all covered with
snow; but as to men, he does not usually attempt them, unless they first attack him. On the
contrary, if you meet him in the woods, if you don’t meddle with him, he won’t meddle
with you; but then you must take care to be very civil to him, and give him the road, for he
is a very nice gentleman, he won’t go a step out of his way for a prince; nay, if you are
really afraid, your best way is to look another way and keep going on; for sometimes if
you stop, and stand still, and look steadfastly at him, he takes it for an affront; but if you
throw or toss anything at him, and it hits him, though it were but a bit of a stick as big as
your finger, he takes it for an affront and sets all his other business aside to pursue his
revenge; for he will have satisfaction in point of honour; that is his first quality. The next
is, that if he be once affronted, he will never leave you, night or day, till he has his
revenge; but follows at a good round rate till he overtakes you.
My man Friday had delivered our guide, and when we came up to him, he was helping
him off from his horse; for the man was both hurt and frighted, and indeed, the last more
than the first; when on the sudden, we spied the bear come out of the wood, and a vast
monstrous one it was, the biggest by far that ever I saw. We were all a little surprised when
we saw him, but when Friday saw him, it was easy to see joy and courage in the fellow’s
countenance. “O! O! O!” says Friday, three times, pointing to him; “O master! You give
me te leave, me shakee te hand with him, me make you good laugh.’’
I was surprised to see the fellow so pleased. ‘‘You fool you,’’ says I, ‘‘he will eat you
up.’’ ‘‘Eatee me up! Eatee me up!’’ says Friday, twice over again; ‘‘me eatee him up. Me
make you good laugh. You all stay here, me show you good laugh!’’ So down he sits, and
gets his boots off in a moment, and put on a pair of pumps (as we call the flat shoes they
wear) and which he had in his pocket, gives my other servant his horse, and with his gun
away he flew, swift like the wind.
The bear was walking softly on, and offered to meddle with nobody till Friday coming
pretty near, calls to him, as if the bear could understand him. ‘‘Hark ye, hark ye,’’ says
Friday, ‘‘me speakee wit you.’’ We followed at a distance; for now being come down on
the Gascoigne side of the mountains, we were entered a vast great forest, where the
country was plain and pretty open, though many trees in it scattered here and there.
Friday, who had, as we say, the heels of the bear, came up with him quickly, and takes
up a great stone and throws at him, and hit him just on the head, but did him no more harm
than if he had thrown it against a wall; but it answered Friday’s end, for the rogue was so
void of fear that he did it purely to make the bear follow him and show us some laugh, as
he called it.
As soon as the bear felt the stone, and saw him, he turns about, and comes after him,
taking devilish long strides, and shuffling along at a strange rate, so as would have put a
horse to a middling gallop; away runs Friday, and takes his course, as if he run towards us
for help; so we all resolved to fire at once upon the bear, and deliver my man; though I
was angry at him heartily for bringing the bear back upon us, when he was going about his
own business another way; and especially I was angry that he had turned the bear upon us,
and then run away; and I called out, ‘‘You dog,’’ said I, ‘‘is this your making us laugh?
Come away, and take your horse, that we may shoot the creature.’’ He hears me, and cries
out, ‘‘No shoot, no shoot; stand still, you get much laugh.’’ And as the nimble creature ran
two foot for the beast’s one, he turned on a sudden, on one side of us, and seeing a great
oak tree fit for his purpose, he beckoned to us to follow; and doubling his pace, he gets
nimbly up the tree, laying his gun down upon the ground, at about five or six yards from
the bottom of the tree.
The bear soon came to the tree, and we followed at a distance; the first thing he did, he
stopped at the gun, smelled at it, but let it lie, and up he scrambles into the tree, climbing
like a cat, though so monstrously heavy. I was amazed at the folly, as I thought it, of my
man, and could not for my life see anything to laugh at yet, till seeing the bear get up the
tree, we all rode nearer to him.
When we came to the tree, there was Friday got out to the small end of a large limb of
the tree, and the bear got about halfway to him; as soon as the bear got out to that part
where the limb of the tree was weaker, ‘‘Ha!’’ says he to us, ‘‘now you see me teachee the
bear dance’’; so he falls a-jumping and shaking the bough, at which the bear began to
totter, but stood still and begun to look behind him, to see how he should get back; then,
indeed, we did laugh heartily. But Friday had not done with him by a great deal; when he
sees him stand still, he calls out to him again, as if he had supposed the bear could speak
English, ‘‘What, you no come farther? pray you come farther’’; so he left jumping and
shaking the bough; and the bear, just as if he had understood what he said, did come a
little farther; then he fell a-jumping again, and the bear stopped again.
We thought now was a good time to knock him on the head, and I called to Friday to
stand still, and we would shoot the bear; but he cried out earnestly, “O pray! O pray! No
shoot, me shoot by and then’’; he would have said ‘‘by and by.’’ However, to shorten the
story, Friday danced so much, and the bear stood so ticklish, that we had laughing enough
indeed, but still could not imagine what the fellow would do; for first we thought he
depended upon shaking the bear off; and we found the bear was too cunning for that too;
for he would not go out far enough to be thrown down, but clings fast with his great broad
claws and feet, so that we could not imagine what would be the end of it and where the
jest would be at last.
But Friday put us out of doubt quickly; for seeing the bear cling fast to the bough, and
that he would not be persuaded to come any farther, ‘‘Well, well,’’ says Friday, ‘‘you no
come farther, me go, me go; you no come to me, me come to you’’; and upon this, he goes
out to the smallest end of the bough, where it would bend with his weight, and gently lets
himself down by it, sliding down the bough, till he came near enough to jump down on his
feet, and away he ran to his gun, takes it up, and stands still.
‘‘Well,’’ said I to him, ‘‘Friday, what will you do now? Why don’t you shoot him?’’ ‘‘No
shoot,’’ says Friday, ‘‘no yet; me shoot now, me no kill; me stay, give you one more
laugh’’; and indeed so he did, as you will see presently; for when the bear saw his enemy
gone, he came back from the bough where he stood, but did it mighty leisurely, looking
behind him every step and coming backward till he got into the body of the tree; then with
the same hinder end foremost, he came down the tree, grasping it with his claws, and
moving one foot at a time, very leisurely; at this juncture, and just before he could set his
hind feet upon the ground, Friday stepped up close to him, clapped the muzzle of his piece
into his ear, and shot him dead as a stone.
Then the rogue turned about to see if we did not laugh; and when he saw we were
pleased by our looks, he falls a-laughing himself very loud. ‘‘So we kill bear in my
country,’’ says Friday. ‘‘So you kill them?’’ says I; ‘‘why, you have no guns.’’ ‘‘No,’’ says
he, ‘‘no gun, but shoot, great much long arrow.’’
This was, indeed, a good diversion to us; but we were still in a wild place, and our guide
very much hurt, and what to do we hardly knew; the howling of wolves ran much in my
head; and, indeed, except the noise I once heard on the shore of Africa, of which I have
said something already, I never heard anything that filled me with so much horror.
These things, and the approach of night, called us off, or else, as Friday would have had
us, we should certainly have taken the skin of this monstrous creature off, which was
worth saving; but we had three leagues to go, and our guide hastened us; so we left him
and went forward on our journey.
The ground was still covered with snow, though not so deep and dangerous as on the
mountains; and the ravenous creatures, as we heard afterwards, were come down into the
forest and plain country, pressed by hunger to seek for food; and had done a great deal of
mischief in the villages, where they surprised the country people, killed a great many of
their sheep and horses, and some people too.
We had one dangerous place to pass, which our guide told us, if there were any more
wolves in the country, we should find them there; and this was a small plain, surrounded
with woods on every side, and a long narrow defile or lane, which we were to pass to get
through the wood, and then we should come to the village where we were to lodge.
It was within half an hour of sunset when we entered the first wood; and a little after
sunset when we came into the plain. We met with nothing in the first wood, except that in
a little plain within the wood, which was not above two furlongs over, we saw five great
wolves cross the road, full speed one after another, as if they had been in chase of some
prey, and had it in view; they took no notice of us, and were gone and out of our sight in a
few moments.
Upon this our guide, who, by the way, was a wretched faint-hearted fellow, bade us
keep in a ready posture; for he believed there were more wolves a-coming.
We kept our arms ready, and our eyes about us, but we saw no more wolves, till we
came through the wood, which was near half a league, and entered the plain; as soon as we
came into the plain, we had occasion enough to look about us. The first object we met
with was a dead horse; that is to say, a poor horse which the wolves had killed, and at least
a dozen of them at work; we could not say eating of him, but picking of his bones rather;
for they had eaten up all the flesh before.
We did not think fit to disturb them at their feast, neither did they take much notice of
us. Friday would have let fly at them, but I would not suffer him by any means; for I found
we were like to have more business upon our hands than we were aware of. We were not
gone half over the plain but we began to hear the wolves howl in the wood on our left in a
frightful manner, and presently after, we saw about a hundred coming on directly towards
us, all in a body, and most of them in a line, as regularly as an army drawn up by
experienced officers. I scarce knew in what manner to receive them; but found to draw
ourselves in a close line was the only way. So we formed in a moment. But that we might
not have too much interval, I ordered that only every other man should fire, and that the
others who had not fired should stand ready to give them a second volley immediately, if
they continued to advance upon us, and that then those who had fired at first should not
pretend to load their fusils again, but stand ready with every one a pistol; for we were all
armed with a fusil and a pair of pistols each man; so we were by this method able to fire
six volleys, half of us at a time; however, at present we had no necessity; for upon firing
the first volley, the enemy made a full stop, being terrified as well with the noise as with
the fire; four of them being shot into the head, dropped, several others were wounded, and
went bleeding off, as we could see by the snow. I found they stopped, but did not
immediately retreat; whereupon, remembering that I had been told that the fiercest
creatures were terrified at the voice of a man, I caused all our company to hollo as loud as
we could; and I found the notion not altogether mistaken, for upon our shout they began to
retire and turn about; then I ordered a second volley to be fired in their rear, which put
them to the gallop, and away they went to the woods.
This gave us leisure to charge our pieces again, and that we might lose no time, we kept
going; but we had but little more than loaded our fusils, and put ourselves into a readiness,
when we heard a terrible noise in the same wood, on our left, only that it was farther
onward the same way we were to go.
 The night was coming on, and the light began to be dusky, which made it worse on our
side; but the noise increasing, we could easily perceive that it was the howling and yelling
of those hellish creatures; and on a sudden, we perceived two or three troops of wolves,
one on our left, one behind us, and one on our front, so that we seemed to be surrounded
with ’em; however, as they did not fall upon us, we kept our way forward, as fast as we
could make our horses go, which, the way being very rough, was only a good large trot;
and in this manner we came in view of the entrance of a wood, through which we were to
pass, at the farther side of the plain; but we were greatly surprised when, coming nearer
the lane, or pass, we saw a confused number of wolves standing just at the entrance.
On a sudden, at another opening of the wood, we heard the noise of a gun; and looking
that way, out rushed a horse, with a saddle and a bridle on him, flying like the wind, and
sixteen or seventeen wolves after him, full speed; indeed, the horse had the heels of them;
but as we supposed that he could not hold it at that rate, we doubted not but they would
get up with him at last, and no question but they did.
But here we had a most horrible sight; for riding up to the entrance where the horse
came out, we found the carcass of another horse, and of two men, devoured by the
ravenous creatures, and one of the men was no doubt the same whom we heard fire the
gun; for there lay a gun just by him, fired off; but as to the man, his head and the upper
part of his body was eaten up.
This filled us with horror, and we knew not what course to take, but the creatures
resolved us soon; for they gathered about us presently in hopes of prey; and I verily
believe there were three hundred of them. It happened very much to our advantage that at
the entrance into the wood, but a little way from it, there lay some large timber trees,
which had been cut down the summer before, and I suppose lay there for carriage; I drew
my little troop in among those trees, and placing ourselves in a line, behind one long tree,
I advised them all to light, and keeping that tree before us, for a breastwork, to stand in a
triangle, or three fronts, enclosing our horses in the center.
We did so, and it was well we did; for never was a more furious charge than the
creatures made upon us in this place; they came on us with a growling kind of a noise and
mounted the piece of timber (which, as I said, was our breastwork) as if they were only
rushing upon their prey; and this fury of theirs, it seems, was principally occasioned by
their seeing our horses behind us, which was the prey they aimed at. I ordered our men to
fire as before, every other man; and they took their aim so sure that indeed they killed
several of the wolves at the first volley; but there was a necessity to keep a continual
firing; for they came on like devils, those behind pushing on those before.
When we had fired our second volley of our fusils, we thought they stopped a little, and
I hoped they would have gone off, but it was but a moment, for others came forward
again; so we fired two volleys of our pistols, and I believe in these four firings we killed
seventeen or eighteen of them, and lamed twice as many; yet they came on again.
I was loath to spend our last shot too hastily; so I called my servant, not my man Friday,
for he was better employed; for with the greatest dexterity imaginable, he had charged my
fusil and his own, while we were engaged; but as I said, I called my other man, and giving
him a horn of powder, I bade him lay a train all along the piece of timber, and let it be a
large train; he did so, and had but just time to get away, when the wolves came up to it,
and some were got up upon it, when I, snapping an uncharged pistol close to the powder,
set it on fire; those that were upon the timber were scorched with it, and six or seven of
them fell, or rather jumped, in among us, with the force and fright of the fire; we
dispatched these in an instant, and the rest were so frighted with the light, which the night,
for it was now very near dark, made more terrible, that they drew back a little.
Upon which I ordered our last pistols to be fired off in one volley, and after that we
gave a shout; upon this, the wolves turned tail, and we sallied immediately upon near
twenty lame ones, who we found struggling on the ground, and fell a-cutting them with
our swords, which answered our expectation; for the crying and howling they made was
better understood by their fellows, so that they all fled and left us.
We had, first and last, killed about threescore of them; and had it been daylight, we had
killed many more. The field of battle being thus cleared, we made forward again; for we
had still near a league to go. We heard the ravenous creatures howl and yell in the woods
as we went several times; and sometimes we fancied we saw some of them, but the snow
dazzling our eyes, we were not certain; so in about an hour more, we came to the town
where we were to lodge, which we found in a terrible fright, and all in arms; for it seems
that the night before the wolves and some bears had broke into the village and put them in
a terrible fright, and they were obliged to keep guard night and day, but especially in the
night, to preserve their cattle and indeed their people.
The next morning our guide was so ill, and his limbs swelled with the rankling of his
two wounds, that he could go no farther; so we were obliged to take a new guide there,
and go to Toulouse, where we found a warm climate, a fruitful pleasant country, and no
snow, no wolves, or anything like them; but when we told our story at Toulouse, they told
us it was nothing but what was ordinary in the great forest at the foot of the mountains,
especially when the snow lay on the ground. But they inquired much what kind of a guide
we had gotten, that would venture to bring us that way in such a severe season; and told us
it was very much we were not all devoured. When we told them how we placed ourselves,
and the horses in the middle, they blamed us exceedingly, and told us it was fifty to one
but we had been all destroyed; for it was the sight of the horses which made the wolves so
furious, seeing their prey; and that at other times they are really afraid of a gun; but they
being excessive hungry, and raging on that account, the eagerness to come at the horses
had made them senseless of danger; and that if we had not by the continued fire, and at
last by the stratagem of the train of powder, mastered them, it had been great odds but that
we had been torn to pieces; whereas, had we been content to have sat still on horseback,
and fired as horsemen, they would not have taken the horses so for much their own when
men were on their backs, as otherwise; and withal they told us that at last, if we had stood
all together, and left our horses, they would have been so eager to have devoured them,
that we might have come off safe, especially having our firearms in our hands, and being
so many in number.
For my part, I was never so sensible of danger in my life; for seeing above three
hundred devils come roaring and open-mouthed to devour us, and having nothing to
shelter us, or retreat to, I gave myself over for lost; and as it was, I believe I shall never
care to cross those mountains again; I think I would much rather go a thousand leagues by
sea, though I were sure to meet with a storm once a week.
 I Revisit My Island
I HAVE nothing uncommon to take notice of in my passage through France; nothing but
what other travellers have given an account of, with much more advantage than I can. I
travelled from Toulouse to Paris, and without any considerable stay came to Calais and
landed safe at Dover the 14th of January, after having had a severe cold season to travel in.
I was now come to the center of my travels, and had in a little time all my new-
discovered estate safe about me, the bills of exchange which I brought with me having
been very currently paid.
My principal guide and privy councillor was my good ancient widow, who, in gratitude
for the money I had sent her, thought no pains too much, or care too great, to employ for
me; and I trusted her so entirely with everything that I was perfectly easy as to the security
of my effects; and indeed, I was very happy from my beginning, and now to the end, in the
unspotted integrity of this good gentlewoman.
And now I began to think of leaving my effects with this woman and setting out for
Lisbon, and so to Brazil; but now another scruple came in my way, and that was religion;
for as I had entertained some doubts about the Roman religion, even while I was abroad,
especially in my state of solitude; so I knew there was no going to Brazil for me, much
less going to settle there, unless I resolved to embrace the Roman Catholic religion
without any reserve; unless, on the other hand, I resolved to be a sacrifice to my
principles, be a martyr for religion, and die in the Inquisition; so I resolved to stay at
home, and if I could find means for it, to dispose of my plantation.
To this purpose I wrote to my old friend at Lisbon, who in return gave me notice that he
could easily dispose of it there. But that if I thought fit to give him leave to offer it in my
name to the two merchants, the survivors of my trustees, who lived in Brazil, who must
fully understand the value of it, who lived just upon the spot, and who I knew were very
rich, so that he believed they would be fond of buying it, he did not doubt but I should
make 4 or 5,000 pieces of eight the more of it.
Accordingly I agreed, gave him order to offer it to them, and he did so; and in about
eight months more, the ship being then returned, he sent me account, that they had
accepted the offer, and had remitted 33,000 pieces of eight to a correspondent of theirs at
Lisbon to pay for it.
In return, I signed the instrument of sale in the form which they sent from Lisbon, and
sent it to my old man, who sent me bills of exchange for 32,800 pieces of eight to me, for
the estate; reserving the payment of 100 moidores a year to him, the old man, during his
life, and 50 moidores afterwards to his son for his life, which I had promised them, which
the plantation was to make good as a rent-charge. And thus I have given the first part of a
life of fortune and adventure, a life of Providence’s checker-work, and of a variety which
the world will seldom be able to show the like of. Beginning foolishly, but closing much
more happily than any part of it ever gave me leave so much as to hope for.
Anyone would think that in this state of complicated good fortune, I was past running
any more hazards; and so indeed I had been, if other circumstances had concurred, but I
was inured to a wandering life, had no family, not many relations, nor, however rich, had I
contracted much acquaintance; and though I had sold my estate in Brazil, yet I could not
keep the country out of my head, and had a great mind to be upon the wing again;
especially I could not resist the strong inclination I had to see my island, and to know if
the poor Spaniards were in being there, and how the rogues I left there had used them.
My true friend the widow earnestly dissuaded me from it, and so far prevailed with me
that for almost seven years she prevented my running abroad; during which time, I took
my two nephews, the children of one of my brothers, into my care. The eldest, having
something of his own, I bred up as a gentleman, and gave him a settlement of some
addition to his estate, after my decease; the other I put out to a captain of a ship; and after
five years, finding him a sensible, bold, enterprising young fellow, I put him into a good
ship, and sent him to sea. And this young fellow afterwards drew me in, as old as I was, to
further adventures myself.
In the meantime, I in part settled myself here; for first of all I married, and that not
either to my disadvantage or dissatisfaction, and had three children, two sons and one
daughter. But my wife dying, and my nephew coming home with good success from a
voyage to Spain, my inclination to go abroad and his importunity prevailed and engaged
me to go in his ship, as a private trader to the East Indies. This was in the year 1694.
In this voyage I visited my new colony in the island, saw my successors the Spaniards,
had the whole story of their lives, and of the villains I left there: how at first they insulted
the poor Spaniards, how they afterwards agreed, disagreed, united, separated, and how at
last the Spaniards were obliged to use violence with them, how they were subjected to the
Spaniards, how honestly the Spaniards used them; a history, if it were entered into, as full
of variety and wonderful accidents as my own part, particularly also as to their battles with
the Carib-beans, who landed several times upon the island, and as to the improvement
they made upon the island itself, and how five of them made an attempt upon the
mainland, and brought away eleven men and five women prisoners, by which, at my
coming, I found about twenty young children on the island.
Here I stayed about twenty days, left them supplies of all necessary things, and
particularly of arms, powder, shot, clothes, tools, and two workmen, which I brought from
England with me, viz., a carpenter and a smith.
Besides this, I shared the island into parts with them, reserved to myself the property of
the whole, but gave them such parts respectively as they agreed on; and having settled all
things with them, and engaged them not to leave the place, I left them there.
From thence I touched at Brazil, from whence I sent a bark, which I brought there, with
more people to the island; and in it, besides other supplies, I sent seven women, being
such as I found proper for service, or for wives to such as would take them. As to the
Englishmen, I promised them to send them some women from England, with a good cargo
of necessaries, if they would apply themselves to planting, which I afterwards performed.
And the fellows proved very honest and diligent after they were mastered and had their
properties set apart for them. I sent them also from Brazil five cows, three of them being
big with calf, some sheep, and some hogs, which, when I came again, were considerably
increased.
But all these things, with an account how three hundred Caribbees came and invaded
them, and ruined their plantations, and how they fought with that whole number twice, and
were at first defeated, and three of them killed; but at last, a storm destroying their
enemies’ canoes, they famished or destroyed almost all the rest, and renewed and
recovered the possession of their plantation, and still lived upon the island.
All these things, with some very surprising incidents in some new adventures of my
own, for ten years more, I may perhaps give a further account of hereafter.
 Afterword
In the first decade of the twenty-first century, two popular series on American television
echoed but also reimagined Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, first published in England almost
three centuries earlier. In its first season, Survivor (2000) was presented to television
viewers as the story of sixteen Americans ‘‘marooned’’ on a ‘‘mysterious’’ island, Borneo.
The ‘‘castaways’’ (who were, of course, all volunteers) were given two minutes at the
beginning of their ordeal to ‘‘salvage’’ everything they could from the boat that brought
them to their destination; they then ferried everything to the island on two rafts. Lost’s first
season (2004) tells the story of survivors of an airline flight (Oceanic Flight 815) that
crashes on what at first seems to be a deserted island. Although eventually it becomes
clear that the island is, if anything, overpopulated rather than deserted, at first the
survivors have to learn how to find food, water, and shelter, and especially how to work
together. The creators of Lost have acknowledged that the series began as a proposal to do
a television version of Cast Away, Robert Zemeckis’s 2000 film with Tom Hanks. That
film made the Crusoe figure a systems engineer for FedEx in contemporary America, but
for all that it radically altered the original story, it also retained many of the most
important elements of Defoe’s novel: a man lost at sea and marooned on a deserted island,
his anguished isolation, and the hero’s mastery of his new island home. Cast Away is only
one of many film versions of Defoe’s most famous book; those adaptations stretch back as
far as 1903 (very near the beginning of the history of film) and include The Adventures of
Robinson Crusoe (1952) by the great surrealist Spanish director, Luis Buñuel, and a 1997
film version starring Pierce Brosnan.
Novelists, too, have responded to and indeed rewritten Robinson Crusoe. Among the
most famous such rewritings of Defoe’s narrative are Swiss Family Robinson (1812) by
Johann Wyss and, much more recently, Foe (1986) by J. M. Coetzee, the South African
writer and winner of the 2003 Nobel Prize for Literature. Other works that have been
discussed as reworkings of Robinson Crusoe include Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of
Arthur Gordon Pym (1838) and two novels—not only Lord of the Flies (1954) but also
Pincher Martin (1956)— by another Nobel Prize winner (in 1986), William Golding.
Indeed Robinson Crusoe has been reimagined so many times in print that all of these
works taken together constitute a distinct literary genre known as the Robinsonade.
Clearly, then, Defoe’s narrative struck a deep nerve in Western culture. The book was
very popular when it was first published, and Defoe sought to take advantage of that
success by writing two sequels: Robinson Crusoe’s Farther Adventures (1719) and
Serious Reflections (1720). (The version of the novel given in this edition is not based on
any of the editions published in Defoe’s lifetime. Spelling and punctuation have been
modernized, and chapters have been created and chapter titles inserted. Such chapter
breaks and titles have been used before but they are not Defoe’s.) The story, moreover, has
endured in the popular imagination. Ian Watt argues that the Crusoe story (like the stories
of Faust, Don Quixote, and Don Juan) is a ‘‘myth of modern individualism’’; that is, the
novel embodies one of the stories that people in Western culture use as a key to who and
what we are, so much so that the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in Émile
(1762), his treatise on education, declares that Robinson Crusoe will be the first book, and
for a long time the only book, read by his representative, imaginary student, Émile.
Robinson Crusoe’s enduring resonance may be explained in many ways; indeed, there
are almost as many explanations as there are interpreters of this text. Many have read the
book simply as a great adventure, the story of an ordinary man who ventures into the great
world, suffers terribly but endures and indeed thrives on his island, and returns to England
a successful man. The dark side of this view is that Robinson Crusoe embodies the very
image of Western imperialism, an impulse and a process that led a few countries in
Western Europe to colonize or otherwise subdue much of Latin America, Africa, and Asia
from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Crusoe styles himself ‘‘a king’’ with ‘‘an
undoubted right of dominion’’ (page 243) on his island, and the great critic Edward Said
points out that it is hardly accidental that the book, often cited as the first great realist
novel, features a European who establishes a kingdom, and with it mastery of racial and
ethnic others, on a faraway, non-European island.
Other readers have focused on a very different element in the narrative: religion.
Defoe’s preface recommends the work for its ‘‘religious application of events’’ and its
justification of ‘‘the wisdom of Providence’’ (page 3), and from the eighteenth century
onward, readers have celebrated the book for its piety. Twentieth-century critics analyzed
the book’s debt to spiritual biography and autobiography, and discussed Robinson
Crusoe’s kinship with the great allegory of Christian man’s journey to salvation, John
Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678). And contemporary American readers can hardly
help noticing that Crusoe—when he prays ‘‘with a true Scripture view of hope founded on
the encouragement of the Word of God’’ and reflects upon the biblical passage ‘‘Call on
Me, and I will deliver you’’ (page 98)—is ‘‘born again’’ on the island.
There are many other ways of thinking about Defoe’s novel, including, to name only the
most striking arguments: Crusoe as economic man, Crusoe’s island as a prison, and
Crusoe as a scientist. It has also been argued that the narrative as a fact-based account tells
us something definitive about the nature of the novel itself. In what follows, however, I
want to focus on three aspects of Robinson Crusoe that I think go a long way toward
explaining why and how the book has worked so powerfully on readers and on other
artists over the last three hundred years, and, especially, why and how it continues to have
such force in our own time. These three elements of the novel are isolation, technique, and
race, and I will discuss these issues by looking at the reception accorded Defoe’s novel,
principally in works for the screen.
Robinson Crusoe is a story about loneliness. The hero of the book, the original title
page informs us, lives on his island for twenty-eight years. It is only two-thirds of the way
through the book that Crusoe is finally joined on the island by another human being,
Friday. Crusoe emphasizes the pain of isolation when he draws up the balance sheet that
summarizes his situation on the island. The first three items on the ‘‘Evil’’ side of the
ledger all have to do with his loneliness: ‘‘I am cast upon a horrible desolate island’’; ‘‘I
am singled out and separated, as it were, from all the world’’; and ‘‘I am divided from
mankind, a solitaire, one banished from human society’’ (pages 67-68). At the end of his
second year on the island, Crusoe gives thanks for ‘‘the many wonderful mercies’’ that
have been bestowed upon him by God but at the same time he makes it clear that his
‘‘solitary state’’ is a continuing source of suffering (page 114), and he later observes that
the period after he saves Friday’s life is ‘‘the pleasantest year of all the life I led in this
place’’ (page 216).
It must be said that a good deal less attention is paid in the novel to the psychic toll of
loneliness than a reader in a world shaped by the rise of psychology might expect. Virginia
Woolf once observed that one of the most surprising features of the book is that in it
‘‘there is no solitude and no soul.’’ But readers have often emphasized the book’s
representation of isolation and the desolation that accompanies it; in the eighteenth
century the critic James Beattie observed that the book ‘‘fixes in the mind a lively idea of
the horrors of solitude,’’ and Poe saw it as offering an unprecedented look at ‘‘the idea of a
man in perfect isolation.’’ Many twentieth-century responses to the book emphasize
Crusoe’s loneliness and its terrible cost. In two of the best films based on the novel, the
hero essentially goes mad because of his ‘‘solitary state.’’ Buñuel reports in his memoirs
that what interested him about the story was Crusoe’s solitude, and his film highlights the
hero’s psychic torment. In one sequence (not based on anything in the novel), Crusoe (Dan
O’Herlihy), in a drunken waking dream, hears the voices of former companions singing a
song that reflects Crusoe’s own state of mind: ‘‘Down among the dead men, down among
the dead men, … down among the dead men, let them lie.’’ When the singing suddenly
stops, Crusoe looks bereft and weeps. Later, we see him running into the ocean in a frenzy,
crying, ‘‘Help! Help!’’ and then talking to two insects, calling them ‘‘my little friends,’’
feeding them an ant, and relishing their eating. Similarly, in Cast Away, Chuck Noland
(Hanks) tries to commit suicide and in the latter stages of his stay on the island talks to
and even quarrels with ‘‘Wilson,’’ a volleyball that takes on human qualities when the
impression of Noland’s bleeding hand imprints something like a human face on it. When
Noland finally escapes from the island on a raft that he has constructed, he loses Wilson
and is shown weeping inconsolably before apparently resigning himself to his own death
by throwing his paddles overboard.
How does Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe avoid the madness that overtakes the heroes of the
films by Buñuel and Zemeckis? He works, and therein lies a major key to the book’s
enduring appeal. Crusoe informs the reader that he is ‘‘very seldom idle’’ (page 116); as a
result of his constant labor, he, a man who ‘‘had never handled a tool’’ in his life, becomes
a ‘‘master of every mechanic art’’ (page 69). He works at everything: animal husbandry,
baking, architecture, farming, pottery, building boats, and making things: clothes, an
umbrella, butter, cheese. More than one critic has pointed out that Crusoe’s experience
recapitulates the economic history of mankind in that Crusoe, on the island, masters the
skills necessary to both agriculture and industry and creates his own world of things.
Woolf argues that the book, above all else, shows how ‘‘serious’’ and ‘‘beautiful’’ it is ‘‘to
dig, to bake, to plant, to build.’’ Crusoe himself reflects on what he learns about the
complex process of growing and making things. ‘‘’Tis a little wonderful, and what I
believe very few people have thought much upon,’’ Defoe’s hero observes, ‘‘the strange
multitude of little things necessary’’ for the production of ‘‘one article of bread’’ (page
119). Crusoe describes the steps necessary to producing a loaf of bread: plowing or
otherwise turning the earth, sowing, building a fence to protect the crop, harvesting and
threshing, milling the grain, and building an oven. After his first harvest, he sets himself
the task, in ‘‘the next six months to apply myself wholly by labour and invention to
furnish myself with utensils proper for the performing all the operations necessary for the
making’’ of bread (page 120). Thus, in the same century in which Adam Smith, the first
great theorist of capitalism, published The Wealth of Nations (1776) and in which the
industrial revolution began in England, Robinson Crusoe laid out the idea of the division
of labor so important both to Smith’s theory and to the industrial revolution generally. And
Defoe’s readers watch admiringly as Crusoe acquires one new skill after another.
On television, the series Survivor attends to this theme. Before that series begins to
focus almost entirely on group dynamics—who gets voted off, who remains— it shows
participants attempting to acquire survival skills, especially those associated with finding
food. Films based on Robinson Crusoe have been particularly interested in Crusoe’s
struggle to master new skills. Buñuel’s Robinson Crusoe is, of all the major films based on
Defoe’s novel, in many ways the most faithful, and this is particularly evident in the film’s
representation of Crusoe’s growing mastery of a wide range of techniques. We see him
fashioning the famous umbrella and goatskin clothes, raising wheat and baking bread,
building a stockade, and making his own pots. In Cast Away Noland’s progress on the
island is registered chiefly by his acquisition of various skills. Early in the hero’s ordeal,
he exults when he manages to build a fire (‘‘I have made fire!’’), but the overweight
businessman is very inept when it comes to fishing or providing himself with shelter. After
four years on the island, however, Noland expertly throws a spear to catch a fish; now
remarkably slim, he meets with ease the physical challenges of life on the island. (His
transformation seemingly begins when he manages to extract an aching tooth; a four-year
gap in the narrative opens after Noland passes out after the painful operation.) And in the
end, Noland manages to build the raft that gets him off the island and carries him to safety
and home. Robinson Crusoe films, then, like readers since 1719, have responded with
fascination to the novel’s description of how, by endless ‘‘experiment,’’ the hero becomes
‘‘master of my business’’ (page 107).
Another form of mastery, one that takes us to the book’s most troubling aspects, is seen
in the relationship between Crusoe and Friday. Shortly after Defoe’s Crusoe rescues
Friday, the basis for their dealings with each other is unmistakably established. Crusoe
relates that shortly after being saved, Friday comes to him and ‘‘lays his head flat upon the
ground, close to my foot, and sets my other foot upon his head’’ and makes ‘‘all the signs
to me of subjection, servitude, and submission imaginable. ’’ Crusoe lets Friday know that
he is ‘‘very well pleased with him’’ (pages 208-9). Crusoe also names Friday, teaches him,
and converts him, and he clearly regards Friday as naturally submissive: ‘‘never man had a
more faithful, loving, sincere servant than Friday was to me; without passions, sullenness,
or designs, perfectly obliged and engaged’’ (page 211). Just after this assessment of Friday,
Crusoe reflects at length on the ways of Providence—how God ordains different
conditions and fates for different kinds of men—and the text thereby suggests that Friday
and his whole race were created as natural servants of European man.
 Such beliefs were, of course, part of the rationale for European imperialism, and some
of Robinson Crusoe’s mythic force, at least for a long time after the book first appeared,
was undoubtedly due to its presentation of a non-European, nonwhite ‘‘other’’ readily
embracing ‘‘subjection, servitude, and submission’’ as his natural stance in respect to
white European man. This element of the book, happily, has become its most problematic
aspect for those who imitate, adapt or otherwise rework Defoe’s novel. Coetzee’s Foe
raises the problem of Friday by presenting him as a man whose tongue has been cut out
and whose true story, as a result, may not be told. Similarly, most of the films based on
Robinson Crusoe treat Friday in such a way as to critique the racial politics of the original.
Buñuel’s Crusoe at first treats Friday (Jaime Fernández) quite cruelly but the Englishman
then undergoes a transformation. At one point he begs Friday to forgive him and declares,
‘‘I want you to be my friend.’’ Man Friday (1975), a British film directed by Jack Gold,
represents Crusoe (Peter O’Toole) as a diseased racist and Friday (Richard Roundtree) as
morally and spiritually superior to the Englishman. In the American film Crusoe (1988),
directed by Caleb Deschanel, there is, strictly speaking no Friday; rather, the Crusoe
(Aidan Quinn) of that film, a nineteenth-century American slave trader, has an encounter
with a black man identified in the film’s credits as ‘‘the Warrior’’ (Ade Sapara). Their
meeting leads to Crusoe’s moral transformation. The Warrior saves Crusoe when he falls
into quicksand, and when the two quarrel over whose language they will use, Crusoe
finally accepts the warrior’s meat and also uses his word for it: ‘‘jala.’’ The two establish a
rough equality, and at the end of the film when the Warrior is taken captive by
anthropologists, Crusoe frees him. Afterward Crusoe is seen on the ship that will take him
home as clean-shaven, clear-eyed, and, we are meant to see, spiritually renewed. That
Zemeckis’s Cast Away does entirely without Friday, and replaces him with Wilson,
undoubtedly has to do partly with the fact that the film is set in our own time; the
filmmakers may well have thought that imagining an island visited by non-European
‘‘savages’’ in a postcolonial, globalized world was simply impossible. But the substitution
of Wilson for Crusoe’s other is also an implicit acknowledgment that Friday is the book’s
most problematic element. Still, the erasure of Friday is not without its own troubling
aspects. In Cast Away, after all, Crusoe’s ‘‘companion’’ on the island has been turned into
a true object, something thrown away, tied down, and finally lost without any real
consequence. Seen in another light, Noland’s island might represent the world beyond the
reach of the United States (and FedEx) as unpeopled and therefore as open to the West’s
occupation and use. No matter how we view Wilson in Cast Away, however, the films
based on Robinson Crusoe from 1952 onward make it clear that race, unlike the
representation of loneliness or the fascination with technique, is one element of the
original Crusoe narrative that must be radically revised in contemporary refashionings of
Defoe’s novel.
In closing, it seems worthwhile to point out that when American television has turned
its attention to Robinson Crusoe, it has done so in important part by turning the story
inside out. Survivor and Lost make the experience of being cast away into a story of a
group stranded on an island together. That story cannot be about loneliness; nor is it
particularly about either technique or race. Rather it becomes a story of renewal as the
result of the experience on the island. In Lost, particularly, all of the major inhabitants
have pasts that they regret (lives of crime, familial conflicts, drug addiction, crippling
wealth), and the island seems to offer them all an opportunity to start their lives over
again. On Survivor, too, the contestants are presented with the chance of achieving great
wealth and as a result the ability to start a new life. These shows, again particularly Lost,
suggest that life back home is the problem and that the island offers at least the possibility
of a solution to that problem. The ‘‘castaways’’ in Lost and Survivor, one could argue,
share with Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe the possibility of transformation as a result of their
ordeal, but, in a way that is not true of Defoe’s novel, the television shows also embody a
critique of the society from which the islanders have come. Still, although different in
crucial ways from Defoe’s story, these offerings of contemporary American television,
like the films made over the last sixty years as well as the literary reimaginings published
almost from the moment Robinson Crusoe appeared, all testify to the continuing
adaptability and enduring power of Defoe’s novel.
—Robert Mayer
 Selected Bibliography
Works by DANIEL DEFOE
An Essay upon Projects, 1697
The True-Born Englishman, 1701 Poem
The Shortest Way with Dissenters, 1702 Prose Satire
A Review of the Affairs of France; A Review of the State of the British Nation, 1704-13
Periodical
The True Relation of the Apparition of One Mrs. Veal, 1706
The History of the Union of Great Britain, 1709 History
The Secret History of the October Club, 1711 Secret History
Robinson Crusoe, 1719 Novel
The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, 1719
Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe, 1720
The Life, Adventures, and Pyracies of the Famous Captain Singleton, 1720 Novel
The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders , 1722 Novel
The History and Remarkable Life of … Colonel Jacque, 1722 Novel
A Journal of the Plague Year, 1722 Novel
Roxana, or the Fortunate Mistress, 1724 Novel
A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain, 1724-27
Selected Biography and Criticism
Backscheider, Paula R. Daniel Defoe: His Life. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1989.
Bender, John. Imagining the Penitentiary: Fiction and the Architecture of Mind in
Eighteenth-Century England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
Caldwell, Tanya. ‘‘Sure Instinct: Incest, Politics, and Genre in Dryden and Defoe.’’ Genre
XXXIII (Spring 2000): 27-50.
Hunter, J. Paul. The Reluctant Pilgrim: Defoe’s Emblematic Method and Quest for Form
in Robinson Crusoe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966.
Mayer, Robert. Eighteenth-Century Fiction on Screen. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2002.
———. History and the Early English Novel: Matters of Fact from Bacon to Defoe.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Moore, John Robert. Daniel Defoe: Citizen of the Modern World. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1958.
Novak, Maximillian E. Daniel Defoe—Master of Fictions: His Life and Ideas. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2001.
————. ‘‘Gender Cultural Criticism and the Rise of the Novel: The Case of Defoe.’’
Eighteenth-Century Fiction 12 (2-3) (January-April 2000): 239-51.
Richetti, John J. Defoe’s Narratives: Situations and Structures . Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1975.
Rogers, Pat, ed. Daniel Defoe: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge, 1998.
Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Knopf, 1993.
Starr, George A. Defoe and Spiritual Autobiography. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1965.
Sutherland, James R. Daniel Defoe: A Critical Study. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1971.
———. Defoe. Writers and Their Work, No. 51. London: Longmans, Green, 1965.
Swaminathan, Srividhya. ‘‘Defoe’s Alternative Conduct Manual.’’ Eighteenth-Century
Fiction 15.2 (2003): 185- 206.
Vickers, Ilse. Defoe and the New Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957.
Zimmerman, Everett. Defoe and the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding.
Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1975.
1
A tropical fever.
2
Ensign; banner.
3
Grain.
4
Food; feed.
5
Perplexity; bewilderment.
6
Come suddenly.
7
Revealed; made known.
8
Did not fail.
9
Lack.