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.
This at length put me upon thinking whether it was not possible to make myself a canoe, or periagua, such as
the natives of those climates make, even without tools, or, as I might say, without hands, 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, if when I had chosen a vast tree in the
woods, and with much trouble cut it down, if I had been 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 as to make a boat of it . if,
after all this, I must leave it just there where I found it, and not be able to launch it into the water?
One would have thought I could not have had the least reflection upon my mind of my circumstances 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
the land: and it was really, in its own nature, more easy for me to guide it over forty.five miles of sea than
about forty.five fathoms 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 inquiries into it by this
foolish answer which I gave myself . "Let me first make it; I warrant I will find some way or other to get it
along when it is done."
This was a most preposterous method; but the eagerness of my fancy prevailed, and to work I went. I felled a
cedar.tree, and I question much whether Solomon ever had such a one for the building of the Temple of
Jerusalem; it was five feet ten inches diameter at the lower part next the stump, and four feet eleven inches
diameter at the end of twenty.two feet; after which it lessened for a while, and then parted into branches. It
was not without infinite labour that I felled this tree; I was twenty days hacking and hewing at it at the
bottom; I was fourteen more getting the branches and limbs and the vast spreading head 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 periagua, and big enough to have carried six.and.twenty men, and
consequently big enough to have carried me and all my cargo.
CHAPTER IX . A BOAT
Robinson Crusoe
When I had gone through this work I was extremely delighted with it. The boat was really much bigger than
ever I saw a canoe or periagua, that was made of one tree, in my life. Many a weary stroke it had cost, you
may be sure; and had I gotten it into the water, I make no question, but I should have begun the maddest
voyage, and the most unlikely to be performed, that ever was undertaken.
But all my devices to get it into the water failed me; though they cost me infinite labour too. It lay about one
hundred yards from the water, and not more; but the first inconvenience was, it was up hill towards the creek.
Well, to take away this 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 grudge pains who have their
deliverance in view?); but when this was worked through, and this difficulty managed, it was still much the
same, 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 upon it, and calculate how deep it was
to be dug, how broad, how the stuff was 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 could have gone through with it; for the
shore lay so high, that at the upper end it must have been at least twenty feet 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 to 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 expectations from, and, indeed, no desires about: in a word, I had nothing indeed to do with it,
nor was ever likely 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 lusts of the flesh,
the lusts of the eye, nor 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 ship.loadings 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 turtle 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; and I had grapes enough to have made
wine, or to have cured into raisins, to have loaded that fleet when it had been built.
But all I could make use of was all that was valuable: I had enough to eat and 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 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 but 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 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 sorry, useless stuff lay; I had no more manner of
CHAPTER IX . A BOAT
Robinson Crusoe
business for it; and 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 a sixpenny.worth 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 seasons; and if I had had the drawer full of diamonds, it had been the same case . 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 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 any one that should fall into such
distress as mine was; and this was, to compare my present condition with what I at first expected it would 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, and 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 it, 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 situation 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 what the nature and end of my being required of me. But, alas!
falling early into the seafaring life, which of all 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 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 the Brazils; 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
CHAPTER IX . A BOAT
Robinson Crusoe
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 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 a 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
