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 for doing it,
my first work was to find out a proper piece of ground, 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 savannah, 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 by enclosing this piece of ground in such a
manner that, my hedge or pale must have been at least two miles about. Nor was the madness of it so great as
to the compass, for if it was ten miles 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 fifty yards when this thought occurred to me; so I
presently stopped short, and, for the beginning, I resolved to enclose a piece of about one hundred and fifty
yards in length, and one hundred yards in breadth, which, as it would maintain as many as I should have in
any reasonable time, so, as my stock increased, I could add more ground to my enclosure.
CHAPTER X . TAMES GOATS
Robinson Crusoe
This was acting with some prudence, and I went to work with courage. I was about three months hedging in
the first piece; and, till I had done it, I tethered the three kids in the best part of it, and used them to feed as
near me as possible, to make them familiar; and very often I would go and carry them some ears of barley, or
a handful of rice, and feed them out of my hand; so that after my enclosure was finished and I let them loose,
they would follow me up and down, bleating after me for a handful of corn.
This answered my end, and in about a year and a half I had a flock of about twelve goats, kids and all; and in
two years more I had three.and.forty, besides several that I took and killed for my food. After that, I
enclosed five several pieces of ground to feed them in, with little pens to drive them to take them as I wanted,
and gates out of one piece of ground into another.
But this was not all; for now I not only had goat's flesh to feed on when I pleased, but milk too . a thing
which, indeed, in the beginning, I did not so much as think of, and which, when it came into my thoughts,
was really an agreeable surprise, for now I set up my dairy, and had sometimes a gallon or two of milk in 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 only when I was a boy,
after a great many essays and miscarriages, made both butter and cheese at last, also salt (though I found it
partly made to my hand by the heat of the sun upon some of the rocks of the sea), and never wanted it
afterwards. How mercifully can our Creator treat His creatures, even in those conditions in which they
seemed to be overwhelmed in 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 the wilderness, where I saw
nothing at first but to perish for hunger!
CHAPTER XI . FINDS PRINT OF MAN'S FOOT ON THE SAND
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 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 of the table and one on the other,
expecting now and then a bit from my hand, as a mark of especial 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, some time
after this, I was likely 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 any one in
England met such a man as I was, it must either have frightened him, 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.
CHAPTER XI . FINDS PRINT OF MAN'S FOOT ON THE SAND
Robinson Crusoe
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 goat's skin, the skirts coming down to about the middle of the 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 had made me a pair of somethings, I scarce knew 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 goat's skin 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 dagger, hung a little saw and a
hatchet, one on one side and 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 goat's skin too, in one of which hung my powder, in the other my shot. At my back I carried my basket,
and on my shoulder my gun, and over my head a great clumsy, ugly, goat's.skin 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 at Sallee, for
the Moors did not wear such, though the Turks did; of these moustachios, 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.bye; 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 of that. In this kind of dress I went my new journey, and was out five or six
days. I travelled first along the sea.shore, directly to the place where I first brought my boat to an anchor to
get 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 points of the rocks which lay out, and which I
was obliged to double with my boat, as is 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 nearer or went
farther from the shore; for, waiting thereabouts till evening, I went up to the rock again, and then the tide of
ebb being made, I plainly saw the current again as before, only that it ran farther 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 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 periagua 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
CHAPTER XI . FINDS PRINT OF MAN'S FOOT ON THE SAND
Robinson Crusoe
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 or 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 provisions, 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 any one'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 land, 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 encircled 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 stakes, but were now grown very firm and tall, always cut, so 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
sea.bedding, 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 I had taken an inconceivable
deal of pains to fence and enclose this ground. I was so anxious 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 that I was
