But now I was to prepare more land, for I had 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. When it was done it was but a sorry one indeed, and very heavy, and requir’d double labour to work with it. However, I went through 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. This work took me up full three months because a great part of the time was in the wet season when I could not go abroad.
Within doors when it rained and I could not go out, I diverted myself with talking to my parrot and teaching him to speak. I slowly 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.
It also happened some time after, 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 earthen-ware vessels in the fire, burnt as hard as a stone and red as a tile. I was surpris’d to see it, and said to myself, "Certainly they might be made to burn whole if they would burn broken."
This set me to study how to order my fire, so as to make it burn some pots. 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. I had hardly patience to stay till they were cold before I set one on the fire again with some water in it to boil me some meat. With a piece of a kid I made some very good broth, tho’ 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 a stone mortar to stamp or beat some corn in. After a great deal of time lost in searching for a stone, I gave it over, and resolv’d to look out a great block of hard wood, which I found indeed much easier. My next difficulty was to make a sieve 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. The remedy I found for this was, at last recollecting I had among the seamen's cloathes, some neckcloths of calico or muslin. With some pieces of these I made three small sieves, proper enough for the work, and thus I made shift for some years.
The baking part was the next thing to be considered, and how I should make bread when I came to have corn. For an oven I was indeed puzzled. At length I found out an expedient for that also, and thus I baked my barley-loaves and became, in a little time, a good pastry-cook into the bargain. I made myself several cakes and puddings of the rice, but made no pies as I had nothing to put into them except the flesh 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. It is to be observ’d, in the intervals of these things, I had my new harvest and husbandry to manage. I reaped my corn in its season, and carried it home as well as I could, and laid it up in the ear 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 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 I had of the barley about twenty bushels and of rice as much, or more. I resolv’d to begin to use it freely, for my bread had been quite gone a great while. I resolv’d also to see what quantity would be sufficient for me a whole year and to sow but once a year.
Upon the whole, I found the forty bushels of barley and rice were much more than I could consume in a year. I resolv’d to sow just the same quantity every year that I sowed the last, in hopes such a quantity would provide me with bread, etc.
Years go by, my sea voyage,
the ominous voice
I finish’d my fourth year in this place and kept my anniversary with the same devotion and with as much comfort as before. By a constant study and serious application to the word of God, I gained a different knowledge from what I had before. I entertained different notions of things. I look'd 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 to do with it, nor was ever likely to have. 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.