Besides this, I arrived at an unexpected perfection in my earthen-ware and contrived well enough to make them with a wheel, which I found easier and better. But I think I was never more vain of my own performance, or more joyful for any thing I found out, than for my being able to make a tobacco-pipe, tho’ it was a very ugly clumsy thing when it was done, and only burnt red like other earthen-ware. Yet as it was hard and firm, and would draw the smoke, I was comforted with it, for I had been always used to smoke.
I began now to perceive my powder abated considerably. This was a want which it was impossible for me to supply, and I began 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 observ’d 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, as they still fled from the hidden beast, till my kid grew an old goat. As I could never find in my heart to kill her, she died at last of meer 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. Particularly, I wanted a she-goat great with young. At length I resolv’d to try a pitfall. I dug several large pits in the earth in places where I had observ’d the goats used to feed. 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. I could have kill’d him, or let him for the beast, but that was not my business, nor would it answer my end. So I let him out, and he ran away, frightened out of his wits once he had smell’d the scent of the beast.
It was a good while before the kids would feed near me, but throwing them some sweet corn tempted them and they began to be tame. And now I found if I expected to supply myself with goat's flesh when I had no powder or shot left, breeding some up tame was my only way.
But then it occurred to me I must keep the tame from the wild or else they would always run wild when they grew up. And the beast must be kept out lest it see my herd as a banquet table to slake its own appetites. 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 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 herbage for them to eat, water for them to drink, and cover to keep them from the sun.
I was about three months hedging in the first piece. 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. Very often I would go and carry them some ears of barley or a handful of rice, but they would shy away from the scent of the beast and press themselves against the farthest reach of the tether. After my enclosure was finish'd and I let them loose, they would huddle together in that part which was away from me.
In about a year and a half, I had a flock of about twelve goats, kids and all. In two years more I had three and forty, besides several I took and kill'd for my food. After that I enclosed five several pieces of ground to feed them in, with little pens to drive them into, to take them as I wanted, and gates out of one piece of ground into another.
But this was not all. Now I not only had goat's flesh to feed on when I pleased, but milk too, a thing which in the beginning I did not so much as think of, and which, when it came into my thoughts, was an agreeable surprise. Now I set up my dairy, and had sometimes a gallon or two of milk in a day. What a table was here spread for me in a wilderness, where I saw nothing, at first but to perish for hunger!
One morning, well within my thirteenth year upon the island, I awoke in the hills after the last night of the moon. The beast had run long and hard those past nights, and yet I had a strange uneasiness in my mind to go down to the point of the island. This inclination increased upon me every day, and at length I resolv’d to travel thither by land, following the edge of the shore. I did so, but had any one in England been to meet such a man as I was, it must either have frightened him or raised a great deal of laughter. As I frequently stood still to look at myself, I could not but smile at the notion of my traveling 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.