The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808). Defoe Daniel

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 I now 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 were 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, &c.

      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 was on shore there, fancying that seeing the main land, 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 an hazard more than a thousand to one of being killed, and perhaps of being eaten; for I had heard that the people of the Caribean coasts were cannibals, or men-eaters; and I knew by the latitude that I could not be far off from that shore: that, suppose they were not cannibals, yet 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 I did cast up in my thoughts afterwards, yet took none of my apprehensions at first; and my head ran mightily upon the thoughts of getting over to that shore.

      Now I wished for my boy Xury, and the long-boat, 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 on 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 upwards, against the high ridge of a beachy rough sand, but no water about her as before.

      If I had had hands to have refitted her, and have launched her into the water, the boat would have done well enough, and I might have gone back into the Brasils with her easy enough; but I might have easily 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 wood, and cut levers and rollers, and brought them to the boat, resolving 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 forwards 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 set 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, viz. of the trunk of a great tree. This I not only thought possible, but easy: and pleased myself extremely with my 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 into the water, when it was made; 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 a 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 this 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 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 own inquiries into it by this foolish answer, which I gave myself; Let me first make it, I'll warrant I'll 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, and felled a cedar-tree: I question much whether Solomon ever had such an one for the building the temple at 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 of it, cut off, which I hacked and hewed through with my axe and hatchet, with 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 chissel, 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.

      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 periagua, that was made of one tree, in my life; many a weary stroke it had cost, you may be sure, for 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 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, 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 calculated 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; for the shore lay high, so 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 lightly of our own strength to go through with it.

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