Artwork for podcast Bite at a Time Books
The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe - Chapter 9 - A Boat
Episode 910th July 2023 • Bite at a Time Books • Bree Carlile
00:00:00 00:40:09

Share Episode

Shownotes

Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the ninth chapter of The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe.

Come with us as we release one bite a day of one of your favorite classic novels, plays & short stories. Bree reads these classics like she reads to her daughter, one chapter a day. If you love books or audiobooks and want something to listen to as you're getting ready, driving to work, or as you're getting ready for bed, check out Bite at a Time Books!

Follow, rate, and review Bite at a Time Books where we read you your favorite classics, one bite at a time. Available wherever you listen to podcasts.

Check out our website, or join our Facebook Group!

Get exclusive Behind the Scenes content on our YouTube!

We are now part of the Bite at a Time Books Productions network!

If you ever wondered what inspired your favorite classic novelist to write their stories, what was happening in their lives or the world at the time, check out Bite at a Time Books Behind the Story wherever you listen to podcasts.

Follow us on all the socials: Instagram - Twitter - Facebook - TikTok

Follow Bree at: Instagram - Twitter - Facebook

Transcripts

Speaker:

Take a look and a buck and let's see what we can find take it chapter by chapter one fight at a time so many adventures and mountains we can climb take it word for word like line.

Speaker:

One bite at a time my name is Brie Carlyle and I love to read and wanted to share my passion with listeners like you.

Speaker:

If you want to know what's coming next and vote on upcoming books, sign up for our newsletter at Bit at a Timebooks.com.

Speaker:

You'll also find our new t shirts in the shop, including podcast shirts and quote shirts from your favorite classic novels.

Speaker:

Be sure to follow my show on your favorite podcast platform so you get all the new episodes.

Speaker:

You can find most of our links in the show notes, but also our website.

Speaker:

Bite at a Timebooks.com includes all of the links for our show, including to our patreon to support the show, and YouTube, where we have special behind the narration of the episodes.

Speaker:

We're part of the byte at a Time Books Productions network.

Speaker:

If you'd also like to hear what inspired your favorite classic authors to write their novels and what was going on in the world at the time, check out the Bite at a Time Books Behind the Story podcast.

Speaker:

Wherever you listen to podcasts, please note while we try to keep the text as close to the original as possible, some words have been changed to honor the marginalized communities who've identified the words as harmful and to stay in alignment with Bite at a Time book's brand values.

Speaker:

Today we'll be continuing the Life and.

Speaker:

Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe.

Speaker:

Chapter Nine A Boat but first I was to prepare more land, for I had now seed enough to sow above an acre of ground.

Speaker:

Before I did this, I had a week's work at least to make me a spade, which when it was done was but a sorry one indeed, and very heavy, and required double labor to work with it.

Speaker:

However, I got through that and sewed 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.

Speaker:

The stakes of which were all cut off.

Speaker:

That wood which I had set before and knew it would grow so that in a year's time I knew I should have a quick or living hedge that would want but little repair.

Speaker:

This work did not take me up less than three months, because a great.

Speaker:

Part of that time was the wet.

Speaker:

Season, when I could not go abroad within doors, that is, when it rained and I could not go out.

Speaker:

I found employment in the following occupations always observing that all the while I was at work, I diverted myself with talking to my parrot and teaching him to speak, and I quickly taught him to know his own name, and at last to speak it out pretty loud.

Speaker:

Pole, which was the first word I had ever heard spoken in the island by any mouth but my own.

Speaker:

This, therefore, was not my work, but in assistance to my work, for now, as I said, I had a great employment upon my hands as follows I had long studied to make by some means or other, some earthen vessels, which indeed I wanted sorely, but knew not where to come at them.

Speaker:

However, considering the heat of the climate, I did not doubt.

Speaker:

But if I could find out any clay, I might make some pots that might, being dried in the sun, be hard enough and strong enough to bear handling, and to hold anything that was dry and required to be kept so.

Speaker:

And as this was necessary in the preparing corn meal, which was the thing I was doing, I resolved to make some as large as I could, and fit only to stand like jars to hold what should be put into them.

Speaker:

It would make the reader pity me.

Speaker:

Or rather laugh at me, to tell.

Speaker:

How many awkward ways I took to raise this paste.

Speaker:

What OD, misshapen ugly things I made.

Speaker:

How many of them fell in and how many fell out the clay not.

Speaker:

Being stiff enough to bear its own.

Speaker:

Weight, how many cracked by the overviolent heat of the sun being set out too hastily, and how many fell in pieces with only removing as well before as after they were dried?

Speaker:

And, in a word, how, after having labored hard to find the clay, to.

Speaker:

Dig it, to temper it, to bring.

Speaker:

It home and work it, I could not make above two large earthen ugly things I cannot call them jars.

Speaker:

In about two months labor, however, as the sun baked these two very dry and hard, I lifted them very gently.

Speaker:

Up and set them down again in.

Speaker:

Two great wicker baskets, which I had made on purpose for them that they might not break.

Speaker:

And as between the pot and the basket there was a little room to spare, I stuffed it full of the rice and barley straw, and these two pots being the stand, always dry, I thought would hold my dry corn and perhaps the meal when the corn was bruised.

Speaker:

Though I miscarried so much in my design for large pots, yet I made several smaller things with better success, such as little round pots, flat dishes, pitchers and pipkins, and any things my hand turned to, and the heat of the sun baked them quite hard.

Speaker:

But all this would not answer my end, which was to get an earthen pot to hold what was liquid and bear the fire, which none of these could do.

Speaker:

It happened after some time making a pretty large fire for cooking my meat.

Speaker:

When I went to put it out, after I had done with it, I found a broken piece of one of my earthenware vessels in the fire burnt as hard as the stone and red as a tile.

Speaker:

I was agreeably surprised to see it and said to myself that certainly they might be made to burn whole if they would burn broken.

Speaker:

This set me to study how to order my fire so as to make it burn.

Speaker:

Some pots.

Speaker:

I had no notion of a kiln such as the Potter's burn in or of glazing them with lead though I had some lead to do it with.

Speaker:

But I placed three large pipkins and.

Speaker:

Two or three pots in a pile, one upon another and placed my firewood all around it with a great heap of embers under them.

Speaker:

I applied the fire with fresh fuel round the outside and upon the top till I saw the pots in the inside red hot quite through and observed that they did not crack at all.

Speaker:

When I saw them clear red, I.

Speaker:

Let them stand in that heat about.

Speaker:

Five or 6 hours until I found one of them, though it did not crack, did melt or run for the sand, which was mixed with the clay melted by the violence of the heat and would have run into glass if I had gone on.

Speaker:

So I slacked my fire gradually till the pots began to abate of the red color and watching them all night, that I might not let the fire abate too fast in the morning.

Speaker:

I had three very good I will not say handsome pipkins and two other earthen pots as hard burnt as could be desired and one of them perfectly glazed with the running of the sand.

Speaker:

After this experiment.

Speaker:

I need not say that I wanted no sort of earthenware for my use.

Speaker:

But I must need say, as to the shapes of them they were very indifferent, as any 1 may suppose, when I had no way of making them.

Speaker:

But as the children make dirt pies, or as a woman would make pies that never learned to raise paste, no joy to thing of so mean a nature was ever equal to mine.

Speaker:

When I found I had made an.

Speaker:

Earthen pot that would bear the fire.

Speaker:

And 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, which it did admirably well.

Speaker:

And with a piece of a kid.

Speaker:

I made some very good broth.

Speaker:

I wanted oatmeal and several other ingredients.

Speaker:

Requisite to make it as good as.

Speaker:

It would have had been.

Speaker:

My next concern was to get me a stone mortar to stamp or beat some corn in.

Speaker:

For as to the mill, there was no thought of arriving at that perfection of art with one pair of hands to supply this want.

Speaker:

I was at a great loss for all the trades in the world.

Speaker:

I was as perfectly unqualified for a stone cutter as for any whatever neither had I any tools to go about it with.

Speaker:

I spent many a day to find out a great stone big enough to cut, hollow and make fit for a mortar, and could find none at all.

Speaker:

Except what was in the solid rock and which I had no way to.

Speaker:

Dig or cut out.

Speaker:

Nor indeed were the rocks in the island of Hardness sufficient, but were all of a sandy, crumbling stone, which neither.

Speaker:

Would bear the weight of a heavy.

Speaker:

Pestle nor would break the corn without filling it with sand.

Speaker:

So, after a great deal of time lost in searching for a stone, I.

Speaker:

Gave it over and resolved to look.

Speaker:

Out for a great block of hardwood, which I found indeed much easier.

Speaker:

And getting one as big as I had strength to stir, I rounded it and formed it on the outside with my axe and hatchet, and then, with the help of fire and infinite labor, made a hollow place in it, as the Indians in Brazil make their canoes.

Speaker:

After this I made a great heavy pestle, or beater of the wood called the ironwood, and this I prepared and laid by against.

Speaker:

I had my next crop of corn, which I proposed to myself to grind or rather pound into meal to make bread.

Speaker:

My next difficulty was to make a sieve or serst to dress my meal and depart it from the bran and the husk, without which I did not see it possible I could have any bread.

Speaker:

This was a most difficult thing even to think on, for to be sure, I had nothing like the necessary thing to make it.

Speaker:

I mean, fine thin canvas or stuff to search the meal through.

Speaker:

And here I was, at a full stop for many months.

Speaker:

Nor did I really know what to do.

Speaker:

Linen, I had none left but what was mere rags.

Speaker:

I had goats hair, but neither knew how to weave it or spin it, and had I known how, here were.

Speaker:

No tools to work it with.

Speaker:

All the remedy that I found for this was that at last I did remember I had, among the seamen's clothes which were saved out of the ship some netcloths of calico or muslin, and with some pieces of these I made three small sieves proper enough for the work.

Speaker:

And thus I made shift for some years.

Speaker:

How I did afterwards I shall show in its place.

Speaker:

The baking part was the next thing to be considered, and how I should make bread when I came to have corn.

Speaker:

For first I had no yeast.

Speaker:

As to that part, there was no.

Speaker:

Supplying the want, so I did not concern myself much about it.

Speaker:

But for an oven, I was indeed in great pain.

Speaker:

At length I found out an experiment for that also, which was thus.

Speaker:

I made some earthen vessels, very broad, but not deep, that is to say, about 2ft diameter, and not above nine inches deep.

Speaker:

These I burned in the fire, and as I had done the other and laid them by and when I wanted to bake, I made a great fire upon my hearth, which I had paved with some square tiles of my own, baking and burning also, but I should.

Speaker:

Not call them square.

Speaker:

When the firewood was burned pretty much into embers or live coals, I drew them forward upon this hearth so as to cover it all over.

Speaker:

And there I let them lie till the hearth was very hot.

Speaker:

Then, sweeping away all the embers, I set down my loaf or loaves and whelming down the earthen pot upon them, drew the embers all round the outside of the pot to keep in and.

Speaker:

Add to the heat.

Speaker:

And thus, as well as in the best oven in the world, I baked my barley loaves and became in little time a good pastry cook into the bargain.

Speaker:

For I made myself several cakes and puddings of the rice.

Speaker:

But I made no pies, neither had I anything to put into them.

Speaker:

Supposing I had, except the flesh, either of fowls or goats.

Speaker:

It need not be wondered if all these things took me up most part of the third year of my boat here.

Speaker:

For it is to be observed that in the intervals of these things I had my new harvest and husbandry to manage.

Speaker:

For I reaped my corn in its season and carried it home as well as I could and laid it up.

Speaker:

In the ear in my large baskets.

Speaker:

Till I had time to rub it out.

Speaker:

For I had no floor to thrash it on or instrument to thrash it with.

Speaker:

And now, indeed, my stock of corn increasing, I really wanted to build my barns bigger.

Speaker:

I wanted a place to lay it up in, for the increase of the corn now yielded me so much that I had of the barley about 20 bushels, and of the rice as much or more insomuch, that now I resolved to begin to use it freely, for my bread had been quite gone a great while.

Speaker:

Also I resolved to see what quantity would be sufficient for me a whole.

Speaker:

Year and to sow but once a.

Speaker:

Year upon the whole.

Speaker:

I found that the 40 bushels of barley and rice were much more than I could consume in a year.

Speaker:

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.

Speaker:

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.

Speaker:

And I was not without secret wishes that I were on shore there.

Speaker:

Fancying that, seeing the mainland in an inhabited country, I might find some way or other to convey myself further and perhaps at last find some means of escape.

Speaker:

But all this while I made no allowance for the dangers of such an undertaking.

Speaker:

And how I might fall into the hands of savages.

Speaker:

And perhaps such as I might have reason to think far worse than the lions and tigers of Africa.

Speaker:

That if I once came in their power, I should run a hazard of more than a thousand to one of being killed, and perhaps of being eaten.

Speaker:

For I had heard that the people of the Caribbean coast were cannibals or man eaters and I knew by that latitude that I could not be far from that shore.

Speaker:

Then supposing 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 20 together.

Speaker:

Much more I that was but one and could make little or no defense.

Speaker:

All these things, I say, which I ought to have considered well and did come into my thoughts afterwards.

Speaker:

It gave me no apprehensions at first and my head ran mightily upon the thought of getting over to the shore.

Speaker:

Now I wished for my boy Zuri and the long boat with shoulder of mutton sail with which I sailed above a thousand miles on the coast of Africa.

Speaker:

But this was in vain.

Speaker:

Then I thought I would go and look at our ship's boat which, as I have said, was blown up upon the shore great way in the storm when we were first cast away.

Speaker:

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 upward against the high ridge of beachy rough sand but no water about her.

Speaker:

If I had had hands to have refitted her and to have launched her into the water, the boat would have done well enough and I might have gone back into the Brazils with her easily enough.

Speaker:

But I might have foreseen that I could no more turn her and set her upright upon her bottom than I could remove the island.

Speaker:

However, I went to the woods 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 repair the damage she had received and she would be a very good boat and I might go to sea in her very easily.

Speaker:

I spared no pains indeed in this.

Speaker:

Piece of fruitless toil and spent, I think, three or four weeks about it.

Speaker:

At last finding it impossible to heave it up.

Speaker:

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.

Speaker:

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.

Speaker:

So I was forced to give it over.

Speaker:

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.

Speaker:

This at length put me upon thinking whether it was not possible to make myself a canoe or pragua 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.

Speaker:

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.

Speaker:

But not at all considering the particular inconveniences which I lay under, more than the Indians did 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.

Speaker:

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 or burn or cut out the inside to make it hollow so as to make a boat of it.

Speaker:

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.

Speaker:

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.

Speaker:

And it was really, in its own nature more easy for me to guide it over 45 miles of sea than about 45 fathoms of land where it lay to set it afloat in the water.

Speaker:

I went to work upon this boat the most like a fool that ever man did who had any of his senses awake.

Speaker:

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.

Speaker:

But I put a stop to my inquiries into it by this foolish answer which I gave myself.

Speaker:

Let me first make it.

Speaker:

I warrant I will find somewhere other to get it along when it is done.

Speaker:

This was a most preposterous method, but the eagerness of my fancy prevailed, and to work I went.

Speaker:

I fell to Cedar Tree, and I questioned much whether Solomon ever had such a one.

Speaker:

For the building of the temple of Jerusalem.

Speaker:

It was 5ft ten inches diameter at the lower part, next to the stump, and 4ft eleven inches diameter at the end of 22ft, after which it lessened for a while, and then parted into branches.

Speaker:

It was not without infinite labor that.

Speaker:

I felled this tree.

Speaker:

I was 20 days hacking and hewing it at the bottom.

Speaker:

I was 14 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 labor.

Speaker:

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.

Speaker:

It cost me near three months more to clear the inside and work it out so as to make an exact boat of it.

Speaker:

This I did indeed without fire, by mere mallet and chisel, and by the dent of hard labor till I had brought it to be a very handsome paragua and big enough to have carried six and 20 men, and consequently big enough to have carried me and all my cargo.

Speaker:

When I had gone through this work, I was extremely delighted with it.

Speaker:

The boat was really much bigger than ever.

Speaker:

I saw a canoe or paragua that was made of one tree in my life.

Speaker:

Many a weary stroke it had caused, you may be sure and had I gotten it into the water, I make no question.

Speaker:

But I should have begun the maddest voyage and the most unlikely to be performed that ever was undertaken.

Speaker:

But all my devices to get it into the water failed me, though they cost me infinite labor, too.

Speaker:

It lay about 100 yards from the water and not more.

Speaker:

But the first inconvenience was, it was uphill towards the creek.

Speaker:

Well, to take away this discouragement, I resolved to dig into the surface of the earth and so make a declivity.

Speaker:

This I began, and it cost me a prodigious deal of pains, but who grudge pains who have had their deliverance in view.

Speaker:

But when this was worked through and this difficulty managed, I was still much the same for I could no more stir the canoe than I could the other boat.

Speaker:

Then I measured the distance of ground and resolved to cut a dock or canal to bring the water up to the canoe.

Speaker:

Seeing I could not bring the canoe down to the water well, I began this work.

Speaker:

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.

Speaker:

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 20ft deep.

Speaker:

So at length, though with great reluctance, I gave this attempt over also this grieved me heartily.

Speaker:

And now I saw, though too late.

Speaker:

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.

Speaker:

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.

Speaker:

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.

Speaker:

I entertained different notions of things.

Speaker:

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.

Speaker:

In a word, I had nothing indeed to do with it, nor was ever likely to have.

Speaker:

So I thought it looked as we may perhaps look upon it hereafter as a place I had lived in.

Speaker:

But what's come out of it and well might I say as Father Abraham, to dives between me and thee is a great goal fixed.

Speaker:

In the first place, I was removed from all the wickedness of the world.

Speaker:

Here I had neither the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eye nor the pride of life.

Speaker:

I had nothing to covet, for I had all that I was now capable of enjoying.

Speaker:

I was lord of the whole manor or, if I pleased, I might call myself king or emperor.

Speaker:

Over the whole country which I had possession of, there were no rivals.

Speaker:

I had no competitor, none to dispute sovereignty or command with me.

Speaker:

I might have raised shiploadings of corn, but I had no use for it.

Speaker:

So I let as little grow as I thought enough for my occasion.

Speaker:

I had tortoise or turtle enough but now and then one was as much as I could put to any use.

Speaker:

I'd 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.

Speaker:

But all I could make use of was all that was valuable.

Speaker:

I had enough to eat and supply my wants.

Speaker:

And what was all the rest to me?

Speaker:

If I killed more flesh than I could eat, the dog must eat it or vermin.

Speaker:

If I sowed more corn than I could eat, it must be spoiled.

Speaker:

The trees that I cut down were lying to rot on the ground.

Speaker:

I could make no more use of them but for fuel.

Speaker:

And that I had no occasion for but to dress my food.

Speaker:

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 youth and that whatever we may heap up to give others we enjoy just as much as we can use and no more.

Speaker:

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.

Speaker:

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.

Speaker:

I had, as hinted before, a parcel of money, as well as gold as silver, about 36 pounds sterling.

Speaker:

Alas, there the sorry, useless stuff lay.

Speaker:

I had no more manner of 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.

Speaker:

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.

Speaker:

As it was, I had not the least advantage by it, or benefit from it but there it lay in a drawer, and grew moldy with the damp of the cave in the wet seasons.

Speaker:

And if I had had the drawer full of diamonds, it had been the same case.

Speaker:

They had been of no manner of value to me because of no use.

Speaker:

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.

Speaker:

I frequently sat down to meet with thankfulness and admired the hand of God's providence which had thus spread my table in the wilderness.

Speaker:

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.

Speaker:

And this gave me sometimes such secret comforts that I could not 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.

Speaker:

All our discontents about what we want appeared to me to spring from the want of thankfulness for what we have.

Speaker:

Another reflection was of great use to me and doubtless would be so to anyone that should fall into such distress as mine was.

Speaker:

And this was to compare my present condition with what I at first expected it would be.

Speaker:

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.

Speaker:

For my relief and comfort without which I had wanted for tools to work, weapons for defense, 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 colors how I.

Speaker:

Must have acted if I had got nothing out of the ship.

Speaker:

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.

Speaker:

That I should have lived if I had not perished like a mere savage.

Speaker:

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 not with my teeth and pull it with my claws like a beast.

Speaker:

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.

Speaker:

And this part also.

Speaker:

I cannot but recommend the reflection of those who are apt in their misery to say, Is it any affliction like mine?

Speaker:

Let them consider how much worse the cases of some people are, and their case might have been if Providence had not fit.

Speaker:

I had another reflection which assisted me also to comfort my mind with hopes.

Speaker:

And this was comparing my present situation with what I had deserved and had therefore reason to expect from the hand of Providence.

Speaker:

I had lived a dreadful life, perfectly destitute of the knowledge and fear of God.

Speaker:

I had been well instructed by father and mother.

Speaker:

Neither had they been wanting to me in their early endeavors 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.

Speaker:

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.

Speaker:

I say, falling early into the seafaring life and into seafaring company.

Speaker:

All that little sense of religion which I had entertained was left out of me by my messmates but 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.

Speaker:

So void was I of everything that was good or the least sense of.

Speaker:

What I was or was to be.

Speaker:

That in the greatest deliverances I enjoyed, such as my escape from saley, 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.

Speaker:

I never had once the words, thank God so much is on my mind or in my mouth nor in the greatest distress had I so much as a thought to pray to him, or so much as to say, Lord have mercy upon me.

Speaker:

No, nor to mention the name of God, unless it was to swear by and blaspheme it.

Speaker:

I had terrible reflections upon my mind for many months, as I've already observed, on account of my wicked and hardened life past.

Speaker:

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.

Speaker:

This gave me great hopes that my repentance was accepted and that God had yet mercy in store for me.

Speaker:

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.

Speaker:

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.

Speaker:

Even.

Speaker:

As great as that of feeding Elijah by ravens, nay, by a long series of miracles and that I could hardly have named a place in the uninhabitable part of the world where I could have been cast more to.

Speaker:

My advantage.

Speaker:

A place where, as I had no society, which was my affliction on one hand.

Speaker:

So I found no ravenous beasts, no furious wolves or tigers to threaten my life, no venomous creatures or poisons which I might feed on to my hurt, no savages to murder and devour me.

Speaker:

In a word, as my life was a life of sorrow one way, so it was a life of mercy another.

Speaker:

And I wanted nothing to make it a life of comfort but to be able to make any sense of God's goodness to me and care over me in this condition, be my daily consolation.

Speaker:

And after I did make a just improvement on these things, I went away and was no more sad.

Speaker:

I had now been here so long that many things which I had brought on shore for my help were either quite gone or very much wasted and near spent.

Speaker:

My ink, as I observed, had been gone some time, all but a very little, which I eked out with water, a little and a little, till it was so pale it scarce left any appearance to black upon the paper as long as it lasted.

Speaker:

I made use of it to minute down the days of the month on which any remarkable thing happened to me.

Speaker:

And first, by casting up times past, I remembered that there was a strange concurrence of days in the various providences which befell me, in which, if I had been superstitiously inclined to observe days as fatal or fortunate, I might have had reason to have looked upon with a great deal of curiosity.

Speaker:

First.

Speaker:

I had observed that the same day that I broke away from my father and friends and ran away to Hole in order to go to sea.

Speaker:

The same day afterwards I was taken by the Sally man of War and made a slave.

Speaker:

The same day of the year that I escaped out of the wreck of that ship in Yarmouth.

Speaker:

Rhodes.

Speaker:

That same day, year afterwards, I made my escape from the Saline in a boat.

Speaker:

The same day of the year I was born, on the 30 September.

Speaker:

That same day I had my life so miraculously saved 26 years after, when I was cast on shore in this island, so that my wicked life and my solitary life began both on a day.

Speaker:

The next thing to my ink being wasted was that of my bread, I mean, the biscuit which I brought out of the ship.

Speaker:

This I had husbanded to the last degree, allowing myself but one cake of bread a day for above a year.

Speaker:

And yet I was quite without bread for near a year before I got any corn of my own.

Speaker:

And great reason I had to be thankful that I had any at all, the getting, it being, as been already observed, next to miraculous, my clothes too began to decay.

Speaker:

As to linen, I had had none a good while, except some checkered shirts, which I found in the chests of the other seamen, and which I carefully preserved, because many times I could bear no other clothes on but a shirt.

Speaker:

And it was a very great help to me that I had among all the men's clothes of the ship almost three dozen of shirts.

Speaker:

There were also indeed several thick watch coats of the seamens which were left, but they were too hot to wear.

Speaker:

And though it is true that the weather was so violently hot that there was no need of clothes, yet I could not go quite naked no, though I had been inclined to it, which I was not, nor could I abide the thought of it, though I was alone.

Speaker:

The reason why I could not go naked was, I could not bear the heat of the sun so well when quite naked as with some clothes on.

Speaker:

Nay, the very heat frequently blistered my skin, whereas with a shirt on the air itself made some motion and whistling under the shirt was twofold cooler than without it.

Speaker:

No more could I ever bring myself to go out in the heat of the sun without a cap or a hat.

Speaker:

The heat of the sun, beating with such violence as it does in that place, would give me the headache presently by darting so directly on my head without a cap or hat on that I could not bear it whereas, if I put on my hat, it would presently go away.

Speaker:

Upon these views I began to consider about putting the few rags I had, which I called clothes, into some order.

Speaker:

I had worn out all the waistcoats I had, and my business was now to try, if I could not make.

Speaker:

Jackets out of the great watch coats.

Speaker:

Which I had by me, and with such other materials as I had.

Speaker:

So I set to work tailoring, or rather indeed, botching, for I made most piteous work of it.

Speaker:

However, I made shift to make two or three new waistcoats, which I hoped would serve me a great while.

Speaker:

As for breeches or drawers, I made but a very sorry shift indeed till afterwards.

Speaker:

I have mentioned that I saved the skins of all the creatures that I killed I mean four footed ones, and I had them hung up stretched out with sticks in the sun by which means some of them were so dry and hard that they were fit for little, but others were very useful.

Speaker:

The first thing I made of these was a great cap for my head with the hair on the outside to shoot off the rain.

Speaker:

And this I performed so well that after I made me a suit of clothes wholly of these skins, that is to say, a waistcoat and breeches, open at the knees and both loose, for they were rather wanting to keep me cool than to keep me warm.

Speaker:

I must not admit to acknowledge that they were wretchedly made for if I was a bad carpenter, I was a worse tailor.

Speaker:

However, they were such as I made very good shift with, and when I was out, if it happened to rain, the hair of my waistcoat and cap being outermost, I was kept very dry.

Speaker:

After this I spent a great deal of time and pains to make an umbrella.

Speaker:

I was indeed in great want of one, and had a great mind to make one.

Speaker:

I had seen them made in the Brazils, where they're very useful in the great heats there, and I felt the heaths.

Speaker:

Every jot is great here, and greater too, being near the Equinox.

Speaker:

Besides, as I was obliged to be much abroad.

Speaker:

It was a most useful thing to me as well for the rains as the heaths.

Speaker:

I took a world of pains with it, and was a great while before I could make anything likely to hold nay, after I had thought I had hit the way, I spoiled two or three before I made one to my mind, but at last I made one that answered indifferently.

Speaker:

Well, the main difficulty, I found, was to make it let down.

Speaker:

I could make it spread but if it did not let down two and draw in, it was not portable for me anyway, but just over my head, which would not do.

Speaker:

However, at last, as I said, I made one to answer and covered it with skins the hair upwards so that it cast off the rain like a penthouse and kept off the sun so effectually that I could walk.

Speaker:

Out in the hottest of the weather with greater advantage than I could before in the coolest.

Speaker:

And when I had no need of it could close it and carry it under my arm.

Speaker:

Thus I lived mighty comfortably, my mind being entirely composed, by resigning myself to the will of God and throwing myself wholly upon the disposal of His Providence.

Speaker:

This made my life better than sociable.

Speaker:

For when I began to regret the want of conversation, I would ask myself whether thus conversing mutually with my own thoughts, and as I hope I may say with even God Himself, my ejaculations was not better than the utmost enjoyment of human society in the world.

Speaker:

Thank you for joining Bite at a.

Speaker:

Time books today while we read a bite of one of your favorite classics.

Speaker:

Again, my name is Brie Carlyle and I hope you come back tomorrow for the next bite of the life and adventures of Robinson Crusoe.

Speaker:

Don't forget to sign up for our newsletter at Bite at a Timebooks.com and.

Speaker:

Check out the shop.

Speaker:

You can check out the show notes or our website, Bite at a Timebooks.com for the rest of the links for our show.

Speaker:

We'd love to hear from you on social media as well.

Speaker:

You take a look and let's see what we can find.

Speaker:

Take it chapter by chapter, one at a time.

Speaker:

So many adventures and mountains we can climb.

Chapters

Video

More from YouTube