The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808). Даниэль Дефо
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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.
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; for by a constant study, and serious application of the word of God, and by the assistance of his grace, I gained a different knowledge from what I had before; I entertained different notions of things; I looked 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 indeed to do with it, nor was ever like to have; so 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; and well I might say, as father Abraham to Dives, "Between me and thee there is a great gulf fixed."
In the first place, I was removed from all the wickedness of the world here: I had neither the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, or the pride of life: I had nothing to covet, for I had all I was now capable of enjoying; I was lord of the whole manor, or, if I pleased, I might call myself king or emperor over the whole country which I had possession of: there were no rivals: I had no competitor, none to dispute sovereignty or command with me; I might have raised ship-loadings of corn, but I had no use for it; so I let as little grow as I thought enough for my occasion: I had tortoises or turtles enough; but now and then one was as much as I could put to any use: I had timber enough to have built a fleet of ships; I had grapes enough to have made wine, or to have cured into raisins, to have loaded that fleet when they had been built.
But all I could make use of, was all that was valuable: I had enough to eat, and to supply my wants, and what was all the rest to me? If I killed more flesh than I could eat, the dog must eat it, or the vermin; if I sowed more corn than I could eat, it must be spoiled. The trees that I cut down were lying to rot on the ground, I could make no more use of them, than for fuel; and that I had no occasion for, but to dress my food.
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 as they are for our use: and that whatever we may heap up indeed to give to others, we enjoy as much as we can use, and no more. 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. 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. I had, as I hinted before, a parcel of money, as well gold as silver, about thirty-six pounds sterling; alas! there the nasty, sorry, useless stuff lay; I had no manner of business for it; and I often thought with myself, that I would have given an handful of it for a gross of tobacco-pipes, or for an hand-mill to grind my corn; nay, I would have given it all for six-penny-worth of turnip and carrot seed out of England, or for an handful of peas and beans, and a bottle of ink: as it was, I had not the least advantage by it, or benefit from it; but there it lay in a drawer, and grew mouldy with the damp of the cave, in the wet season; and if I had had the drawer full of diamonds, it had been the same case; and they had been of no manner of value to me, because of no use.
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. I frequently sat down to my meat with thankfulness, and admired the hand of God's providence, which had thus spread my table in the wilderness: I learnt 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; and this gave me sometimes