On One Occasion, His Agility In Pursuing
A Goat Had Nearly Cost Him His Life:
As, while pursuing it with great
eagerness, he caught hold of it on the brink of a precipice, of
Which,
he was not aware, being concealed by bushes, so that he fell with the
goat down the precipice to a great depth, and was so bruised and stunned
by the fall, that he lay senseless, as he supposed, for twenty-four
hours, and when he recovered his senses found the goat dead under him.
He was then scarcely able to crawl to his hut, about a mile distant, and
could not stir out again for ten days.
He came at length to relish his meat well enough without bread and salt.
In the proper season he had plenty of good turnips, which had been sowed
there by Captain Dampier's men, and had now spread over several acres of
ground. He had also abundance of cabbage, from the cabbage-palms, and
seasoned his food with the fruit of the pimento, which is the same with
Jamaica pepper, and has a fine flavour. He found also a species of black
pepper, called malageta, which was good for expelling wind and curing
gripes. He soon wore out all his shoes and other clothes, by running in
the woods; and, being forced to shift without, his feet became so hard
that he ran about every where without inconvenience, and it was some
time after he came to us before he could wear shoes, as his feet swelled
when he first began again to wear them. After he had got the better of
his melancholy, he sometimes amused himself with carving his name on the
trees, together with the date of his being left there, and the time of
his solitary residence. At first he was much pestered with cats and
rats, which had bred there in great numbers from some of each species
which had got on shore from ships that had wooded and watered at the
island. The rats gnawed his feet and clothes when he was asleep, which
obliged him to cherish the cats, by feeding them with goats flesh, so
that many of them became so tame that they used to lie beside him in
hundreds, and soon delivered him from the rats. He also tamed some kids,
and for his diversion would at times sing and dance with them and his
cats: So that, by the favour of Providence and the vigour of his youth,
for he was now only thirty years of age, he came at length to conquer
all the inconveniences of his solitude, and to be quite easy in his
mind.
When his clothes were worn out, he made himself a coat and a cap of goat
skins, which he stitched together with thongs of the same, cut out with
his knife, using a nail by way of a needle or awl. When his knife was
worn out, he made others as well as he could of some old hoops that had
been left on the shore, which he beat out thin between two stones, and
grinded to an edge on a smooth stone.
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