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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