and to render such an affair not only improbable, but impossible; and that therefore I ought not by any means to remove.  However, I was so enamoured of this place, that I spent much of my time there for the whole remaining part of the month of July; and though, upon second thoughts, I resolved, as above stated, not to remove; yet I built me a little kind of a bower, and surrounded it at a distance with a strong fence, being a double hedge, as high as I could reach, well staked, and filled between with brush-wood.  Here I lay very secure, sometimes two or three nights together; always going over it with a ladder, as before:  so that I fancied now I had my country and my sea-coast house.  This work took me up till the beginning of August.

I had but newly finished my fence, and began to enjoy my labour, when the rains came on, and made me stick close to my first habitation:  for though I had made a tent like the other, with a piece of sail, and spread it very well, yet I had not the shelter of a hill to keep me from storms, nor a cave behind me to retreat into when the rains were extraordinary.

About the beginning of August, as I said, I had finished my bower, and began to enjoy myself.  The 3d of August, I found the grapes I had hung up were perfectly dried, and indeed were excellent good raisins of the sun:  so I began to take them down from the trees; and it was very happy that I did so, as the rains which followed would have spoiled them, and I should have lost the best part of my winter food; for I had above two hundred large bunches of them.  No sooner had I taken them all down, and carried most of them home to my cave, but it began to rain:  and from hence, which was the 14th of August, it rained, more or less, every day till the middle of October; and sometimes so violently, that I could not stir out of my cave for several days.

In this season, I was much surprised with the increase of my family.  I had been concerned for the loss of one of my cats, who ran away from me, or, as I thought, had been dead; and I heard no more of her, till, to my astonishment, she came home with three kittens.  This was the more strange to me, because, about the end of August, though I had killed a wild cat, as I called it, with my gun, yet I thought it was quite a different kind from our European cats:  yet the young cats were the same kind of house-breed as the old one; and both of my cats being females, I thought it very strange.  But from these three, I afterwards came to be so pestered with cats, that I was forced to kill them like vermin, or wild beasts, and to drive them from my house as much as possible.

From the 14th of August to the 26th, incessant rain; so that I could not stir, and was now very careful not to be much wet.  In this confinement, I began to be straitened for food; but venturing out twice, I one day killed a goat, and the last day, which was the 26th, found a very large tortoise, which was a treat to me.  My food was now regulated thus:  I ate a bunch of raisins for my breakfast; a piece of the goat’s flesh, or of the turtle, broiled, for my dinner (for, to my great misfortune, I had no vessel to boil or stew any thing;) and two or three of the turtle’s eggs for my supper.