Notwithstanding all this, my thoughts ran continually upon that shore.  I now wished for my boy Xury, and the long boat, with the shoulder of mutton sail:  I went to the ship’s boat that had been cast a great way on the shore in the late storm.  She was removed but a little; but her bottom being turned up by the impetuosity and fury of the waves and wind, I fell to work with all the strength I had, with levers and rollers I had cut from the wood, to turn her, and repair the damages she had sustained.  This work took me up three or four weeks, when finding my little strength all in vain, I fell to undermining it by digging away the sand, and so to make it fall down, setting pieces of wood to thrust and guide it in the fall.  But after this was done, I was still unable to stir it up, or to get under it, much less to move it forward towards the water, and so I was forced to give it over.

This disapointment, however did not frighten me.  I began to think whether it was not possible for me to make a canoe or perigua, such as the Indians make of the trunk of a tree, But here I lay under particular inconveniencies; want of tools to make it, and want of hands to move it in the water when it was made.  However, to work I went upon it, stopping all the inquiries I could make, with this very simple answer I made to myself, Let’s first make it, I’ll warrant I’ll find some way or other to get it along when it is done.

I first cut down a cedar tree, which 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 space, and then parted into branches.  Twenty days was I a hacking and hewing this tree at the bottom, fourteen more in cutting off the branches and limbs, and a whole month in shaping it like the bottom of the boat.  As for the inside, I was three weeks with a mallet and chissel, clearing it in such a manner, as that it was big enough to carry twenty-six men, much bigger than any canoe I ever saw in my life, and confequentiy sufficient to transport me and all my effects to that wished-for shore I so ardently desired.

Nothing remained now, but, indeed, the greatest difficulty to get it into the water, it lying about one hundred yards from it.  To remedy the first inconvenience, which was a rising hill between the boat and the creek, with wonderful pains and labour I dug into the bowels of the earth, and made a declivity.  But when this was done, all the strength I had was as insufficient to remove it, as it was when I attempted to remove the boat.  I then proceeded to measure the difference of ground, resolving to make a canal, in order to bring the water to the canoe, since I could not bring the canoe to the water.  But as this seemed to be impracticable to myself alone, under the space of eleven or twelve years, it brought me into some sort of consideration:  so that I concluded this also to be impossible, and the attempt altogether vain.  I now saw, and not before, what stupidity it is to begin a work before we reckon its costs, or judge rightly our own abilities to go through with its performance.