The next thing that wasted after my ink, was the biscuit which I had brought out of the ship, and though I allowed myself but one cake a day, for above a twelvemonth, yet I was quite out of bread for near a year, before I got any corn of my own.

In the next place, my clothes began to decay, and my linen had been gone long before.  However, I had preserved about three dozen of the sailors chequered shirts, which proved a great refreshment to me, when the violent beams of the sun would not suffer me to bear any of the seamen’s heavy watch coats, which made me turn taylor, and, after a miserable botching manner, convert them to jackets.  To preserve my head, I made me a cap of goat-skins, with the hair outwards to keep out the rain; which indeed served me so well, that afterwards I made me a waistcoat and opened-kneed breeches of the fame:  And then I contrived a sort of an umbrella, covering it with skins, which not only kept out the heat of the sun, but rain also.  Thus being easy, and settled in my mind, my chief happiness was to converse with God, in most heavenly and comfortable ejaculations.

For five years after this I cannot say any extraordinary thing occured to me.  My chief employment was to cure my raisins, and plant my barley and rice, of both which I had a year’s provision beforehand.  But though I was disapointed in my first canoe, I made it, at intermediate times, my business to make a second, of much inferior size; and it was two-years before I had finished it.  But as I perceived it would no wife answer my design of failing to the other shore, my thoughts were consigned to take a tour round the island, to see what further discoveries I could make.  To this intent, after having moved her to the water, and tried how she would sail, I fitted up a little raft to my boat, and made a sail of the ships sail that by me.  I then made lockers or boxes at the end of it, to put in necessaries, provision, and ammunition, which would preserve them dry, either from rain or the spray of the sea; and in the inside of the boat, I cut me a long hollow place to lay my gun in, and to keep it dry made a flag to hang over it.  My umbrella I fixed in a step in the stern, like a mast, to keep the heat of the sun off me.  And now resolving to see the circumference of my little kingdom, I victualled my ship for the voyage, putting in two dozen of my barley-bread loaves, an earthen pot-full of parched rice, a little bottle of rum, half a goat, powder and shot, and two watch coats.  It was the 6th of November, in the 6th year of my reign, or captivity, that I set out in this voyage; which was much longer than I expected, being obliged to put further out, by reason of the rocks that lay a great way in the sea.  And indeed so much did these rocks surprise me, that I was for putting back, fearing that if I ventured farther it would be out of my power to return in this uncertainty I came to an anchor just off shore, to which I waded with my gun on my shoulder, and then climbing up a hill, which overlooked that point, I saw the full extent of it, and so resolved to run all hazards.