When I had gone through this work, I was extremely delighted with it.  The boat was really much bigger than I ever saw a canoe or periagua that was made of one tree, in my life.  Many a weary stroke it had cost, you may be sure; and there remained nothing but to get it into the water; and had I gotten it into the water, I make no question but I should have begun the maddest voyage, and the most unlikely to be performed, that ever was undertaken.

But all my devices to get it into the water failed me, though they cost me infinite labor too.  It lay about one hundred yards from the water, and not more; but the first inconvenience was, it was uphill towards the creek.  Well, to take away this discouragement, I resolved to dig into the surface of the earth, and so make a declivity.  This I began, and it cost me a prodigious deal of pains; but who grudges pains that have their deliverance in view?  But when this was worked through, and this difficulty managed, it was still much at one, for I could no more stir the canoe than I could the other boat.

Then I measured the distance of ground, and resolved to cut a dock or canal, to bring the water up to the canoe, seeing I could not bring the canoe down to the water.  Well, I began this work; and when I began to enter into it, and calculate how deep it was to be dug, how broad, how the stuff to be thrown out, I found that by the number of hands I had, being none but my own, it must have been ten or twelve years before I should have gone through with it; for the shore lay high, so that at the upper end it must have been at least twenty feet deep; so at length, though with great reluctancy, I gave this attempt over also.

This grieved me heartily; and now I saw, though too late, the folly of beginning a work before we count the cost and before we judge rightly of our own strength to go through with it.

THE MYSTERIOUS FOOTPRINT

By Daniel Defoe

I was something impatient to have the use of my boat, though very loath to run any more hazards; and therefore sometimes I sat contriving ways to get her about the island, and at other times I sat myself down contented enough without her.  But I had a strange uneasiness in my mind to go down to the point of the island where, as I have said, in my last ramble, I went up the hill to see how the shore lay, and how the current set, that I might see what I had to do.  This inclination increased upon me every day, and at length I resolved to travel thither by land, following the edge of the shore.  I did so; but had anyone in England been to meet such a man as I was, it must either have frighted him, or raised a great deal of laughter; and as I frequently stood still to look at myself, I could not but smile at the notion of my traveling through Yorkshire, with such an equipage, and in such a dress.  Be pleased to take a sketch of my figure, as follows:—­

I had a great high shapeless cap, made of a goat-skin, with a flap hanging down behind, as well to keep the sun from me, as to shoot the rain off from running into my neck; nothing being so hurtful in these climates as the rain upon the flesh, under the clothes.