, that it might swim upright as it ought to do. It cost me
near three months more to clear the inside, and work it so as to make
an exact boat of it. This I did, indeed, without fire, by mere mallet
and chisel, and by the dint of hard labor, till I had brought it to be
a very handsome _periagua_, and big enough to have carried six and
twenty men, and consequently big enough to have carried me and all my
cargo.

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