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ldings, huts, castle, nor any living creature to be seen! It cannot be," says I, "that this place was made for nothing!" I then went a considerable way into the wood, and inclined to have gone much farther, it being very beautiful, but, on second thoughts, judged it best to content myself at present with only looking out a safe retreat for that night; for, however agreeable the place then seemed, darkness was at hand, when everything about me would have more or less of horror in it. The wood, at its first entrance, was composed of the most charming flowering shrubs that can be imagined; each growing upon its own stem, at so convenient a distance from the other, that you might fairly pass between them any way without the least incommodity. Behind them grew numberless trees, somewhat taller, of the greatest variety of shapes, forms, and verdures the eye ever beheld; each, also, so far asunder as was necessary for the spreading of their several branches and the growth of their delicious fruits, without a bush, briar, or shrub amongst them. Behind these, and still on the higher ground, grew an infinite number of very large, tall trees, much loftier than the former, but intermixed with some underwood, which grew thicker and closer the nearer you approached the rock. I made a shift to force my way through these as far as the rock, which rose as perpendicular as a regular building, having only here and there some crags and unevennesses. There was, I observed, a space all the way between the underwood and the rock, wide enough to drive a cart in; and, indeed, I thought it had been left for that purpose. I walked along this passage a good way, having tied a rag of the lining of my jacket at the place of my entrance, to know it again at my coming back, which I intended to be ere it grew dark; but I found so much pleasure in the walk, and surveying a small natural grotto which was in the rock, that the daylight forsook me unawares: whereupon I resolved to put off my return unto the boat till next morning, and to take up my lodging for that night in the cave. I cut down a large bundle of underwood with my cutlass, sufficient to stop up the mouth of the grotto, and laying me down to rest, slept as sound as if I had been on board my ship; for I never had one hour's rest together since I shot the gulf till this. Nature, indeed, could not have supported itself thus long under much labour; but as I had nothing to do but only ke
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