t while before I
could make any thing likely to hold; nay, after I thought I had hit the
way, I spoiled two or three before I made one to my mind; but at last I
made one that answered indifferently well. The main difficulty I found
was to make it to let down: I could make it to spread; but if it did not
let down too, and draw in, it would not be portable for me any way, but
just over my head, which would not do. However, at last, as I said, I
made one to answer; I covered it with skins, the hair upwards, so that
it cast off the rain like a penthouse, and kept off the sun so
effectually, that I could walk out in the hottest of the weather, with
greater advantage than I could before in the coolest; and when I had no
need of it, I could close it, and carry it under my arm.

Thus I lived mighty comfortably, my mind being entirely composed by
resigning to the will of God, and throwing myself wholly upon the
disposal of his providence: this made my life better than sociable; for
when I began to regret the want of conversation, I would ask myself,
whether thus conversing mutually with my own thoughts, and, as I hope I
may say, with even my Maker, by ejaculations and petitions, was not
better than the utmost enjoyment of human society in the world?

I cannot say, that after this, for five years, any extraordinary thing
happened to me; but I lived on in the same course, in the same posture
and place, just as before. The chief thing I was employed in, besides my
yearly labour of planting my barley and rice, and curing my raisins, of
both which I always kept up just enough to have sufficient stock of the
year's provisions beforehand; I say, besides this yearly labour, and my
daily labour of going out with my gun, I had one labour to make me a
canoe, which at last I finished: so that by digging a canal to it, six
feet wide, and four feet deep, I brought it into the creek, almost half
a mile. As for the first, that was so vastly big, as I made it without
considering beforehand, as I ought to do, how I should be able to launch
it; so never being able to bring it to the water, or bring the water to
it, I was obliged to let it lie where it was, as a memorandum to teach
me to be wiser next time. Indeed the next time, though I could not get a
tree proper for it, and was in a place where I could not get the water
to it, at any less distance than, as I have said, of near half a mile;
yet as I saw it was practicable at last, I never gave it