found
employment on the following occasions; always observing, that while I
was at work, I diverted myself with talking to my parrot, and teaching
him to speak; and I quickly learned him to know his own name, and at
last to speak it out pretty loud, Pol; which was the first word I ever
heard spoken in the island by any mouth but my own. This, therefore, was
not my work, but an assistant to my work; for now, as I said, I had a
great employment upon my hands, as follows: I had long studied, by some
means or other, to make myself some earthen vessels, which indeed I
wanted much, but knew not where to come at them: however, considering
the heat of the climate, I did not doubt but if I could find out any
clay, I might botch up some such pot as might, being dried in the sun,
be hard and strong enough to bear handling, and to hold any thing that
was dry, and required to be kept so; and as this was necessary in the
preparing corn, meal, &c. which was the thing I was upon, I resolved to
make some as large as I could, and fit only to stand like jars, to hold
what should be put into them.

It would make the reader pity me, or rather laugh at me, to tell how
many awkward ways I took to raise this pastil; what odd, misshapen, ugly
things I made; how many of them fell in, and how many fell out, the clay
not being stiff enough to bear its own weight; how many cracked by the
over violent heat of the sun, being set out too hastily; and how many
fell in pieces with only removing, as well before as after they were
dried: and, in a word, how, after having laboured hard to find the
clay, to dig it, to temper it, to bring it home, and work it, I could
not make above two large earthen ugly things (I cannot call them jars)
in about two months' labour.

However, as the sun baked these two very dry and hard, I lifted them
very gently up, and set them down again in two great wicker baskets,
which I had made on purpose for them, that they might not break; and as
between the pot and the basket there was a little room to spare, I
stuffed it full of the rice and barley-straw; and these two pots being
to stand always dry, I thought would hold my dry corn, and perhaps the
meal, when the corn was bruised.

Though I miscarried so much in my design for large pots, yet I made
several smaller things with better success; such as little round pots,
flat dishes, pitchers, and pipkins, and any thing my hand turned to; and
the heat of the sun baked them very