see how nature made artificers at first, I carried the carpenters
to see Will Atkins’ basket-house, as I called it; and they both
owned they never saw an instance of such natural ingenuity before,
nor anything so regular and so handily built, at least of its kind;
and one of them, when he saw it, after musing a good while, turning
about to me, “I am sure,” says he, “that man has no need of us; you
need do nothing but give him tools.”
Then I brought them out all my store of tools, and gave every man a
digging-spade, a shovel, and a rake, for we had no barrows or
ploughs; and to every separate place a pickaxe, a crow, a broad
axe, and a saw; always appointing, that as often as any were broken
or worn out, they should be supplied without grudging out of the
general stores that I left behind. Nails, staples, hinges,
hammers, chisels, knives, scissors, and all sorts of ironwork, they
had without reserve, as they required; for no man would take more
than he wanted, and he must be a fool that would waste or spoil
them on any account whatever; and for the use of the smith I left
two tons of unwrought iron for a supply.
My magazine of powder and arms which I brought them was such, even
to profusion, that they could not but rejoice at them; for now they
could march as I used to do, with a musket upon each shoulder, if
there was occasion; and were able to fight a thousand savages, if
they had but some little advantages of situation, which also they
could not miss, if they had occasion.
I carried on shore with me the young man whose mother was starved
to death, and the maid also; she was a sober, well-educated,
religious young woman, and behaved so inoffensively that every one
gave her a good word; she had, indeed, an unhappy life with us,
there being no woman in the ship but herself, but she bore it with
patience. After a while, seeing things so well ordered, and in so
fine a way of thriving upon my island, and considering that they
had neither business nor acquaintance in the East Indies, or reason
for taking so long a voyage, both of them came to me and desired I
would give them leave to remain on the island, and be entered among
my family, as they called it. I agreed to this readily; and they
had a little plot of ground allotted to them, where they had three
tents or houses set up, surrounded with a basket-work, palisadoed
like Atkins’s, adjoining to his plantation. Their tents were
contrived so that they had each of them a room apart to lodge in,
and a middle tent like a great storehouse to lay their goods in,
and to eat and to drink in. And now the other two Englishmen
removed their habitation to the same place; and so the island was
divided into three colonies, and no more – viz. the Spaniards, with
old Friday and the first servants, at my habitation under the hill,
which was, in a word, the capital city, and where they had so
enlarged and extended their works, as well under as on the outside
of the hill, that they lived, though perfectly concealed, yet full
at large. Never was there such a little city in a wood, and so
hid, in any part of the world; for I verify believe that a thousand
men might have ranged the island a month, and, if they had not
known there was such a thing, and looked on purpose for it, they
would not have found it. Indeed the trees stood so thick and so
close, and grew so fast woven one into another, that nothing but
cutting them down first could discover the place, except the only
two narrow entrances where they went in and out could be found,
which was not very easy; one of them was close down at the water’s
edge, on the side of the creek, and it was afterwards above two
hundred yards to the place; and the other was up a ladder at twice,