Having now fixed my habitation, I found it absolutely necessary to provide a place to make a fire in, and fuel to burn; and what I did for that, as also how I enlarged my cave, and what conveniences I made, I shall give a full account of in its place; but I must first give some little account of myself, and of my thoughts about living, which, it may well be supposed, were not a few.
I had a dismal prospect of my condition; for, as I was not cast away upon that island without being driven, as is said, by a violent storm, quite out of the course of our intended voyage, and a great way, namely, some hundreds of leagues, out of the ordinary course of the trade of mankind, I had great reason to consider it as a determination of Heaven, that, in this desolate place, and in this desolate manner, I should end my life. The tears would run plentifully down my face when I made these reflections; and sometimes I would expostulate with myself why Providence should thus completely ruin his creatures, and render them so absolutely miserable, so without help abandoned, so entirely depressed, that it could hardly be rational to be thankful for such a life.
But something always returned swift upon me to check these thoughts, and to reprove me; and, particularly, one day walking, with my gun in my hand, by the sea-side, I was very pensive upon the subject of my present condition, when reason, as it were, expostulated with me the other way, thus:—”Well, you are in a desolate condition, it is true; but pray, remember, where are the rest of you? Did not you come eleven of you into the boat? Where are the ten? Why were they not saved, and you lost? Why were you singled out? Is it better to be here or there?” And then I pointed to the sea. All evils are to be considered with the good that is in them, and with what worse attended them.
Then it occurred to me again, how well I was furnished for my subsistence, and what would have been my case if it had not happened, which was an hundred thousand to one, that the ship floated from the place where she first struck, and was driven so near the shore that I had time to get all things out of her. What would have been my case, if I had been to have lived in the condition in which I at first came on shore, without necessaries of life, or necessaries to supply and procure them? “Particularly,” said I, loud, though to myself, “what should I have done without a gun, without ammunition, without any tools to make any thing or to work with—without clothes, bedding, a tent, or any manner of covering?” and that now I had all these to a sufficient quantity, and was in a fair way to provide myself in such a manner as to live without my gun when my ammunition was spent; so that I had a tolerable view of subsisting without any want, as long as I lived: for I considered, from the beginning, how I should provide for the accidents that might happen, and for the time that was to come, even not after my ammunition should be spent, but even after my health or strength should decay.
I confess I had not entertained any notion of my ammunition being destroyed at one blast, I mean, my powder being blown up by lightning; and this made the thoughts of it so surprising to me when it lightened and thundered, as I observed just now.
And now, being about to enter into a melancholy relation of a scene of silent life, such, perhaps, as was never heard of in the world before, I shall take it from its beginning, and continue it in its order. It was, by my account, the 30th of September, when, in the manner as above said, I first set foot upon this horrid island, when the sun being, to us, in its autumnal equinox, was almost just over my head; for I reckoned myself, by observation, to be in the latitude of nine degrees twenty-two minutes north of the Line.