But first I was to prepare more land, for I had now seed enough to sow above an acre of ground. Before I did this, I had a week’s work at least to make me a spade, which, when it was done, was a very sorry one indeed, and very heavy, and required double labour to work with it; however, I went through that, and sowed my seeds in two large flat pieces of ground, as near my house as I could find them to my mind, and fenced them in with a good hedge, the stakes of which were all cut off that wood which I had set before, which I knew would grow; so that in one year’s time I knew I should have a quick or living hedge that would want but little repair. This work was not so little as to take me up less than three months; because great part of that time was in the wet season, when I could not go abroad.
Within doors, that is, when it rained and I could not go out, I found employment on the following occasions; always observing, that all the while I was at work, I diverted myself with talking to my parrot, and teaching him to speak; and I quickly learnt him to know his own name, and at last to speak it out pretty loud, Poll, 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: namely, I had long studied, by some means or other, to make myself some earthen vessels, which indeed I wanted sorely, 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 suitable clay, I might botch up some such pot as might, being dried by the sun, be hard enough 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 preparing corn, meal, etc., 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.
Chapter IX
IT would make the reader pity me, or rather laugh at me, to tell how many awkward ways I took to raise this paste, 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 to 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 strangely hard.
But all this would not answer my end, which was to get an earthen pot to hold what was liquid, and bear the fire, which none of these could do. It happened after some time, making a pretty large fire for cooking my meat, when I went to put it out, after I had done with it, I found a broken piece of one of my earthen-ware vessels in the fire, burnt as hard as a stone, and red as a tile. I was agreeably surprised to see it, and said to myself, that certainly they might be made to burn whole, if they would burn broken.