to be kept so. Now, as this was necessary in the preparing of corn, meal, &c., which was the thing I was doing, 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 paste; what odd, mis-shapen, 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 merely with removing, before as well as after they were dried. In a word, after having labored hard to find the clay; to dig it, to temper it, to bring it home, and to work it, I could not make above two large earthen ugly things-I cannot call them jars in about two months.

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. These two pots, which were always to stand dry, I thought would hold my dry. corn, and perhaps the meal, when the corn was bruised.

Though I failed so badly 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 things my hand turned to; and the heat of the sun baked them quite hard. By and by, however, I succeeded in making good large pots also.

HOW I BECAME MY OWN MILLER AND BAKER.

My next concern was to get a stone mortar to stamp or beat some corn in; for as to a mill, there was no chance of one arriving at that perfection of art with one pair of hands. To supply this want, I was at a great loss; for, of all the

trades in the world, I was as perfectly unfit for a stonecutter as for any whatever; neither had I any tools to set about it with. I spent many a day to find out a great stone, big enough to be hollowed out, with the purpose of making it fit for a mortar; but I could find none at all except what was in the solid rock, and which I had no way to dig or cut out. I, therefore, resolved to look out for a great block of hard wood, which, indeed, I found much easier. Getting one as big as I had strength to stir, I rounded it, and formed it on the outside with my axe and hatchet; then, with the help of fire, I made a hollow place in it, as the Indians in Brazil make their canoes. After this, I made a great heavy pestle, or beater, of hard wood; and this I prepared and laid by for my next crop of corn, which I proposed to grind, or rather pound, into meal, to make bread.

The baking part was the next thing to be considered, and how I should make bread when I came to have corn; for

I had no yeast. As to that want, there was no supplying it, so I did not concern myself much about it; but for an oven, I was indeed in great perplexity. At length I found out an experiment for that also, and it was this: I made some earthen vessels very broad, but not deep, that is to say, about two feet across, and not above nine inches deep. These I burned in the fire, as I had done the other, and laid them by; and when I wanted to bake, I made a great fire upon my hearth, which I had paved with some square tiles, of my own baking and burning.

When the firewood had burned pretty well into embers, or live coals, I drew them forward upon this hearth, so as to cover it all over, and there I let them lie till the hearth was very hot. Then, sweeping away all the embers, I set down my loaf, or loaves, and placing the earthen pot upon them, drew the embers all round the outside of the pot, to

keep in, and add to the heat. Thus, as well as in the best oven in the world, I baked my barley-loaves; and I became, in little time, a good pastry-cook into the bargain; for I made myself several cakes and puddings of the rice. But I made no pies, neither had I anything to put into them, supposing I had, except the flesh either of fowls or goats.

It need not be wondered at, if all these things took me up most part of the third year of my abode here; for, it is to be observed, that in the intervals of these things I had my new harvest and husbandry to manage. I reaped my corn in its season, and carried it home as well as I could; and I laid it up in the ear, in my large baskets, till I had time to rub it out, for I had no floor to thrash it on, or instrument to thrash it with.

And now, indeed, my stock of corn increasing, I really. wanted to build my barns bigger: I wanted a place to lay it up in; for the stock of seed now yielded me so much, that I had of the barley about twenty bushels, and of the rice as much, or more. I was now safe in resolving to begin to use it freely.

I AM STARTLED BY THE PRINT OF A MAN'S FOOT.

I cannot say, that after this for five years anything extraordinary happened. I lived on as before, as contented as I could well be; for I had a natural longing for my country and my home, or even for the society of man of whatever kind. At last, however, a circumstance happened which gave a new bent to my thoughts.

It happened one day, about noon, that I was startled by the print of a man's naked foot, which was very plainly to be seen, on the sand. I stood like one thunderstruck, or as if I had seen a ghost. I listened, I looked round me, but I could hear nothing, nor see anything; I went up to a rising ground, to look farther; I went up the shore, and

down the shore, but it was all one: I could see no other impression but that one. I went to it again to see if there were any more, and to observe if it might not be my fancy; but there was no room for that supposition, for there was exactly the print of a foot-toes, heel, and every part of a foot.

How it came thither I knew not, nor could I in the least imagine; but after innumerable fluttering thoughts, like a man perfectly confused and out of myself, I came to my sea-side house, hardly feeling the ground I went on, and terrified to the last degree. I looked behind me at every two or three steps, suspecting every bush and tree, and fancying every stump at a distance to be a man. Nor is it possible to describe in how many various shapes my affrighted imagination represented things to me; how many wild ideas found their way every moment into my fancy; and what strange notions came into my thoughts by the way.

When I came to my castle-for so I think I called it ever after this-I fled into it like one pursued. Whether I went over by the ladder, as first contrived, or went in at the hole in the rock, which I had called a door, I cannot remember; no! nor could I remember the next morning, for never frightened hare fled to cover, or fox to earth, with more terror of mind than I to this retreat.

I slept none that night; I tossed about in my hammock, even more confused and terrified than I had been at noon. I tried to chase away my fears; but the question, How can the footprint have come there? was always recurring. At last I came to the conclusion that it must be some of the savages of the main-land opposite, who having wandered out to sea in their canoes, had been driven by the currents or by contrary winds to the island. If so, it was clear they had been on shore, and had, probably, gone being as loath, perhaps, to have stayed in this desolate island as I would have been to have had them.

away again to sea,

In the midst of these fears the thought one day occurred to me, that all this might be a mere fancy of my own, and that this foot might be the print of my own foot, made as I walked on the beach. This cheered me up a little, too, and I began to persuade myself my fear was all a delusion; that the foot-print was no other than my own. Again, I considered that I could by no means tell, for certain, where I had trod, and where I had not. If it turned out, that this was simply the print of my own foot, I had played the part of those fools who try to make stories of ghosts, and then are frightened at them more than anybody

Now I began to take courage, and to peep abroad again, for I had not stirred out of my castle for three days and nights. My provisions ran short; for I had little or nothing within doors but some barley-cakes and water: then, too, I knew that my goats wanted to be milked; and this was usually my evening diversion. Encouraging myself, therefore, with the belief that this was nothing but the print of one of my own feet; and that I might be truly said to have been startled at my own shadow-I began to go abroad again, and went to my country-house to milk my flock. But to see with what fear I went forward; how often I looked behind me; how I was ready, every now and then, to lay down my basket, and run for my life, it would have made any one fancy I was haunted with an evil conscience.

However, I went down thus two or three days; and, seeing nothing, I began to be a little bolder, and to think there was really nothing in it but my own imagination; but I could not persuade myself fully of this till I should go down to the shore again, and see this print of a foot, and measure it by my own, to observe if there was any likeness or fitness, that I might be assured it was my own foot. Now, when I came to the spot-first, it appeared clear to me, that when I had been down at the beach, I could not possibly have been any