Now I wished for my boy Xury, and the long-boat with the shoulder-of-mutton sail, with which I sailed above a thousand miles on the coast of Africa; but this was in vain: then I thought I would go and look at our ship's boat, which, as I have said, was blown up upon the shore a great way, in the storm, when we were first cast away. She lay nearly where she did at first, but not quite; having turned, by the force of the waves and the winds, almost bottom upward, against a high ridge of beachy rough sand; but no water about her, as before. If I had had hands to have refitted her, and to have launched her into the water, the boat would have done very well, and I might have gone back into the Brazils with her easily enough; but I might have foreseen, that I could no more turn her and set her upright upon her bottom, than I could remove the island; however, I went to the woods, and cut levers and rollers, and brought them to the boat, resolving to try what I could do; suggesting to myself, that if I could but turn her down, and repair the damage she had received, she would be a very good boat, and I might venture to sea in her.
I spared no pains, indeed, in this piece of fruitless toil, and spent, I think, three or four weeks about it: at last, finding it impossible to heave her up with my little strength, I fell to digging away the sand, to undermine her, and so as to make her fall down, setting pieces of wood to thrust and guide her right in the fall.
But when I had done this, I was unable to stir her up again, or to get under her, much less to move her forward towards the water; so I was forced to give it over: and yet, though I gave over the hopes of the boat, my desire to venture over the main increased, rather than diminished, as the means for it seemed impossible.
At length, I began to think whether it was not possible to make myself a canoe, or periagua, such as the natives of those climates make, even without tools, or, as I might say, without hands, of the trunk of a great tree. This I not only thought possible, but easy, and pleased myself extremely with the idea of making it, and with my having much more convenience for it than any of the Negroes or Indians; but not at all considering the particular inconveniences which I lay under more than the Indians did, viz. the want of hands to move it into the water when it was made, a difficulty much harder for me to surmount than all the consequences of want of tools could be to them: for what could it avail me, if, after I had chosen my tree, and with much trouble cut it down, and might be able with my tools to hew and dub the outside into the proper shape of a boat, and burn or cut out the inside to make it hollow, so as to make a boat of it; if, after all this, I must leave it just where I found it, and was not able to launch it into the water?
One would imagine, if I had had the least reflection upon my mind of my circumstances while I was making this boat, I should have immediately thought how I was to get it into the sea: but my thoughts were so intent upon my voyage in it, that I never once considered how I should get it off the land; and it was really, in its own nature, more easy for me to guide it over forty-five miles of sea, than the forty-five fathoms of land, where it lay, to set it afloat in the water.
I went to work upon this boat the most like a fool that ever man did, who had any of his senses awake. I pleased myself with the design, without determining whether I was able to undertake it; not but that the difficulty of launching my boat came often into my head; but I put a stop to my own inquiries into it, by this foolish answer: Let me first make it; I warrant I will find some way or other to get it along when it is done.
This was a most preposterous method; but the eagerness of my fancy prevailed, and to work I went. I felled a cedar tree, and I question much whether Solomon ever had such a one for the building of the Temple at Jerusalem; it was five feet ten inches diameter at the lower part next the stump, and four feet eleven inches diameter at the end of twenty-two feet, where it lessened, and then parted into branches. It was not without infinite labour that I felled this tree; I was twenty days hacking and hewing at the bottom, and fourteen more getting the branches and limbs, and the vast spreading head of it, cut off: after this, it cost me a month to shape it and dub it to a proportion, and to something like the bottom of a boat, that it might swim upright as it ought to do. It cost me near three months more to clear the inside, and work it out so as to make an exact boat of it: this I did, indeed, without fire, by mere mallet and chisel, and by the dint of hard labour, till I had brought it to be a very handsome periagua, and big enough to have carried six and twenty men, and consequently big enough to have carried me and all my cargo.
When I had gone through this work, I was extremely delighted with it. The boat was really much bigger than ever I saw a canoe or periagua, that was made of one tree, in my life. Many a weary stroke it had cost, you may be sure; and there remained nothing but to get it into the water; which, had I accomplished, I make no question but I should have begun the maddest voyage, and the most unlikely to be performed, that ever was undertaken.
But all my devices to get it into the water failed me; though they cost me inexpressible labour too. It lay about one hundred yards from the water, and not more; but the first inconvenience was, it was up hill towards the creek. Well, to take away this discouragement, I resolved to dig into the surface of the earth, and so make a declivity: this I begun, and it cost me a prodigious deal of pains; (but who grudge pains that have their deliverance in view?) when this was worked through, and this difficulty managed, it was still much the same, for I could no more stir the canoe than I could the other boat. Then I measured the distance of ground, and resolved to cut a dock or canal, to bring the water up to the canoe, seeing I could not bring the canoe down to the water. Well, I began this work; and when I began to enter upon it, and calculate how deep it was to be dug, how broad, how the stuff was to be thrown out, I found by the number of hands I had, having none but my own, that it must have been ten or twelve years before I could have gone through with it; for the shore lay so high, that at the upper end it must have been at least twenty feet deep; this attempt, though with great reluctancy, I was at length obliged to give over also.