After this experiment, I need not say that I wanted no sort of earthen-ware for my use; but I must needs say, as to the shapes of them, they were very indifferent, as any one may suppose, as I had no way of making them but as the children make dirt pies, or as a woman would make pies that never learned to raise paste.

No joy at a thing of so mean a nature was ever equal to mine, when I found I had made an earthen pot that would bear the fire; and I had hardly patience to stay till they were cold, before I set one on the fire again, with some water in it, to boil me some meat, which it did admirably well; and with a piece of a kid I made some very good broth; though I wanted oatmeal, and several other ingredients requisite to make it so good as I would have had it been.

My next concern was to get a stone mortar to stamp or beat some corn in; for as to the mill, there was no thought of arriving to that perfection of art with one pair of hands.  To supply this want I was at a great loss; for, of all trades in the world, I was as perfectly unqualified for a stonecutter, as for any whatever; neither had I any tools to go about it with.  I spent many a day to find out a great stone big enough to cut hollow, and make fit for a mortar; but could find none at all, except what was in the solid rock, and which I had no way to dig or cut out:  nor, indeed, were the rocks in the island of sufficient hardness, as they were all of a sandy crumbling stone, which would neither bear the weight of a heavy pestle, nor would break the corn without filling it with sand:  so, after a great deal of time lost in searching for a stone, I gave it over, and resolved to look out a great block of hard wood, which I found indeed much easier; and getting one as big as I had strength to stir, I rounded it, and formed it on the outside with my axe and hatchet; and then, with the help of fire, and infinite labour, 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 the wood called iron-wood; and this I prepared and laid by against I had my next crop of corn, when I proposed to myself to grind, or rather pound, my corn into meal, to make my bread.

My next difficulty was to make a sieve, or searce, to dress my meal, and to part it from the bran and the husk, without which I did not see it possible I could have any bread.  This was a most difficult thing, even but to think on; for I had nothing like the necessary thing to make it; I mean fine thin canvass or stuff, to searce the meal through.  Here I was at a full stop for many months; nor did I really know what to do; linen I had none left, but what was mere rags; I had goats’-hair, but neither knew how to weave it nor spin it; and had I known how, here were no tools to work it with:  all the remedy I found for this was, at last recollecting I had, among the seamen’s clothes which were saved out of the ship, some neckcloths of calico or muslin, with some pieces of these I made three small sieves, proper enough for the work; and thus I made shift for some years:  how I did afterwards, I shall show in its place.