But when I had done this, I was unable to stir it up again, or to get under it, much less to move it forwards 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 for the main increased, rather than decreased, as the means for it seemed impossible.

This at length set me upon thinking 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, viz. of the trunk of a great tree.  This I not only thought possible, but easy:  and pleased myself extremely with my thoughts 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. 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 was it to me, that when I had chosen a vast tree in the woods, I might with great trouble cut it down, if after I might be able with my tools to hew and dub the outside into a proper shape of a boat, and burn or cut out the inside to make it hollow, so to make a boat of it, if, after all this, I must leave it just there where I found it, and was not able to launch it into the water?

One would have thought I could not have had the least reflection upon my mind of this circumstance, while I was making this boat, but I should have immediately thought how I should get it into the sea; but my thoughts were so intent upon my voyage over the sea 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 about 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 ever 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, which I gave myself; Let me first make it, I’ll warrant I’ll 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, and felled a cedar-tree:  I question much whether Solomon ever had such an one for the building 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, after which it lessened for a while, and then parted into branches.  It was not without infinite labour that I felled this tree:  I was twenty days hacking and hewing at it at the bottom; I was fourteen more