weary quires and reams and piles of old books, I filled my
chamber with flowers and grasses, for I was then in my first
fervour for botany. Having given up employment that would be
a task to me, I needed one that would be an amusement, nor
cause me more pains than a sluggard might choose to take. I
undertook to make the _Flora petrinsularis_, and to describe
every single plant on the island, in detail enough to occupy
me for the rest of my days. In consequence of this fine
scheme, every morning after breakfast, which we all took in
company, I used to go with a magnifying glass in my hand and
my Systema Naturae under my arm, to visit some district of
the island. I had divided it for that purpose into small
squares, meaning to go through them one after another in
each season of the year. At the end of two or three hours I
used to return laden with an ample harvest, a provision for
amusing myself after dinner indoors, in case of rain. I
spent the rest of the morning in going with the steward, his
wife, and Theresa, to see the labourers and the harvesting,
and I generally set to work along with them; many a time
when people from Berne came to see me, they found me perched
on a high tree, with a bag fastened round my waist; I kept
filling it with fruit and then let it down to the ground
with a rope. The exercise I had taken in the morning and the
good humour that always comes from exercise, made the repose
of dinner vastly pleasant to me. But if dinner was kept up
too long, and fine weather invited me forth, I could not
wait, but was speedily off to throw myself all alone into a
boat, which, when the water was smooth enough, I used to
pull out to the middle of the lake. There, stretched at full
length in the boat's bottom, with my eyes turned up to the
sky, I let myself float slowly hither and thither as the
water listed, sometimes for hours together, plunged in a
thousand confused delicious musings, which, though they had
no fixed nor constant object, were not the less on that
account a hundred times dearer to me than all that I had
found sweetest in what they call the pleasures of life.
Often warned by the going down of the sun that it was time
to return, I found myself so far from the island that I was
forced to row with all my mig