4. My employment this time was to finish the wall before
described, and search the island. I discovered a kind of pigeons like
our house-pigeons in a nest among the rocks. I brought them home, nursed
them till they could fly, and then they left me. After this, I shot
some, which proved excellent food. Some time I spent vainly in
contriving to make a cask; I may well say it was vain, because I could
neither joint the staves; nor fix the heads, so as to make it tight: So,
leaving that, took some goat's tallow I had about me, and a little okum
for the wick, and provided myself with a lamp, which served me instead
of candles.

But now a very strange event happened. For being in the height of my
search, what should come into my hand, but a bag, which was used to hold
corn (as I supposed) for the fowls; so immediately resolving to put
gunpowder in it, I shook all the hulks and dirt upon one side of the
rock, little expecting what the consequences would be. The rain had
fallen plentifully a few days before; and about a month after, to my
great amazement something began to lock out very green and flourishing;
and when I came to view it more nicely, every day as it grew, I found
about ten or twelve ears of green barley appeared in the very same shape
and make as that in England.

I can scarce express the agitations of my mind at this sight. Hitherto I
had looked upon the actions of this life no otherwise than only as the
events of blind chance and fortune. But now the appearance of this
barley, flourishing in a barren soil, and my ignorance in not conceiving
how it should come there, made me conclude _that miracles were not yet
ceased:_ nay, I even thought that God had appointed it to grow there
without any seed, purely for my sustenance in this miserable and
desolate island. And indeed such great effect this had upon me, that it
often made me melt into tears, through a grateful sense of God's
mercies; and the greater still was my thankfulness, when I perceived
about this little field of barley some rice stalks, also wonderfully
flourishing.

While thus pleased in mind, I concluded there must be more corn in the
island; and therefore made a diligent search narrowly among the rocks;
but not being able to find any, on a sudden it came into my mind, how I
had shaken the husks of corn out of the bag, and then my admiration
ceased, with my gratitude to the Divine Being, _as thinking it was but
natural_, and not to be conceived a m