. The forest was full of the boles of trees that had been blown down.
But they were far away from the shore. At first he did not think of this
very much. He had overcome so many difficulties that he thought, "Never
mind, I will get my boat to water, no matter where I make it, in some
way." So he selected a tree trunk some distance from the bank of the
little creek near his cave and began work.

He had first to burn out his log the proper length and hack it into boat
shape with his stone tools. This was very slow and tedious work. He had
to handle the fire with great care for there was always the danger of
spoiling the shape of the slowly forming boat. Both ends must be
sharpened, but one more than the other to form the prow or forward going
end. After he had shaped his boat, he began hollowing it out. This he
did also by burning for the most part. He used the branches of pitch
bearing trees for this purpose. But it was so slow. He worked at his
boat all the time he could spare from his regular duties in attending to
his goats, his garden and his cave. He was always making his cave
larger. Every time he made a piece of furniture or stored away grain he
must make more room in his cave by digging away the earth and carrying
it out. He had made a large strong wicker basket for this purpose.

He had had a vague idea that when he got his boat done he would dig a
trench back from the bank of the creek and thus float his boat. But he
had not thought it out clearly. "Or anyway," he thought, "I can in some
way manage to roll it to the water." He must now actually plan to put
some of these ideas into effect. He first went over the ground and found
that to dig a trench from the water to the boat, so that the water would
come to the boat, he would have to dig it twenty feet deep. "I can never
do this," he said, "with my poor tools."

He next tried his rolling plan. But he had been so anxious to have a
large boat that he had overlooked everything else. Try as hard as he
might he could not stir his boat from the spot. After many trials with
the longest levers he could handle, the boat still stuck fast. It would
not budge an inch. He at last gave it up. "It will lie here," he
thought, "to remind me how foolish it is to attempt to do anything
without first having thought it out carefully."

There was nothing to do but to choose another tree trunk. This time he
selected a much smaller one, and one that lay at the top of the little
slo