eat deal of time and pains to make an umbrella; I
was, indeed, in great want of one, and had a great mind to make one; I
had seen them made in the Brazils, where they are very useful in the
great heats there, and I felt the heats every jot as great here, and
greater too, being nearer the equinox; besides, as I was obliged to be
much abroad, it was a most useful thing to me, as well for the rains as
the heats. I took a world of pains with it, and was a great while before
I could make anything likely to hold: nay, after I had thought I had hit
the way, I spoiled two or three before I made one to my mind: but at last
I made one that answered indifferently well: the main difficulty I found
was to make it let down. I could make it spread, but if it did not let
down too, and draw in, it was not portable for me any way but just over
my head, which would not do. However, at last, as I said, I made one to
answer, and covered it with skins, the hair upwards, so that it cast off
the rain like a pent-house, and kept off the sun so effectually, that I
could walk out in the hottest of the weather with greater advantage than
I could before in the coolest, and when I had no need of it could close
it, and carry it under my arm.

Thus I lived mighty comfortably, my mind being entirely composed by
resigning myself to the will of God, and throwing myself wholly upon the
disposal of His providence. This made my life better than sociable, for
when I began to regret the want of conversation I would ask myself,
whether thus conversing mutually with my own thoughts, and (as I hope I
may say) with even God Himself, by ejaculations, was not better than the
utmost enjoyment of human society in the world?

CHAPTER X--TAMES GOATS

I cannot say that after this, for five years, any extraordinary thing
happened to me, but I lived on in the same course, in the same posture
and place, as before; the chief things I was employed in, besides my
yearly labour of planting my barley and rice, and curing my raisins, of
both which I always kept up just enough to have sufficient stock of one
year's provisions beforehand; I say, besides this yearly labour, and my
daily pursuit of going out with my gun, I had one labour, to make a
canoe, which at last I finished: so that, by digging a canal to it of six
feet wide and four feet deep, I brought it into the creek, almost half a
mile. As for the first, which was so vastly big, for I made it without
consi