ed
out as soon as it was dry and cured, and kept it in great baskets.

I began now to perceive my powder abated considerably; this was a want
which it was impossible for me to supply, and I began seriously to
consider what I must do when I should have no more powder; that is to
say, how I should kill any goats. I had, as is observed in the third
year of my being here, kept a young kid, and bred her up tame, and I was
in hopes of getting a he-goat; but I could not by any means bring it to
pass, till my kid grew an old goat; and as I could never find in my heart
to kill her, she died at last of mere age.

But being now in the eleventh year of my residence, and, as I have said,
my ammunition growing low, I set myself to study some art to trap and
snare the goats, to see whether I could not catch some of them alive; and
particularly I wanted a she-goat great with young. For this purpose I
made snares to hamper them; and I do believe they were more than once
taken in them; but my tackle was not good, for I had no wire, and I
always found them broken and my bait devoured. At length I resolved to
try a pitfall; so I dug several large pits in the earth, in places where
I had observed the goats used to feed, and over those pits I placed
hurdles of my own making too, with a great weight upon them; and several
times I put ears of barley and dry rice without setting the trap; and I
could easily perceive that the goats had gone in and eaten up the corn,
for I could see the marks of their feet. At length I set three traps in
one night, and going the next morning I found them, all standing, and yet
the bait eaten and gone; this was very discouraging. However, I altered
my traps; and not to trouble you with particulars, going one morning to
see my traps, I found in one of them a large old he-goat; and in one of
the others three kids, a male and two females.

As to the old one, I knew not what to do with him; he was so fierce I
durst not go into the pit to him; that is to say, to bring him away
alive, which was what I wanted. I could have killed him, but that was
not my business, nor would it answer my end; so I even let him out, and
he ran away as if he had been frightened out of his wits. But I did not
then know what I afterwards learned, that hunger will tame a lion. If I
had let him stay three or four days without food, and then have carried
him some water to drink and then a little corn, he would have been as
tame as one