of the kids; for they are mighty sagacious, tractable
creatures, where they are well used.

However, for the present I let him go, knowing no better at that time:
then I went to the three kids, and taking them one by one, I tied them
with strings together, and with some difficulty brought them all home.

It was a good while before they would feed; but throwing them some sweet
corn, it tempted them, and they began to be tame. And now I found that
if I expected to supply myself with goats' flesh, when I had no powder or
shot left, breeding some up tame was my only way, when, perhaps, I might
have them about my house like a flock of sheep. But then it occurred to
me that I must keep the tame from the wild, or else they would always run
wild when they grew up; and the only way for this was to have some
enclosed piece of ground, well fenced either with hedge or pale, to keep
them in so effectually, that those within might not break out, or those
without break in.

This was a great undertaking for one pair of hands yet, as I saw there
was an absolute necessity for doing it, my first work was to find out a
proper piece of ground, where there was likely to be herbage for them to
eat, water for them to drink, and cover to keep them from the sun.

Those who understand such enclosures will think I had very little
contrivance when I pitched upon a place very proper for all these (being
a plain, open piece of meadow land, or savannah, as our people call it in
the western colonies), which had two or three little drills of fresh
water in it, and at one end was very woody--I say, they will smile at my
forecast, when I shall tell them I began by enclosing this piece of
ground in such a manner that, my hedge or pale must have been at least
two miles about. Nor was the madness of it so great as to the compass,
for if it was ten miles about, I was like to have time enough to do it
in; but I did not consider that my goats would be as wild in so much
compass as if they had had the whole island, and I should have so much
room to chase them in that I should never catch them.

My hedge was begun and carried on, I believe, about fifty yards when this
thought occurred to me; so I presently stopped short, and, for the
beginning, I resolved to enclose a piece of about one hundred and fifty
yards in length, and one hundred yards in breadth, which, as it would
maintain as many as I should have in any reasonable time, so, as my stock
increased,