ldings, huts, castle, nor any
living creature to be seen! It cannot be," says I, "that this place was
made for nothing!"

I then went a considerable way into the wood, and inclined to have gone
much farther, it being very beautiful, but, on second thoughts, judged
it best to content myself at present with only looking out a safe
retreat for that night; for, however agreeable the place then seemed,
darkness was at hand, when everything about me would have more or less
of horror in it.

The wood, at its first entrance, was composed of the most charming
flowering shrubs that can be imagined; each growing upon its own stem,
at so convenient a distance from the other, that you might fairly pass
between them any way without the least incommodity. Behind them grew
numberless trees, somewhat taller, of the greatest variety of shapes,
forms, and verdures the eye ever beheld; each, also, so far asunder as
was necessary for the spreading of their several branches and the growth
of their delicious fruits, without a bush, briar, or shrub amongst them.
Behind these, and still on the higher ground, grew an infinite number
of very large, tall trees, much loftier than the former, but intermixed
with some underwood, which grew thicker and closer the nearer you
approached the rock. I made a shift to force my way through these as far
as the rock, which rose as perpendicular as a regular building, having
only here and there some crags and unevennesses. There was, I observed,
a space all the way between the underwood and the rock, wide enough
to drive a cart in; and, indeed, I thought it had been left for that
purpose.

I walked along this passage a good way, having tied a rag of the lining
of my jacket at the place of my entrance, to know it again at my coming
back, which I intended to be ere it grew dark; but I found so much
pleasure in the walk, and surveying a small natural grotto which was in
the rock, that the daylight forsook me unawares: whereupon I resolved
to put off my return unto the boat till next morning, and to take up my
lodging for that night in the cave.

I cut down a large bundle of underwood with my cutlass, sufficient to
stop up the mouth of the grotto, and laying me down to rest, slept as
sound as if I had been on board my ship; for I never had one hour's rest
together since I shot the gulf till this. Nature, indeed, could not have
supported itself thus long under much labour; but as I had nothing to do
but only ke