urney,
without a settled place of abode, had been so unpleasant to me that my
own house, as I called it to myself, was a perfect settlement to me,
compared to that; and it rendered every thing about me so comfortable,
that I resolved I would never go a great way from it again, while it
should be my lot to stay on the island.

I reposed myself here a week, to rest and regale myself after my long
journey; during which, most of the time was taken up in the weighty
affair of making a cage for my Pol, who began now to be a mere domestic,
and to be mighty well acquainted with me. Then I began to think of the
poor kid, which I had pent in within my little circle, and resolved to
go and fetch it home, and give it some food; accordingly I went, and
found it where I left it; for indeed it could not get out, but was
almost starved for want of food; I went and cut boughs of trees and
branches of such shrubs as I could find, and threw it over, and having
fed it, I tied it as I did before to lead it away; but it was so tame
with being hungry, that I had no need to have tied it; for it followed
me like a dog; and as I continually fed it, the creature became so
loving, so gentle, and so fond, that it became from that time one of my
domestics also, and would never leave me afterwards.

The rainy season of the autumnal equinox was now come, and I kept the
30th of September in the same solemn manner as before, being the
anniversary of my landing on the island, having now been there two
years, and no more prospect of being delivered than the first day I came
there. I spent the whole day in humble and thankful acknowledgments of
the many wonderful mercies which my solitary condition was attended
with, and without which it might have been infinitely more miserable. I
gave humble and hearty thanks, that God had been pleased to discover to
me even that it was possible I might be more happy in this solitary
condition than I should have been in a liberty of society, and in all
the pleasures of the world: that he could fully make up to me the
deficiencies of my solitary state, and the want of human society, by his
presence, and the communication of his grace to my soul, supporting,
comforting, and encouraging me to depend upon his providence here, and
hope for his eternal presence hereafter.

It was now that I began sensibly to feel how much more happy the life I
now led was, with all its miserable circumstances, than the wicked,
cursed, abomi