y to be delivered from?" So I stopped there; but though I
could not say I thanked God for being there, yet I sincerely gave
thanks to God for opening my eyes, by whatever afflicting providences,
to see the former condition, of my life, and to mourn for my wickedness,
and repent. I never opened the Bible, or shut it, but my very soul
within me blessed God for directing my friend in England, without any
order of mine, to pack it up among my goods; and for assisting me
afterwards to save it out of the wreck of the ship.

Thus, and in this disposition of mind, I began my third year; and though
I have not given the reader the trouble of so particular an account of
my works this year as at the first, yet in general it may be observed,
that I was very seldom idle; having regularly divided my time, according
to the several daily employments that were before me; such as, first, my
duty to God, and reading the Scriptures, which I constantly set apart
some time for, thrice, every day: secondly, the going abroad with my gun
for food, which generally took me up three hours every morning when it
did not rain: thirdly, the ordering, curing, preserving, and cooking
what I had killed or catched for my supply; these took up great part of
the day: also it is to be considered, that in the middle of the day,
when the sun was in the zenith, the violence of the heat was too great
to stir out; so that about four hours in the evening was all the time I
could be supposed to work in; with this exception, that sometimes I
changed my hours of hunting and working, and went to work in the
morning, and abroad with my gun in the afternoon.

To this short time allowed for labour, I desire may be added the
exceeding laboriousness of my work; the many hours, which for want of
tools, want of help, and want of skill, every thing that I did, took up
out of my time: for example, I was full two-and-forty days making me a
board for a long shelf, which I wanted in my cave; whereas two sawyers,
with their tools and saw-pit, would have cut six of them out of the same
tree in half a day.

My case was this: it was to be a large tree which was to be cut down,
because my board was to be a broad one. The tree I was three days a
cutting down, and two more cutting off the boughs, and reducing it to a
log, or piece of timber. With inexpressible hacking and hewing I reduced
both the sides of it into chips, till it began to be light enough to
move; then I turned it, and m