t would make the reader pity me, or rather laugh at me, to tell how
many awkward ways I look to raise this paste, what odd misshapen ugly
things I made, how many of them fell in, and how many fell out, the clay
not being stiff enough to bear its own weight; how many cracked by the
over-violent heat of the sun, being set out too hastily; and how many
fell to pieces with only removing, as well before as after they were
dried; and, in a word, how, after having laboured hard to find the clay,
to dig it, to temper it, to bring it home, and work it, I could not make
above two large earthen ugly things, I cannot call them jars, in about
two months labour.

However, as the sun baked these two very dry and hard, I lifted them
very gently up and set them down again in two great wicker-baskets,
which I had made on purpose for them that they might not break; and, as
between the pot and the basket there was a little room to spare, I
stuffed it full of the rice and barley-straw; and these two pots being
to stand always dry, I thought would hold my dry corn, and perhaps the
meal when the corn was bruised.

Though I miscarried so much in my design for large pots, yet I made
several smaller things with better success; such as little round pots,
flat dishes, pitchers, and pipkins, and any thing my hand turned to; and
the heat of the sun baked them strangely hard.

But all this would not answer my end, which was to get an earthen pot to
hold what was liquid, and bear the fire, which none of these could do.
It happened after some time, making a pretty large fire for cooking my
meat, when I went to put it out, after I had done with it, I found a
broken piece of one of my earthenware vessels in the fire, burnt as hard
as a stone, and red as a tile. I was agreeably surprised to see it, and
said to myself, that certainly they might be made to burn whole, if they
would burn broken.

This set me to study how to order my fire, so as to make it burn me some
pots. I had no notion of a kiln such as the potters burn in, or of
glazing them with lead, though I had some lead to do it with; but I
placed three large pipkins, and two or three pots, in a pile one upon
another, and placed my fire-wood all round it with a great heap of
embers under them: I piled the fire with fresh fuel round the outside,
and upon the top, till I saw the pots in the inside red-hot quite
through, and observed that they did not crack at all: when I saw them
clear red, I let