ugh with my axe and hatchet, with
inexpressible labour: after this it cost me a month to shape it, and dub
it to a proportion, and to something like the bottom of a boat, that it
might swim upright as it ought to do. It cost me near three months more
to clear the inside, and work it out so as to make an exact boat of it:
this I did indeed without fire, by mere mallet and chissel, and by the
dint of hard labour; till I had brought it to be a very handsome
periagua, and big enough to have carried six-and-twenty men, and
consequently big enough to have carried me and all my cargo.

When I had gone through this work, I was extremely delighted with it:
the boat was really much bigger than I ever saw a canoe or periagua,
that was made of one tree, in my life; many a weary stroke it had cost,
you may be sure, for there remained nothing but to get it into the
water; and had I gotten it into the water, I make no question but I
should have begun the maddest voyage, and the most unlikely to be
performed, that ever was undertaken.

But all my devices to get it into the water failed me, though they cost
infinite labour too; it lay about one hundred yards from the water, and
not more; but the first inconvenience was, it was up hill towards the
creek. Well, to take away this discouragement, I resolved to dig into
the surface of the earth, and so make a declivity; this I began, and it
cost me a prodigious deal of pains: but who grudge pains, that have
their deliverance in view? but when this was worked through, and this
difficulty managed, it was still much at one; for I could no more stir
the canoe, than I could the other boat.

Then I measured the distance of ground, and resolved to cut a dock, or
canal, to bring the water up to the canoe, seeing I could not bring the
canoe down to the water: well, I began this work, and when I began to
enter into it, and calculated how deep it was to be dug, how broad, how
the stuff to be thrown out, I found, that by the number of hands I had,
being none but my own, it must have been ten or twelve years before I
should have gone through with it; for the shore lay high, so that at the
upper end it must have been at least twenty feet deep: so at length,
though with great reluctancy, I gave this attempt over also.

This grieved me heartily; and now I saw, though too late, the folly of
beginning a work before we count the cost, and before we judge lightly
of our own strength to go through with it.