t it in
pieces, and bring it home in a basket; and the like by a turtle: I could
cut it up, take out the eggs, and a piece or two of the flesh, which was
enough for me, and bring them home in a basket, and leave the rest
behind me. Also large deep baskets were the receivers of my corn, which
I always rubbed out as soon as it was dry, and cured, and kept it in
great baskets.

I began now to perceive my powder abated considerably; this was a want
which it was impossible for me to supply, and I began seriously to
consider what I must do when I should have no more powder; that is to
say, how I should do to kill any goats. I had, as is observed, in the
third year of my being here, kept a young kid, and bred her up tame, and
I was in hopes of getting a he-goat: but I could not by any means bring
it to pass, till my kid grew an old goat; and as I could never find in
my heart to kill her, she died at last of mere age.

But being now in the eleventh year of my residence, and, as I have said,
my ammunition growing low, I set myself to study some art to trap and
snare the goats, to see whether I could not catch some of them alive;
and particularly, I wanted a she-goat great with young. For this
purpose, I made snares to hamper them; and I do believe they were more
than once taken in them; but my tackle was not good, for I had no wire,
and I always found them broken, and my bait devoured. At length I
resolved to try a pitfall: so I dug several large pits in the earth, in
places where I had observed the goats used to feed, and over those pits
I placed hurdles, of my own making too, with a great weight upon them;
and several times I put ears of barley and dry rice, without setting the
trap; and I could easily perceive that the goats had gone in and eaten
up the corn, for I could see the marks of their feet. At length I set
three traps in one night, and going the next morning, I found them all
standing, and yet the bait eaten and gone; this was very discouraging.
However, I altered my traps; and, not to trouble you with particulars,
going one morning to see my traps, I found in one of them a large old
he-goat, and in one of the others three kids, a male and two females.

As to the old one, I knew not what to do with him; he was so fierce, I
durst not go into the pit to him; that is to say, to go about to bring
him away alive, which was what I wanted: I could have killed him, but
that was not my business, nor would it answer my end;