lifted the kid over the pales, and would willingly have kept it alive;
but finding it could not be brought to eat, I was forced to slay it also
for my subsistence.

Thus entered into as strange a scene of life as ever any man was in, I
had most melancholy apprehensions concerning my deplorable condition:
and many times the tears would plentifully run down my face, when I
considered how I was debarred from all communications with human kind.
Yet while these disponding cogitations would seem to make me accuse
Providence, other good thoughts would interpose and reprove me after
this manner: Well, supposing you are desolate, it is not better to be so
than totally perish? Why, were you singled out to be saved and the rest
destroyed? Why should you complain, when not only your life is
preserved, but the ship driven into your reach, in order to take what
was necessary out of her for your subsistence? But to proceed, it was,
by the account I kept, the 30th of September, when I first landed on
this island. About twelve days after, fearing lest I should lose my
reckoning of time, nay, even forget the Sabbath days, for want of pen,
ink, and paper, I carved with a knife upon a large post, in great
letters; and set it up: in the similitude of a cross, on the seashore
where I landed, I CAME ON SHORE, _Sept._ 30 1659. Every day I cut a
notch with my knife on the sides of the square post, and this on the
Sabbath was as long again as the rest; and every first day of the month
as long again as that long one. In this manner I kept my calendar,
weekly, monthly or yearly reckoning of time. But had I made a more
strict search (as afterwards I did) I needed not have set up this mark;
for among the parcels belonging to the gunner, carpenter, and captain's
mate, I found those very things I wanted; particularly pens, ink, and
paper. So I found two or three compasses, some mathematical
instruments, dials, perspective glasses, books of navigation, three