provision with my gun, which commonly took me up, when it did not rain,
three hours every morning: _Thirdly_, The ordering, curing, preserving,
and cooking what I killed, or catched for my supply which took me up
great part of the day: for, in the middle of the day, the sun being in
its height, it was so hot, that I could not stir out; so that I had only
but four hours in the evening to work in: and then the want of tools, of
assistance, and skill, wasted a great deal of time to little purpose. I
was no less than two and forty days making a board fit for a long shelf,
which two sawyers with their tools and saw-pit, would have cut off the
same tree in half a day. It was a large tree, as my board was to be
broad. I was three days in cutting it down and two more in lopping off
the boughs, and reducing it to a piece of timber. This I hacked and
hewed off each side, till it became light to move; then I turned it,
made one side of is smooth and flat as a board from end to end, then
turned it downward, cutting the other side, till I brouht the plank to
be about three inches thick, and smooth on both sides. Any body may
judge my great labour and fatigue in such a piece of work; but this I
went through with patience, as also many other things that my
circumstances made necessary for me to do.

The harvest months, November and December, were now at hand, in which I
had the pleasing prospect of a very good crop. But here I met with a new
problem; for the goats and hares, having tasted of the outshoot of the
blade, kept it to short that it had not strengthen to shoot up into a
stalk. To prevent this, I enclosed it with a hedge, and by day shot some
of its devourers; and my dog which I had tied to the field-gate, keeping
barking all night; so frightened those creatures, that I got entirely
rid of them.

But no sooner did I get rid of these, than other enemies appeared, to