It need not be wondered at, if all these things took me up most part of the third year of my abode here; for, it is to be observed, in the intervals of these things, I had my new harvest and husbandry to manage: I reaped my corn in its season, and carried it home as well as I could, and laid it up in the ear, in my large baskets, till I had time to rub it out; for I had no floor to thrash it on, or instrument to thrash it with.
And now, indeed, my stock of corn increasing, I really wanted to build my barns bigger: I wanted a place to lay it up in; for the increase of the corn now yielded me so much, that I had of the barley about twenty bushels, and of rice as much, or more, insomuch that now I resolved to begin to use it freely; for my bread had been quite gone a great while: I resolved also to see what quantity would be sufficient for me a whole year, and to sow but once a year.
Upon the whole, I found that the forty bushels of barley and rice were much more than I could consume in a year; so I resolved to sow just the same quantity every year that I sowed the last, in hopes that such a quantity would fully provide me with bread, &c.
All the while these things were doing, you may be sure my thoughts ran many times upon the prospect of land which I had seen from the other side of the island; and I was not without some secret wishes that I was on shore there; fancying, that seeing the main land, and an inhabited country, I might find some way or other to convey myself farther, and perhaps at last find some means of escape.
But all this while I made no allowance for the dangers of such a condition, and that I might fall into the hands of savages, and perhaps such as I might have reason to think far worse than the lions and tigers of Africa; that if I once came in their power, I should run a hazard of more than a thousand to one of being killed, and perhaps of being eaten; for I had heard that the people of the Caribbean coast were cannibals, or man-eaters; and I knew, by the latitude, that I could not be far off from that shore. Then supposing they were not cannibals, yet that they might kill me, as they had many Europeans who had fallen into their hands, even when they have been ten or twenty together; much more I, who was but one, and could makee little or no defence; all these things, I say, which I ought to have considered well of, and did cast up in my thoughts afterwards, took up none of my apprehensions at first; yet my head ran mightily upon the thought of getting over to the shore.