An American Robinson Crusoe | Page 8

to himself on
which to keep a record. "I must also know when Sunday is. I must rest
one day in the week. Yes, I must find something," he said, "on which to
write." And finally he found it. He chose two trees standing near each
other and then sought for a small sharp stone, which he could make still
sharper by striking it on another. When he had got this pen ready he cut
into the bark of one tree:

_Shipwreck, Sunday, 10th of September, 1875._
He made seven cuts in a row for the seven days in the week. The first
cut was longer than the others. This was to represent the Sunday. At
sundown every day he made a new cut in the bark.
The other tree he called the month tree. On its stem he was to cut a
mark every time his week tree told him a month had passed. But he
must be careful, for the months were not of equal length. But he
remembered that his teacher had once said in school that the months
could be counted on the knuckles and hollows of the hand, in such a
way that the long and short months could be found easily and he could
tell in this way the number of days in each.
Robinson worked at enlarging his shelter a little every day. He was
sorely at loss to find something in which to carry the dirt away from the
entrance, or enough so that it would not choke up the opening. A large
clam shell was all he could think of at present. He would carry the dirt
to the entrance and some distance away, and then throw it. Fortunately
the ground sloped away rapidly, so that he needed a kind of platform
before his door.
He was careful to open the cleft at some distance above the large
opening. For the air was damp and impure in the shelter. But with the
opening made high above, fresh air was constantly passing into, and
impure air out of, his cave. Light, too, was admitted in this way.

XII
ROBINSON MAKES A HUNTING BAG
Several days passed with Robinson's hat-making and his
calendar-making and his watching the sea. Every day his corn and
bananas became more distasteful to him. And he planned a longer
journey about the island to see if something new to eat could be found.
But he considered that if he went a distance from his cave and found

something it would really be of little use to him. "I could eat my fill,"
he said, "but that is all. And by the time I get back to my cave I will
again be hungry. I must find something in which I can gather and carry
food." He found nothing.
"The people in New York," he said, "have baskets, or pockets, or bags
made of coarse cloth. Of them all, I could most easily make the net,
perhaps, of vines. But the little things would fall out of the net. I will
see whether I can make a net of small meshes."
But he soon saw that the vines did not give a smooth surface. He
thought for a long while. In his garden at home his father had
sometimes bound up the young trees with the soft inner bark of others.
He wondered if he could use this. He stripped away the outer bark from
the tree, which before had yielded him a fibre for his hat, and pulled off
the long, smooth pieces of the inner bark. He twisted them together.
Then he thought how he could weave the strands together. He looked at
his shirt. A piece was torn off and unravelled. He could see the threads
go up and down. He saw that some threads go from left to right (woof),
others lengthwise (the warp).
From his study of the woven cloth, Robinson saw he must have a
firmer thread than the strips of bark gave alone. He separated his bark
into long, thin strips. These he twisted into strands or yarn by rolling
between his hands, or on a smooth surface. As he twisted it he wound it
on a stick. It was slow, hard work. Of all his work, the making of yarn
or thread gave him the most trouble. He learned to twist it by knotting
the thread around the spindle or bobbin on which he wound it and
twirling this in the air. He remembered sadly the old spinning wheel we
had seen at his grandmother's house.
His next care was something to hold the threads while he wove them in
and out. He had never seen a loom.
After long study Robinson set two posts in the ground and these he
bound