Page:Unparalleled sufferings and surprising adventures of Philip Quarle.pdf/14

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.

14

loom, to allow for rolling up at one end, instead of a bolster, and makes it thicker than the first; which he intends in cold weather shall lie upon him instead of blankets.

Being provided with the most necessary furniture he wanted, he thinks on more conveniences, resolving to make himself a table to eat his victuals upon, and a chair to sit on: thus having cut several sticks above four feet long, he drives them in a row a little way in the ground; then takes smaller, which he interweaves between: having made the top, he sets it upon four other sticks, forky at the upper end, which he stuck in the ground at one side of his barrack, to the height of a table; this being done, he cuts four more branches, such as he judged would do best for the seat and back of a chair, which he also drove in the ground near his table; and having twisted the branches, which grew to them, with each other, from back to front, and across again, he weaves smaller between, bottoming his seat, which completes the furniture of his habitation.

Now being entirely reconciled to the state of life Providence, on whom he fully depended, had been pleased to call him to, he resolves to make provision of these excellent roots; and with his hatchet he cuts a piece of a tree wherewith he makes a shovel, in order to dig them up with more ease: with this instrument he went to the place where he had observed they grew thickest, which being near the monkeys quarters, they came down from off the trees in great numbers, grinning as if they would have flown at him; which made him stop a while; he might, indeed, with the instrument in his hand, have killed several, and perhaps have dispersed the rest, but