I cannot say that after this, for five years, any extraordinary thing happened to me, but I lived on in the same course, in the same posture and place, as before; the chief things I was employed in, besides my yearly labour of planting my barley and rice, and curing my raisins, of both which I always kept up just enough to have sufficient stock of one year’s provisions beforehand; I say, besides this yearly labour, and my daily pursuit of going out with my gun, I had one labour, to make a canoe, which at last I finished: so that, by digging a canal to it of six feet wide and four feet deep, I brought it into the creek, almost half a mile.
No puedo decir que, durante cinco años no me ocurriera nada extraordinario pero, lo cierto es que mi vida seguía el mismo curso, en el mismo lugar de siempre. Aparte de mi cultivo anual de cebada y arroz, del que siempre guardaba suficiente para un año, y de mis salidas diarias con la escopeta, tenía una ocupación importante: construir mi canoa, la cual, finalmente, pude acabar.