is the substance and original of the mathematics, so by stating, and
squaring every thing by reason, and by making the most rational judgment
of things, every man may be, in time, master of every mechanic art. I
had never handled a tool in my life; and yet, in time, by labour,
application, and contrivance, I found, at last, that I wanted nothing
but I could have made, especially if I had had tools. However, I made
abundance of things, even without tools; and some with no more tools
than an adze and a hatchet, which perhaps were never made that way
before, and that with infinite labour. For example, if I wanted a board,
I had no other way but to cut down a tree, set it on an edge before me,
and hew it flat on either side with my axe, till I had brought it to be
as thin as a plank, and then dub it smooth with my adze. It is true, by
this method I could make but one board of a whole tree; but this I had
no remedy for but patience, any more than I had for a prodigious deal of
time and labour which it took me up to make a plank or board: but my
time or labour was little worth, and so it was as well employed one way
as another.

However, I made me a table and a chair, as I observed above, in the
first place; and this I did out of the short pieces of boards that I
brought on my raft from the ship. But when I wrought out some boards, as
above, I made large shelves, of the breadth of a foot and a half, one
over another, all along one side of my cave, to lay all my tools, nails,
and iron-work on; and, in a word, to separate every thing at large in
their places, that I might easily come at them. I knocked pieces into
the wall of the rock, to hang my guns, and all things that would hang
up: so that had my cave been seen, it looked like a general magazine of
all necessary things; and I had every thing so ready at my hand, that it
was a great pleasure to me to see all my goods in such order, and
especially to find my stock of all necessaries so great.