surface as under, so I turned to and ploughed crossways, which gave it a
little better appearance. Then I allowed it a week to rest, taking my
spade in the meantime and breaking the lumps and digging in the straying
"vraic." At length I had my land in tolerable order, although the
seaweed refused to rot as quickly as I desired. I reckoned, however,
that it would rot in time, and thus nourish the seed I put in, and so it
did.

I will not weary the readers with too much of my farming cares, but have
written a little about it to show what obstacles a Crusoe has to
overcome, and how hard he has to work to gain his ends. He has no one to
pat his back when he is triumphant, nor anyone to sympathise with him
over a failure. He is his own critic and censor. Suffice it to say that
in due course I had patches of barley, clover, lucerne, mangold,
carrots, etc., sown, and when once the seeds were in I had plenty of
leisure for other pursuits.

Although early spring, the weather was very mild to what I had been used
to on the Norfolk coast; in fact the temperature was as warm in April as
it is in the East of England at the end of May.

The garden by the house also had my care, for I planted enough edibles
in it to have maintained a large family, instead of a solitary being
like myself. Still, I counted my animals as my family, and got to love
them all, even to the little pigs. I named them all. There was my dog
"Begum," the donkey "Eddy," the goat "Unicorn," which I contracted to
"Corny." This name was derived from the fact that she had broken off one
horn close to her head. The pigs being twins were "Romulus" and "Remus,"
and, like the first Romans of that name, had frequent family quarrels,
which were, however, soon ended, the brothers rolling over each other in