There were a great many of them.
"Good!" thought Robinson. "If I could only dig up enough of them and
plant them thick around the door of my cave, I would have just the
thing. No one could get at me, nor at the goat, either, The thorns
would keep anything from creeping through, peeping in or getting
over."
So he took his mussel-shell spade and went to work. It was pretty
hard, but at length he succeeded in laying bare the roots of quite
a number. But he could not drag them to his cave on account of the
thorns sticking in him. He thought a long time. Finally, he sought
out two strong poles or branches which were turned up a little at one
end and like a sled runner. To these he tied twelve cross-pieces with
bark. To the foremost he tied a strong rope made from cocoa fiber.
He then had something that looked much like a sled on which to draw
his thistle-like brush to his cave. But for one day he had done enough.
The transplanting of the thistles was hard work. His spade broke and
he had to make a new one. In the afternoon he broke his spade again.
And as he made his third one, he made up his mind that it was no use
trying to dig with such a weak tool in the hard ground. It would only
break again.
"If I only had a pick." But he had none. He found a thick, hard, sharp
stone. With it he picked up the hard earth, but had to bend almost
double in using it. "At home," he thought, "they have handles to
picks.
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