He poured goats' milk on the flour and
kneaded it into a thick dough. He did not forget to add salt. He
placed his loaf in a shallow earthen pan he had made for this purpose.
After the fire had heated the stones of his oven through, he put in
his loaf and soon was enjoying a meal of corn bread and meat stew.
Robinson soon tried to make cocoa from the beans of the cocoa palm
that grew in the island. This with good rich goats' milk in it he
thought the best drink in the world. He often thought of making sugar
from the sugar cane plant he had discovered in the island. But the
labor of squeezing out the juice was too great. He could think of no
way to do this without the help of horses or oxen.
XXXII
ROBINSON AS FISHERMAN
Robinson was now eager to use his fire and cooking vessels. He had
noticed with hungry eyes fine large fish in the creek near his cave.
But he had never taken the trouble to catch any. "What is the use?"
he thought. "I cannot eat them raw." It was different now and he began
to devise ways of making a catch. How he longed for a fish-hook, such
as he had so often used when loitering along the Hudson River! "But
a fish-hook is not to be thought of," he said to himself, "unless I
can make one of bone." He went down to the brook and searched long
for a fish-bone that he might make use of for this purpose. He found
nothing.
"I must try something else," he thought. He remembered the nets he
used to see along the Hudson and wondered if he could not make a small
one to pull through the water and thus catch the fish.
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