Location: Crusoe explores the island by heading northwest of his sea-coast house into a more heavily wooded area with plentiful resources such as fruit trees and fresh water.
Purpose: Crusoe finds the land to be beautiful and a more suitable home as there is an abundance of food in the forests. However, Crusoe does not want to remove his old shelter because he would lose the seashore house as a place to look out for ships heading down the coast. Instead, he builds the country house as a second home where he will live during the dry season.
“...to inclose myself among the hills and woods, in the centre of the island, was to anticipate my bondage, and to render such an affair not only improbable, but impossible; and that, therefore, I ought not by any means to remove.”
How it is made: Crusoe describes building a bower which is a rustic dwelling made out of leaves and brushwood. He surrounds it with a double hedged fence using stakes that would later grow into trees. The growth of the stakes comes as a pleasant surprise to Crusoe who immediately recognizes the excellent shading and defensive barrier provided by the growing tree wall. Crusoe does not recognize the tree, though he refers to it as "osier-like wood". Upon further research into the vegetation of Tobago and other Caribbean islands, our group strongly believes that the tree species described would have closely resembled the Bursera Simaruba ("Gumbo-limbo"), which is frequently used as living fencing because of its rapid growth rate and because it is easily transplanted1. Crusoe later employs this fence technology for the outer wall and surrounding forest barrier around his sea-coast house.
The tree walls create a very secure dwelling but require a ladder to climb over the hedge. As time passed the trees grew and provided shade during the hot season. He eventually builds a tent as well and continues to furnish when he has extra time. He also creates another area for his animals. The following image shows the country house in it's early form, one year after Crusoe's arrival on the island:
The following image shows the country house after 4 years, once the stakes have grown into trees.
“Under this I had made me a squab, or couch, with the skins of the creatures I had killed, and with other soft things, and a blanket laid on them, such as belonged to our sea-bedding, which I had saved, and a great watch-coat to cover me”
“Adjoining to this, I had my inclosures for my cattle, that is to say, my goats. As I had taken an inconceivable deal of pains to fence and inclose this ground, I was so uneasy to see it kept entire, lest the goats should break through, that I never left off till, with infinite labour, I had stuck the outside of the hedge so full of small stakes, and so near to one another, that it was rather a pale than a hedge, and there was scarcely room to put a hand through between them. Afterwards, when those stakes grew, as they all did in the next rainy season, they made the inclosure strong like a wall, indeed, stronger than any wall.”
Size: The enclosure including the hedge grows out to 25 yards in diameter.
Timeline: Crusoe begins building the country house in August of the first year. He continues to make improvements throughout his stay on the island. The first version of his country house was made in approximately a month’s time.
Narrative: In the middle ages a cottage was often accompanied with a barn as well as a small plot of land. In the modern day, a cottage usually refers to a vacation home or a summer residence typically in a rural location.
Notes:
1. "Bursera simaruba," Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bursera_simaruba (accessed January 21, 2010)
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