The next day I looked over my load of matweed, having given it that name, and separated the different lengths from each other. I then found I had several pieces between forty and fifty feet long, of which I resolved to get a good number more, to make me a drag-net that I might try for some fish in the lake. A day or two after, therefore, I brought home another load of it Then I picked out a smooth level spot upon the green-sward, and having prepared a great number of short wooden pegs, I strained a line of the matweed about ten feet long, tying it at each end to a peg, and stuck a row of pegs along by that line, about two inches asunder; I next strained another line of the same length, parallel to that, at the distance of forty feet from it, and stuck pegs thereby, corresponding to the former row; and from each peg on one side, to the opposite peg on the other, I tied a like length of my mat-line, quite through the whole number of pegs; when the work looked like the inside of a harpsichord. I afterwards drove pegs in like manner along the whole length of the two outermost longer lines, and tied shorter lines to them, so that the whole affair then represented the squares of a racket; the corners of each of which squares I tied very tight with smaller pieces of the line, till I had formed a complete net of forty feet long and ten wide. When I had finished my net, as I thought, I wrapped several stones in rags, and fastened them to the bottom to sink it, and some of the smallest unscooped dry gourds to the top, to keep that part buoyant. I now longed to begin my new trade, and carried the net to my boat with that intention; but after two or three hauls I found it would not answer for want of length (though by chance I caught a blackish fish without scales, a little bigger than whiting, but much longer, which stuck by the gills in it); so I left the net in the boat, resolving to make an addition to it with all speed; and returning to my grotto, I supped on the fish I had taken and considered how to pursue my enterprise with better effect.