t know it at the time, but subsequent
experience gave him reason to suspect, that this forethought saved most
of his favourites from premature deaths. Seed might germinate, and the
plants shoot luxuriantly from out of the ashes of the volcano, under the
united influence of the sun and rains, in that low latitude, but it was
questionable whether the nourishment to be derived from such a soil, if
soil it could yet be called, would prove to be sufficient to sustain the
plants when they got to be of an age and size to demand all the support
they wanted. So convinced did Mark become, as the season advanced, of
the prudence of what he then did out of a mere impulse, that he passed
hours, subsequently, in raising loam to the summit of the mount, in
order to place it in the different hills. For this purpose, Bob rigged a
little derrick, and fitted a whip, so that the buckets were whipped up,
sailor-fashion, after two or three experiments made in lugging them up
by hand had suggested to the honest fellow that there might be a cheaper
mode of obtaining their wishes.

When Mark was temporarily satisfied with gazing at his new-found
treasures, he went to work to scatter the grass stood over the summit
and sides of the crater. Inside, there was not much motive for sowing
anything, the rock being so nearly perpendicular; but on the outside of
the hill, or 'mountain,' as Bob invariably called it, the first ten or
twelve feet excepted, there could be no obstacle to the seeds taking;
though from the want of soil much of it, Mark knew, must be lost; but,
if it only took in spots, and gave him a few green patches for the eye
to rest on, he felt he should be amply rewarded for his trouble. Bob
scattered guano wherever he scattered grass-seed, and in this way they
walked entirely round the crater, Mark using up at least half of Friend
Abraham White's provision in behalf of the savages of Fejee, in the way
of the grasses. A gentle soft rain soon came to moisten this seed, and
to embed it with whatever there was of soil on the surface, giving it
every chance to take root that circumstances would allow.

This preliminary step taken towards covering the face of the mount with
verdure, our mariners went to work to lay out their garden, regularly,
within the crater. Mark manifested a good deal of ingenuity in this
matter. With occasional exceptions the surface of the plain, or the
bottom of the crater, was an even crust of no great thickness, com