These were covered with
strips of hoop iron, nailed lengthways upon them at short intervals from
each other, thereby obtaining a better grip upon the canes, and
preventing the wood from being bruised and grooved. These rollers were
worked by a horse mill, which Mr. Hardy had ordered from England. It was
made for five horses, and did a great deal of useful work, grinding the
Indian corn into fine flour for home consumption and for sale to
neighbouring settlers, and into coarse meal, and pulping the pumpkins
and roots for the pigs and other animals.

Mr. Hardy also tried many other experiments, as the climate is suited to
almost every kind of plant and vegetable. Among them was the cultivation
of ginger, of the vanilla bean, of flax, hemp, and coffee. In all of
them he obtained more or less success; but the difficulty of obtaining
labour, and the necessity of devoting more and more attention to the
increasing flocks, herds, and irrigated land, prevented him from
carrying them out on a large scale. However, they served the purpose for
which he principally undertook them,--of giving objects of interest and
amusement to his children.

CHAPTER XII.

A STEADY HAND.

It was now more than eighteen months since the Hardys had been fairly
established at Mount Pleasant. A stranger who had passed along at the
time the house was first finished, would certainly fail to recognise it
now. Then it was a bare, uninviting structure, looking, as has been
said, like a small dissenting chapel built on the top of a gentle rise,
without tree or shelter of any kind. Now it appeared to rise from a mass
of bright green foliage, so rapidly had the trees grown, especially the
bananas and other tropical shrubs planted upon each side of the house.
At the foot of the slope were some sixty or seventy acres of cultivated
ground, while to the right were three or four large and strong wire
enclosures, in which the milch cows, the cattle, the sheep, and the pigs
were severally driven at night.

Everything was prospering beyond Mr. Hardy's most sanguine
expectations. More and more land was monthly being broken up and
irrigated. Large profits had been realized by buying lean cattle during
the dry season, fattening them upon alfalfa, and sending them down to
Rosario for sale. The pigs had multiplied astonishingly; and the profits
from the dairy were increasing daily, as more cows were constantly
added. The produce of Mount Pleasant was so valued