Page:The crater; or, Vulcan's peak.djvu/235

OR, VULCAN S PEAK. 229 a fence of brush, with a view of having a garden in Eden. Really, it almost seemed superfluous ; though those who . had been accustomed to salads, and beans, and beets, and onions, and cucumbers, and all the other common vegeta bles of a civilized kitchen, soon began to weary of the more luscious fruits of the tropics. With the wild figs, however, Heaton, who was a capital horticulturist, fancied he could do something. He picked out three or four thriving young trees of that class, which bore fruit a little better flavoured than most around them, and cut away all their neighbours, letting in the sun and air freely. He also trimmed their branches, and dug around the roots, which he refreshed with guano; the use of which had been imparted by Mark to his fellow-colonists, though Bigelow knew all about it from having lived in Peru, and Bob had early let the governor himself into the secret. The governor and his lady, as the community now began to term Mr. and Mrs. Mark Woolston, were on the point of embarking in the Neshamony, to visit Vulcan s Peak, after a residence on the Reef of more than a month, when the orders for sailing were countermanded, in consequence of certain signs in the atmosphere, which indicated some thing like another hurricane. The tempest came, and in good earnest, but without any of the disastrous conse quences which had attended that of the previous year. It blew fearfully, and the water was driven into all the sounds, creeks, channels and bays of the group, bringing many of the islands, isthmuses, peninsulas, and plains of rock, what the seamen call awash, though no material portion was actually overflowed. At the Reef itself, the water rose a fathom, but it did not reach the surface of the island by several feet, and all passed off without any other conse quences than giving the new colonists a taste of the cli mate. Mark, on this occasion, for the first time, noted a change that was gradually taking place on the surface of the Reef, without the crater. Most of its cavities were collecting deposits, that were derived from various sources. Sea weed, offals, refuse stuff of all kinds, the remains of the deluge of fish that occurred the past year, and all the in describable atoms that ever contribute to form soil in the VOL. 1. 20