After resting himself for an hour in that delicious grove, Mark began to roam around the plain, to get an idea of its beauties and extent.  The former were inexhaustible, offering every variety of landscape, from the bold and magnificent to the soft and bewitching.  There were birds innumerable, of the most brilliant plumage, and some that Mark imagined must be good to eat.  In particular did he observe an immense number of a very small sort that were constantly pecking at a wild fig, of which there was a grove of considerable extent.  The fig itself, he did not find as palatable as he had hoped, though it was refreshing, and served to vary the diet; but the bird struck him to be of the same kind as the celebrated reed-bird, of the Philadelphia market, which we suppose to be much the same as the becca fichi of Italy.  Being provided with mustard-seed shot, Mark loaded his piece properly, and killed at least twenty of these little creatures at one discharge.  After cleaning them, he struck a light by means of the pan and some powder, and kindled a fire.  Here was wood, too, in any quantity, an article of which he had feared in time he might be in want, and which he had already begun to husband, though used only in his simple cookery.  Spitting half-a-dozen of the birds, they were soon roasted.  At the same time he roasted a bunch of plantain, and, being provided with pepper and salt in his pack, as well as with some pilot-bread, and a pint-bottle of rum, we are almost ashamed to relate how our young explorer dined.  Nothing was wanting to such a meal but the sweets of social converse.  Mark fancied, as he sat enjoying that solitary repast, so delicious of itself, and which was just enough sweetened with toil to render it every way acceptable, that he could gladly give up all the rest of the world, for the enjoyment of a paradise like that before him, with Bridget for his Eve.

The elevation of the mountain rendered the air far more grateful and cool than he was accustomed to find it, at mid-summer, down on the Reef, and the young man was in a sort of gentle intoxication while breathing it.  Then it was that he most longed for a companion, though little did he imagine how near he was to some of his species, at that very moment; and how soon that, the dearest wish of his heart, was to be met by an adventure altogether so unexpected to him, that we must commence a new chapter, in order to relate it.

Chapter XIII.

    “The merry homes of England! 
      Around their hearths by night,
    What gladsome looks of household love
      Meet in the ruddy light! 
    There woman’s voice flows forth in song,
      Or childhood’s tale is told,
    Or lips move tunefully along
      Some glorious page of old.”

    Mrs. Hemans.