About twelve, or at midnight, the Abraham entered the cove.  Late as was the hour, each immigrant assumed a load suited to his or her strength, and ascended the Stairs, favoured by the sweet light of a full moon.  That night most of the new-comers passed in the groves, under tents or in an arbour that had been prepared for them; and sweet was the repose that attended happiness and security, in a climate so agreeable.

Next morning, when the immigrants came out of their temporary dwellings, and looked upon the fair scene before them, they could scarcely believe in its reality!  It is true, nothing remarkable or unexpected met their eyes in the shape of artificial accessories; but the bountiful gifts of Providence, and the natural beauties of the spot, as much exceeded their anticipations as it did their power of imagining such glories!  The admixture of softness and magnificence made a whole that they had never before beheld in any other portion of the globe; and there was not one among them all that did not, for the moment, feel and speak as if he or she had been suddenly transformed to an earthly paradise.

Chapter XXII.

    “You have said they are men;
     As such their hearts are something.”

    Byron.

The colony had now reached a point when it became necessary to proceed with method and caution.  Certain great principles were to be established, on which the governor had long reflected, and he was fully prepared to set them up, and to defend them, though he knew that ideas prevailed among a few of his people, which might dispose them to cavil at his notions, if not absolutely to oppose him.  Men are fond of change; half the time, for a reason no better than that it is change; and, not unfrequently, they permit this wayward feeling to unsettle interests that are of the last importance to them, and which find no small part of their virtue in their permanency.

Hitherto, with such slight exceptions as existed in deference to the station, not to say rights of the governor, everything of an agricultural character had been possessed in common among the colonists.  But this was a state of things which the good sense of Mark told him could not, and ought not to last.  The theories which have come into fashion in our own times, concerning the virtues of association, were then little known and less credited.  Society, as it exists in a legal form, is association enough for all useful purposes, and sometimes too much; and the governor saw no use in forming a wheel within a wheel.  If men have occasion for each other’s assistance to effect a particular object, let them unite, in welcome, for that purpose; but Mark was fully determined that there should be but one government in his land, and that this government should be of a character to encourage and not to depress exertion.  So long as a man toiled for himself and those nearest and dearest to him, society had a security for his