The peak, or highest part of the island, was at its northern extremity, and within two miles of the grove in which Mark Woolston had eaten his dinner.  Unlike most of the plain, it had no woods whatever, but rising somewhat abruptly to a considerable elevation, it was naked of everything but grass.  On the peak itself, there was very little of the last even, and it was obvious that it must command a full view of the whole plain of the island, as well as of the surrounding sea, for a wide distance.  Resuming his pack, our young adventurer, greatly refreshed by the delicious repast he had just made, left the pleasant grove in which he had first rested, to undertake this somewhat sharp acclivity.  He was not long in effecting it, however, standing on the highest point of his new discovery within an hour after he had commenced its ascent.

Here, Mark found all his expectations realized touching the character of the view.  The whole plain of the island, with the exceptions of the covers made by intervening woods, lay spread before him like a map.  All its beauties, its shades, its fruits, and its verdant glades, were placed beneath his eye, as if purposely to delight him with their glories.  A more enchanting rural scene the young man had never beheld, the island having so much the air of cultivation and art about it, that he expected, at each instant, to see bodies of men running across its surface.  He carried the best glass of the Rancocus with him, in all his excursions, not knowing at what moment Providence might bring a vessel in sight, and he had it now slung from his shoulders.  With this glass, therefore, was every part of the visible surface of the island swept, in anxious and almost alarmed search for the abodes of inhabitants.  Nothing of this sort, however, could be discovered.  The island was unquestionably without a human being, our young man alone excepted.  Nor could he see any trace of beast, reptile, or of any animal but birds.  Creatures gifted with wings had been able to reach that little paradise; but to all others, since it first arose from the sea, had it probably been unapproached, if not unapproachable, until that day.  It appeared to be the very Elysium of Birds!

Mark next examined the peak itself.  There was a vast deposit of very ancient guano on it, the washings of which for ages, had doubtless largely contributed to the great fertility of the plain below.  A stream of more size than one would expect to find on so small an island, meandered through the plain, and could be traced to a very copious spring that burst from the earth at the base of the peak.  Ample as this spring was, however, it could never of itself have supplied the water of the brook, or rivulet, which received the contributions of some fifty other springs, that reached it in rills, as it wound its way down the gently inclined plane of the island.  At one point, about two leagues from the Peak, there was actually a little lake visible, and Mark could even trace its outlet, winding its way beyond it.  He supposed that the surplus tumbled into the sea in a cascade.