plainly visible.  As these cavities collected and retained the moisture, usually from rain to rain, Mark had some of Friend Abraham White’s grass-seed sown over them, in order to aid nature in working out her own benevolent designs.  In less than a month, patches of green began to appear on the dusky rocks, and there was good reason to hope that a few years would convert the whole Reef into a smiling, verdant plain.  It was true, the soil could not soon obtain any useful depth, except in limited spots; but, in that climate, where warmth and moisture united to push vegetation to the utmost, it was an easy thing to obtain a bottom for grasses of almost all kinds.

Nor did Mark’s provident care limit itself to this one instance of forethought.  Socrates was sent in the dinghy to the prairie, over which the hogs had now been rooting for fully two months, mixing together mud and sea-weed, somewhat loosely it is true, but very extensively; and there he scattered Timothy-seed in tolerable profusion.  Socrates was a long-headed, as well as a long-footed fellow, and he brought back from this expedition a report that was of material importance to the future husbandry of the colonists.  According to his statement, this large deposit of mud and sea-weed lay on a peninsula, that might be barricaded against the inroads of hogs, cattle, &c., by a fence of some two or three rods in length.  This was a very favourable circumstance, where wood was to be imported for many years to come, if not for ever; though the black had brought the seeds of certain timbers, from the Peak, and put them into the ground in a hundred places on the Reef, where the depth of deposit, and other circumstances, seemed favourable to their growth.  As for the Prairie, could it be made to grow grasses, it would be a treasure to the colony, inasmuch as its extent reached fully to a thousand acres.  The examination of Socrates was flattering in other respects.  The mud was already dry, and the deposit of salt did riot seem to be very great; little water having been left there after the eruption, or lifting of the earth’s crust.  The rains had done much, and certain coarse, natural grasses, were beginning to show themselves in various parts of the field.  As the hogs would not be likely to root over the same spot twice, it was not proposed to exclude them, but they were permitted to range over the field at pleasure, in the hope that they would add to its fertility by mixing the materials for soil.  In such a climate, every change of a vegetable character was extremely rapid, and now that no one thought of abandoning the settlement, it was very desirable to obtain the different benefits of civilization as soon as possible.