With the foregoing arrangements completed and thoroughly understood, the governor set sail for the Reef, accompanied by his little squadron.  It was an exquisitely beautiful day, one in which all the witchery of the climate developed itself, soothing the nerves and animating the spirits.  Bridget had lost most of her apprehensions of the natives, and could laugh with her husband and play with her child almost as freely as before the late events.  Everybody, indeed, was in high spirits, the launching of the schooner being regarded as a thing that would give them complete command of the adjacent seas.

The passage was short, a fresh breeze blowing, and four hours after quitting the cliffs, the Neshamony was under the lee of Cape South, and heading for the principal inlet.  As the craft glided along, in perfectly smooth water now, Mark noted the changes that time was making on those rocks, which had so lately emerged from the depths of the ocean.  The prairie, in particular, was every way worthy of his attention.  A mass of sea-weed, which rested on a sort of stratum of mud immediately after the eruption, had now been the favourite pasturage of the hogs for more than a twelvemonth.  These hogs at the present time exceeded fifty full-grown animals, and there were twice that number of grunters at their heels.  Then the work they had done on the Prairie was incredible.  Not less than hundreds of acres had they rooted over, mixing the sea-weed with the mud, and fast converting the whole into soil.  The rains had washed away the salt, or converted it into manure, as well as contributing to the more rapid decay of the vegetable substances.  In that climate the changes are very rapid, and Mark saw that another year or two would convert the whole of that vast range, which had been formerly computed at a surface of a thousand acres, into very respectable pastures, if not into meadows.  Of meadows, however, there was very little necessity in that latitude; the eternal summer that reigned furnishing pasturage the year round.  The necessary grasses might be wanting to seed down so large a surface, but those which Socrates had put in were well-rooted, and it was pretty certain they would, sooner or later, spread themselves over the whole field.  In defiance of the hogs, and their increasing inroads, large patches were already green and flourishing.  What is more, young trees were beginning to show themselves along the margin of the channels.  Henton had brought over from Betto’s group several large panniers made of green willows, and these Socrates had cut into strips, and thrust into the mud.  Almost without an exception they had struck out roots, and never ceasing, day or night, to grow, they were already mostly of the height of a man.  Four or five years would convert them into so many beautiful, if not very useful trees.