in the yoke.  These were the descendants of the single pair Woolston had sent across, less than twelve years before, which had increased in an arithmetical proportion, care having been taken not to destroy any.  They now exceeded a hundred, of whom quite half were cows; and the islanders occasionally treated themselves to fresh beef.  As cows had been brought into the colony in every vessel that arrived, they were now in tolerably good numbers, Mark Woolston himself disposing of no less than six when he broke up his farming establishment for a visit to America.  There were horses, too, though not in as great numbers as there were cows and oxen.  Boats were so much used, that roadsters were very little needed; and this so much the less, on account of the great steadiness of the trades.  By this time, everybody understood the last; and the different channels of the group were worked through with almost the same facility as would have been the case with so many highways.  Nevertheless, horses were to be found in the colony, and some of the husbandmen preferred them to the horned cattle in working their lands.

A week was passed in visiting the group.  Something like a consciousness of having ill-treated Mark was to be traced among the people; and this feeling was manifested under a well-known law of our nature, which rendered those the most vindictive and morose, who had acted the worst.  Those who had little more to accuse themselves of than a compliant submission to the wrong-doing of others, in political matters everywhere the most numerous class of all, received their visiters well enough, and in many instances they treated their guests with delicacy and distinction.  On the whole, however, the late governor derived but little pleasure from the intercourse, so much mouthing imbecility being blended with the expressions of regret and sympathy, as to cause him to mourn over the compliance of his fellow-creatures, more than to rejoice at their testimony in his own favour.

But, notwithstanding all these errors of man, nature and time had done their work magnificently since the last “progress” of Woolston among the islands.  The channels were in nearly every instance lined with trees, and the husbandry had assumed the aspect of an advanced civilization.  Hedges, beautiful in their luxuriance and flowers, divided the fields; and the buildings which contribute to the comforts of a population were to be found on every side.  The broad plains of soft mud, by the aid of the sun, the rains, the guano, and the plough, had now been some years converted into meadows and arable lands; and those which still lay remote from the peopled parts of the group, still nine-tenths of its surface, were fast getting the character of rich pastures, where cattle, and horses, and hogs were allowed to roam at pleasure.  As the cock crowed from the midst of his attendant party of hens and chickens, the ex-governor in passing would smile sadly, his thoughts reverting to the time when its predecessor raised its shrill notes on the naked rocks of the Reef!