Page:The crater; or, Vulcan's peak.djvu/457

 OR, VULCAN S PEAK. 217 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 &quot; progress&quot; of Woblston among the islands. The channels were in nearly every instance lined with trees, and the husbandry had assumed the aspect of an advanced civiliza tion. 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 cha racter 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! That Reef itself had undergone more changes than any other spot in the colony, as the Peak had undergone fewer. The town by this time contained more than two hundred buildings, of one ort ana anotner, and the population ex ceeded five hundred souls. This was a small population for so many tenements : but the children, as yet, did not bear a just proportion to the adults. The crater was the subject of what to Mark Woolston was a most painful law suit. From the first, he had claimed that spot as his private property; though he had conceded its use to the public, tion, to be a place of refuge when invasions were appre hended. But the crater he had found barren, and had ren* dered fertile ; the crater had even seemed to him to be an especial gift of Providence bestowed on him in his misery ; and the crater was his by possession, as well as by other rights, when he received strangers into his association None of the older inhabitants denied this claim. It is the last comers who are ever the most anxious to dispute an cient rights. As they can possess none of these established VOL. II. 19
 * under a lease, since it was so well adapted ; by natural forma