re
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!

That Reef itself had undergone more changes than a