in of the past night had thoroughly, washed
the pile of earth, and, on tasting it. Mark was convinced that much of
the salt it contained had been carried off. This encouraged him to
persevere in his gardening projects. As yet, the spring had only just
commenced, and he was in hopes of being able to prepare one bed, at
least, in time to obtain useful vegetables from it.

The Rancocus had a great many planks and boards in her hold, a part of
the ample provision made by her owners for the peculiar voyage on which
she had been sent. Of real cargo, indeed, she had very little, the
commerce between the civilized man and the savage being ordinarily on
those great principles of Free Trade, of which so much is said of late
years, while so little is understood, and which usually give the lion's
share of the profit to them who need it least. With some of these
planks, Mark made a staging for his raft. By the time he was ready, Bob
returned with a load of loam, and, on the next outward voyage, the raft
was taken as well as the dingui. Mark had fitted pins and grummets, by
which the raft was rowed, he and Bob impelling it, when light, very
easily at the rate of two miles in the hour.

Mark found Betts's deposit of decayed vegetable matter even larger and
more accessible than he had hoped for. A hundred loads might be got
without even using a wheelbarrow; and to all appearances there was
enough of it to give a heavy dressing to many acres, possibly to the
whole area of the crater. The first thing the young man did was to
choose a suitable place, dig it well up, mixing a sufficiency of guano
with it, agreeably to Betts's directions, and then to put in some of his
asparagus roots. After this he scattered a quantity of the seed, raking
the ground well after sowing. By the time this was done, Bob had both
dingui and raft loaded, when they pulled the last back to the reef,
towing the boat. In this manner our two mariners continued to work most
of the time, for the next fortnight, making, daily, more or less trips
to the 'loam-rock,' as they called the place where this precious deposit
had been made; though they neglected none of their other necessary
duties. As the distance was short, they could come and go many times in
a day, transporting at each trip about as much of the loam as would make
an ordinary American cart-load of manure. In the whole, by Mark's
computation, they got across about fifty of these cargoes, in the course
of their