Crutchely drank less in
honour of his wedding-day; but the investment in tools, seeds, pigs,
wheelbarrows, and other matters, honestly intended to better the
condition of the natives of Vanua Levu and Viti Levu, did not amount to
a single cent less than one thousand dollars, lawful money of the
republic.

In looking over the packages, Mark found white clover seed, and Timothy
seed, among other things, in sufficient quantity to cover most of the
mount of the crater. The weather temporarily clearing off, he called to
Bob, and they went ashore together, Mark carrying some of the grass seed
in a pail, while. Betts followed with a vessel to hold guano. Providing
a quantity of the last from a barrel that had been previously filled
with it, and covered to protect it from the rain, they clambered up the
side of the crater. This was the first time either had ascended since
the day they finished planting there, and Mark approached his hills with
a good deal of freshly-revived interest in their fate. From _them_ he
expected very little, having had no loam to mix with the ashes; but, by
dwelling so much of late on the subject of tillage, he was not without
faint hopes of meeting with some little reward for the pains he had
taken. The reader will judge of the rapture then, as well as of the
surprise, with which he first saw a hill of melons, already in the
fourth leaf. Here, then, was the great problem successfully solved.
Vegetation had actually commenced on that hitherto barren mount, and the
spot which had lain--how long, Mark knew not, but probably for a
thousand years, if not for thousands of years, in its nakedness--was
about to be covered with verdure, and blest with fruitfulness. The inert
principles which, brought to act together; had produced this sudden
change from barrenness to fertility, had probably been near neighbours
to each other all that time, but had failed of bringing forth their
fruits, for the want of absolute contact. So Mark reasoned, for he
nothing doubted that it was Betts's guano that had stimulated the
otherwise barren deposit of the volcano, and caused his seed to
germinate. The tillage may have aided, as well as the admission of air,
light and water; but something more than this, our young gardener
fancied, was wanting to success. That something the manure of birds,
meliorated and altered by time, had supplied, and lo! the glorious
results were before his eyes.

It would not be easy to portray to the