at least, into rock. All the white water had
disappeared, and in its place arose islands of rock, or mud, or sand. A
good deal of the last was to be seen, and some quite near the Reef, as
we shall still continue to call the island of the crater. Island,
however, it could now hardly be termed. It is true that ribands of water
approached it on all sides, resembling creeks, and rivers and small
sounds; but, as Mark stood there on the Summit, it seemed to him that it
was now possible to walk for leagues, in every direction, commencing at
the crater and following the lines of reefs, and rocks, and sands, that
had been laid bare by the late upheaving. The extent of this change gave
him confidence in its permanency, and the young man had hopes that what
had thus been produced by the Providence of God would be permitted to
remain, to answer his own benevolent purposes. It certainly made an
immense difference in his own situation. The boat could still be used,
but it was now possible for him to ramble for hours, if not for days,
along the necks, and banks, and hummocks, and swales that had been
formed, and that with a dry foot. His limits were so much enlarged as to
offer something like a new world to his enterprise and curiosity.

The crater, nevertheless, was apparently about the centre of this new
creation. To the south, it is true, the eye could not penetrate more
than two or three leagues. A vast, dun-looking cloud, still covered the
sea in that direction, veiling its surface far and wide, and mingling
with the vapours of the upper atmosphere. Somewhere within this cloud,
how far or how near from him he knew not, Mark made no doubt a new
outlet to the pent forces of the inner earth was to be found, forming
another and an active crater for the exit of the fires beneath. Geology
was a science that had not made its present progress in the day of Mark
Woolston, but his education had been too good to leave him totally
without a theory for what had happened. He supposed that the internal
fires had produced so much gas, just beneath this spot, as to open
crevices at the bottom of the ocean, through which water had flowed in
sufficient quantities to create a vast body of steam, which steam had
been the immediate agent of lifting so much of the rock and land, and of
causing the earthquake. At the same time, the internal fires had acted
in concert; and following an opening, they had got so near the surface
as to force a chimney for th