found it was perfectly sweet. Provided with his gun, and carrying his
pack, our young man entered this ravine, and following the course of the
brook, he at once commenced an ascent. The route was difficult only in
the labour of moving upwards, and by no means as difficult in that as he
had expected to find it. It was, nevertheless, fortunate that this
climbing was to be done in the shade, the sun seldom penetrating into
those cool and somewhat damp crevices through which the brook found its
way.

Notwithstanding his great activity, Mark Woolston was just an hour in
ascending to the Peak. In no place had he found the path difficult,
though almost always upward; but he believed he had walked more than two
miles before he came out on level ground. When he had got up about
three-fourths of the way, the appearances of things around him suddenly
changed. Although the rock itself looked no older than that below, it
had, occasionally, a covering that clearly could never have emerged from
the sea within the last few days. From that point everything denoted an
older existence in the air, from which our young man inferred that the
summit of Vulcan's Peak had been an island long prior to the late
eruption. Every foot he advanced confirmed this opinion, and the
conclusion was that the ancient island had lain too low to be visible to
one on the Reef.

An exclamation of delight escaped from our explorer, as he suddenly came
out on the broken plain of the Peak. It was not absolutely covered, but
was richly garnished with wood; cocoa-nut, bread-fruits, and other
tropical trees; and it was delightfully verdant with young grasses. The
latter were still wet with a recent shower that Mark had seen pass over
the mountain, while standing for the island; and on examining them more
closely, the traces of the former shower of volcanic ashes were yet to
be seen. The warmth in the sun, after so sharp a walk, caused the young
man to plunge into the nearest grove, where he had no difficulty in
helping himself to as many cocoa-nuts, fresh from the trees, as a
thousand men could have consumed. Every one has heard of the delicious
beverage that the milk of the cocoa-nut, and of the delicious food that
its pulp furnishes, when each is taken from the fruit before it hardens.
How these trees came there, Mark did not know. The common theory is that
birds convey the seeds from island to island; though some suppose that
the earth contains the elements of al