manner Mr,
Warrington, or Judge Warrington, as he was now called, bought three
fifty-acre lots adjoining his own share on the Peak, and sold his
hundred-acre lot in the group. The price established by these original
sales, would seem to give a value of ten dollars an acre to land on the
Peak, and of three dollars an acre to land in the group. Some lots,
however, had a higher value than others, all these things being left to
be determined by the estimate which the colonists placed on their
respective valuations. As everything was conducted on a general and
understood principle, and the drawing was made fairly and in public,
there was no discontent; though some of the lots were certainly a good
deal preferable to others. The greatest difference in value existed in
the lots in the group, where soil and water were often wanted; though,
on the wholes much more of both was found than had been at first
expected. There were vast deposits of mud, and others of sand, and
Heaton early suggested the expediency of mixing the two together, by way
of producing fertility. An experiment of this nature had been tried,
under his orders, during the absence of the governor, and the result was
of the most satisfactory nature; the acre thus manured producing
abundantly.

As it was the sand that was to be conveyed to the mud, the toil was much
less than might have been imagined. This sand usually lay near the
water, and the numberless channels admitted of its being transported in
boats along a vast reach of shore. Each lot having a water front, every
man might manure a few acres, by this process, without any great
expense; and no sooner were the rights determined, and the decisions of
the parties made as to their final settlements, than many went to work
to render the cracked and baked mud left by the retiring ocean fertile
and profitable. Lighters were constructed for the purpose, and the
colonists formed themselves into gangs, labouring in common, and
transporting so many loads of sand to each levee, as the banks were
called, though not raised as on the Mississippi, and distributing it
bountifully over the surface. The spade was employed to mix the two
earths together.

Most of the allotments of land, in the group, were in the immediate
neighbourhood of the Reef. As there were quite a hundred of them, more
than ten thousand acres of the islands were thus taken up, at the start.
By a rough calculation, however, the group extended east and