was now September, and my apples and pears were ripe, and so were the
lovely mulberries. The giant tree was a sight to behold, with its
bushels of red, purple, and blackish-ruby fruit. I might have gathered
enough fruit and vegetables to have supplied a small community
throughout the season, so prolific is the soil, and encouraging to
vegetation the air.

My potatoes turned out remarkably well--free from blemish, and of good
flavour. I must have had two or three tons, and went through the labour
of digging them and picking up all the tiny ones, as if I expected or
feared a famine. The pig's winter food was assured, at all events.

[Illustration: THE MAIN PATH OF THE ISLAND.]

Long previous to this I had cut and gathered my hay crop, which was to
form the chief sustenance for "Eddy," and the goat, "Corny," for the
next five or six months. This I made into a neat stack close to the
house, and thatched thickly with brakes, beside which I covered it with
tarpaulin, and girded it about with old chain-cable to prevent its being
blown away: also I guarded the base with a surrounding of wire-netting
to preserve it from the rabbits.

The crop I took most pleasure in was the barley, which I looked upon as
my legitimate harvest; the other crops seeming to be more like gardening
than real harvest work. I cut every handful with a reaping hook, which
took a long time; but as I had not a scythe this was my only way of
cutting it down. True, the Channel Islands mode of harvesting the barley
is to pull it up by the roots, a handful at a time, knocking the soil
off the roots upon the toe of the boot; but this seemed to me such an
un-English method that I would have nothing to do with it.

After it had lain to dry for three or four days I called "Eddy" and my
solid-wheeled cart into requisition, and took it, load by load, down the
rocky path to the store-house, where I placed it all safely away in the
upper chamber. The pathway was so narrow in places that the deviation of
a few inches would have caused donkey, load, and cart, to be
precipitated scores of feet down the abrupt slope into the sea beneath.
To avoid this catastrophe I had to take a pick-axe and shovel, and
devote a whole day to widening it in parts, making this, the main path
to the top of the island, nowhere less than four feet wide.

I rode home atop of the last load, and at my own door drank my own
health, with three cheers for everything and everybody, to which "Flap