upon some of which we could descry a few
of those agile creatures climbing almost like flies. The plateau was
thickly wooded, many of the trees having been fruit-bearing once, but
now, much to our disappointment, barren from neglect.

A ruined house, surrounded by other vestiges of what had once been a
homestead, stood in the middle of this piece of land. Feeling curious to
know what the history of this isolated settlement might be, I asked
the mate if he knew anything of it. He told me that an American named
Halstead, with his family, lived here for years, visited only by an
occasional whaler, to whom they sold such produce as they might have and
be able to spare at the time. What their previous history had been, or
why they thus chose to cut themselves off from the world, he did not
know; but they seemed contented enough with their tiny kingdom, nor had
any wish to leave it. But it came to pass that one night they felt
the sure and firm-set earth trembling convulsively beneath their feet.
Rushing out of their house, they saw the heavens bespread with an awful
pall of smoke, the under-side of which was glowing with the reflected
fires of some vast furnace. Their terror was increased by a smart shower
of falling ashes and the reverberations of subterranean thunders. At
first they thought of flight in their boat, not reckoning the wide
stretch of sea which rolled between them and the nearest land, but
the height and frequency of the breakers then prevailing made that
impossible.

Their situation was pitiable in the extreme. During the years of peace
and serenity they had spent here, no thought of the insecurity of their
tenure had troubled them. Though they had but been dwellers on the
threshold of the mountain, as it were, and any extension of their
territory impossible by reason of the insurmountable barrier around
them, they had led an untroubled life, all unknowing of the fearful
forces beneath their feet. But now they found the foundations of the
rocks beneath breaking up; that withering, incessant shower of ashes
and scoriae destroyed all their crops; the mild and delicate air changed
into a heavy, sulphurous miasma; while overhead the beneficent face of
the bright-blue sky had become a horrible canopy of deadly black, about
which played lurid coruscations of infernal fires.

What they endured throughout those days and nights of woe, could never
be told. They fled from the home they had reared with such abundanc