At ease upon a point so vital to his subsistence,
so many thoughts and meditations crowded upon
him, that it was long before he could command
sufficient singleness of calculation to view his new
position, or come to any definite conclusion what
was next to be done. He paced slowly, back and
forward, with his hand upon his brow, and engaged
in intense and painful thought. There was a splendour
and beauty in the solitary scene before him,
which filled his eye. But society alone cheers, and
satisfies the heart; and the first thought, from the
view of every thing before him, untouched by the
axe, unmarked by the hand, unimpressed by the
footstep of man, was, that he was the only human
being that existed in this charming solitude. Such
a beautiful nature only speaks to the heart, when
we feel that others enjoy it with us; that other
eyes sympathize with ours in the pleasures of vision,
and that other hearts commune with us in our joys.
Well say the Scriptures, that it is not good for man
to be alone.

Still, as a lover of nature, the vividness and freshness
of the landscape made its way to his heart;
and he paused, as he slowly sauntered among the
trees, in admiration of the novelty and splendour
of the new creation round him. He admired the
trees, that reared their straight columns so high in
the air, their trunks enwrapped with the tender and
beautifully formed foliage of vines, and their cone-shaped
tops spreading an alcove of verdure; birds
chiding and singing on their summits, of a plumage

[figure description] Page 074.[end figure description]

of indescribable richness, and forms entirely new;
sea fowls, with their necks stretched out in advance
of their bodies like an arrow, screaming and
sailing between the trees and the cliffs; animals of
a size and colour, wholly foreign to his eye, frolicking
on the trees; a clear brook winding from the
cliffs, and its waters dancing along in the sunbeams.
Such was the prospect upon which he
gazed. In the distance, a single animal of uncouth
appearance, nearly of the height of man, and
moving on, by bounding in leaps of a dozen feet
at a spring, was known to him, from the resemblance
to engravings which he had seen, as a kangaroo.
This animal he well knew to be harmless;
nor had he yet seen an object to inspire fear, or a
sense of danger.

Not far before him, a prodigious cliff towered on
the shore of the sea, overlooking every object but
the mountains, which rose at the distance of a mile
from the shore. To think of climbing them for a
survey of the country, was a project too arduous
for his present strength. He walked slowly to the
cliff. In the direction of the sea, nothing was visible
but the boundless and heaving billow; on the
immediate skirt of the sea, nothing but continued
ranges of these black cliffs, continually lashed by
the foam of the surge, that tumbled upon their
bases. Through the interior, at the distance of
one and two miles, and in some places a league,
there sprang from the smooth grass turf a barrier,
almost as regular as a wall, to an immense height,

[figure description] Page 075.[end figure description]

and composed of the same black and volcanic rock
with the cliffs on the shore. At an elevation of,
perhaps, three hundred feet, there was a narrow
grass terrace, enamelled with the most brilliant
flowers, hanging from flexile stems, and contrasting
delightfully with the black and shining masses of
rock, which they covered. From this terrace
mounted another wall to another terrace. By these
regular gradations, sloping back like the sides of a
pyramid, the black walls rose into mountains above
the region of the clouds. The aspect of the beauty
of the trees, received almost a terrific contrast from
the frowning, gigantic, and savage grandeur of
these mountains, upon whose summits, smoking
with volcanic fires that were never quenched, the
clouds rested, and the thunders burst. The regular
belt of open woods between their vases, carpeted
with grass, formed a beautiful and equable stripe
of verdure, contrasting in its amenity and softness,
with the awful mountains that bounded it on one
side; and the white and sterile sands, and the blue
and boundless billow, that skirted it on the other.

It was the labour of half an hour to gain the
summit of the cliff before him. The rounding of
the shore indicated an island. No contiguous
islands or rocks, rose from the bosom of the wave.
The sky, shining in cloudless and tropical brightness;
the illimitable sea, undotted by a sail; the
repelling loneliness and immensity of sterile nature
stretched in front; and volcanic mountains, that
arrested the clouds behind, were the grand features

[figure description] Page 076.[end figure description]

of the scene, which spread above, around, and
below the young solitary. From the cliff, he descended
to wander in the woods along the smooth
carpet of grass, preserving a parallel distance between
the mountains and the sea. He cast a surveying
eye around him, as he made his way along
the grassy and flowering sward, often crossing rills
of pure water that wound from the base of the mountains,
through the grass and flowers. He came
upon rivulets, and beautiful little streams; but still
seeing the same birds, the same animals, barren
trees, and gaudy and unknown flowers, the same
screaming flights of sea fowls, and the same monotonous
beauty of animal and vegetable nature.
To his view, there was something in this sterile and
useless exuberance and gaudiness of nature, these
beautiful flowers that shed their perfumes upon the
desert air, and this soothing amenity of the landscape,
that almost had the aspect of mocking his
solitude. “It may be,” said he to himself, as his
heart thrilled with the momentary suggestion, “it
may be, that the same Providence which brought
me to land, has cast some of my companions on
this same solitude, and that at this moment, like
me, they are wandering in search of the same objects,
society, food, and shelter.” The impulse to
make known his presence by calling upon them,
was too powerful to be resisted. “Companion!
Companion!” he cried, “I, too, am alone!” He
waited a moment almost in terror, as a thousand
magnified voices answered from the mountains,

[figure description] Page 077.[end figure description]

“Alone! alone!” The deafening sounds seemed
the reply of a thousand giants, that inhabited the
caves of the mountains. He waited in breathless
anxiety, till the remote reverberations, Alone!
alone! died away, and his calmer reason convinced
him, that these cries were no more than the
responses of echo. He sat him down in the shade,
and his eyes filled with involuntary tears. “The
birds on the trees,” said he, “have their families
and their loves. The animals play in groups, and
each one at night retires to kindred shelter and
society. But thou, who hast left a father's house,
unconscious of the value of home, and unthankful
for the comforts and joys of society, wilt fall unpitied,
unrelieved and alone, in the desert, and
probably, human eye will never see thy bleached
bones. Oh! here, at such a time and place, is the
response of the heart to all that the impious and
unbelieving have said against religion.” In this extreme
desertion, his heart betook itself to the ever
present Divinity. “Father in heaven,” said he,
“Thy spirit hovers over the deep. Thou dwellest
above these mountains. They who pray to Thee in
my father's house in company, and I who pray to
Thee in this solitude, both speak to the same ever
present, ever gracious Being. Blessed be thy
name, that I can commune with Thee, if with none
beside. Pity, sustain, and shelter me, forlorn and
lonely as I am, with a sense of thy presence. Thou
hast planted in my bosom this earnest craving for
the society of my kind. Either in thy good time

[figure description] Page 078.[end figure description]

and way, restore me to my kind, or be Thou to
me society, consolation and hope, so long as Thou
shalt see fit to continue me in life. Whenever
Thou shalt see fit to remove me from this solitary
communion with Thee below, may it be to the
multitudes which no man can number, who exult in
thy presence above.”

Thus tranquillized, composed, and fortified with
prayer, he looked to the coming night without distressing
anxiety. He had charged himself on Him,
who heareth the young ravens when they cry; and he
saw the sun descending almost with a feeling of
cheerfulness. There was an inexplicable feeling,
that inclined him to consider the spot, where he
first awoke to consciousness on the shore, as his
home. He marked it out on the sand. In the
temperature of that climate, it was the place most
cool and grateful to his feelings for sleep, and
gladly would he have stretched himself there for
the night. But on the naked beach, he would be
exposed not only to be devoured by wild beasts,
but to the still more certain danger of sickness
from the evening dews. His first object was to find
a shelter for the night. The next point of interest
was, to search for some regular dependence for food
and subsistence, when his bread should be exhausted.
His third grand object was, to explore
the country, and ascertain whether it was an island
upon which he was cast, or a part of the shore of
New Holland, or New Britain.

His own inference, from the evidence before him

[figure description] Page 079.[end figure description]

was, that he had been wrecked near one of the
volcanic islands, that rise in such numbers from the
depths of the South Sea. He remembered, that
during the storm, they had been driven rapidly to
the south; and that he had supposed, that they had
drifted into the vicinity of New Holland, or New
Britain. He remembered to have read, that these
volcanic islands had been but partially explored;
that some of them were scarcely known, except by
a casual notice in the journal of a ship's course; and
that most of them were considered uninhabited.
They were also situated remote from the track of
any but exploring ships, and his prospect, on the
face of it, was, that he was the only one of the
ship's company that survived, and that he was
destined to spend his days, and perish alone on the
island.

How bitterly he remembered the truth of the
common adage, that we know the value of nothing,
until we want it. As the sun began to decline,
and the gloom of evening advanced from the
east, he remembered, how often he had slighted
the advances of others to his intimacy; how often
he had indulged notions of superiority; how much
importance he had been taught to attach to the
point, of not associating with persons below him.
He had now at his leisure, an opportunity to consider
the moral character of that pride, that had
made such calculations, and to understand the true
value of a companion. The most despised being
in his native village would have here been sought,

[figure description] Page 080.[end figure description]

as the highest earthly boon. His feelings would
have been consulted with the most careful delicacy.
Could he have had even his father's house dog for
a companion, he would have felt comparatively
happy.

He had wandered, perhaps, two leagues from the
point where he was cast ashore. He had seen in
all the distance, no animals of any size, but kangaroos;
and the timid manner in which they
avoided him, evidenced that he had nothing to apprehend
from them. But he was not sufficiently
acquainted with the natural history of this region
to judge, whether there might not still be beasts of
prey. His fears would naturally suggest, that there
were. He had seen serpents, but they seemed
rather of the harmless class, than those deadly ones,
that generally inhabit tropical regions. The place
might be inhabited, though he no where saw the
trace of human footstep. The dews of the night
were like rains; and he well understood, how adverse
they were to life in such climates. He made
his way to the foot of the mountains, and employed
the fading twilight in searching along their bases
for some cavern of retirement and shelter. But he
sought in vain. The first bench of ascent was, for
the most part, a smooth, shining and perpendicular
wall of three hundred feet in height, without fissure,
or interstice. He found a somewhat thicker shade
where a number of small trees interlaced their
branches, and wove together a thickness of foliage,
which looked as if it would exclude the dew, and

[figure description] Page 081.[end figure description]

partially even the rain. He pulled up, and spread
a bed of dry grass, and laid himself down under the
dark canopy, to find such repose as he might, in
communion with his heart and with God. His repose
was that of innocence, and his sleep as that
of the grave. The stars rolled their courses, and
the night birds and beasts cried unheeded. No
dreams even of home mocked him, and when he
sprang up from his grass couch in the morning,
wakened by the chattering and the songs of birds
in the branches over his head, the last moment of
remembrance at night, and the first consciousness
of morning, were only two successive moments
without an interval.

When he went forth from his covert, the cheerfulness
of nature and morning was in his heart, and
he joined the birds, and the joyous morning cry of
every living thing, in a hymn of praise to the Divinity,
as the sun was springing up from the depths
of the sea. His devotions finished, he travelled
with the speed excited by a keen appetite, to the
point where he had secured his cask of bread. He
saw no place, that promised so good and safe a
shelter, as that which he had occupied that night.
Thither he determined to remove his stock of bread.
He found, to his terror, that the bread, damaged
by the sea water, would soon be so completely
spoiled by the heat, as to become incapable of
serving him for food. This was another reason
why this all-important treasure should be removed,
separated, spread, and parched in the sun. To have

[figure description] Page 082.[end figure description]

spread it on the cliff, would have been to have
exposed it to be devoured by the hundred birds of
prey.

Little as he had been used to dainties, or to
consult his appetite, this bread, mouldy and salt,
was but an unsavoury repast. Not an oyster, not
even a shrimp, or the smallest shell-fish, was to be
found on the shore. Not the slightest indication of
any thing, that looked like fruit, or that promised
to serve for sustenance, had been seen in his long
walk of the preceding day. The thought of the
terrible death of hunger, struck upon his heart,
like an ice-bolt. He remembered the precious
words, that not a sparrow falleth to the ground without
our heavenly Father, and the thought dispelled his
fears, and renewed his courage. He examined the
shore anew, in search of oysters. From a large
flat surface of rocks beyond the cliff, that bounded
one extremity of the cove, he observed that the
wave retired at times, and left it bare. When the
wave returned, it was again covered deep with
water. As he contemplated the surface, when bare,
it seemed rough, as if with the slightly jagged surface
of an oyster-bed. In the hope of making such
an invaluable discovery, he hastily undressed, and
plunged into the water. He had learned to be
an expert swimmer in the waters of his native
lake. The coolness and purity of the sea waters
refreshed him. Watching the proper moment of
the receding wave, he sprang past the point of the
cliff, and stood erect on the ooze of the naked,

[figure description] Page 083.[end figure description]

table-surface. His joy may be imagined, when
his conjectures were fully realized. For a great
distance along the base of the cliff, and as far under
the water as he could see, all was a rich and extensive
oyster-bed. He took as many as he could
hold in his hands; and found that he could conveniently
throw them on shore. He watched the return
of the refluent wave, and by a dexterous dive,
rose upon its surface, suspending himself until it
receded again. In this way, he had soon thrown
on shore an ample supply, and found them of the
finest kind. He returned to complete his morning
meal, thankfully looking up to the Giver of all
good for a supply of food at once nutritive, and
apparently inexhaustible. Henceforward to have
distrusted Providence, would have seemed to him
as a crime.

How easily, and rapidly the mind passes from
despondence to joy. Abundantly refreshed with
food, and braced by sea bathing, he ascended the
verdant lawn with an alert step, and a heart filled
with tranquillity, if not with joy. He almost forgot
his loneliness, as he walked amidst a nature, as
fresh and brilliant as the creation on its first morning.
The birds, large and small, with their gaudy
plumage, and their wild and chattering songs, seemed
so tame, and so little aware that man was their
natural enemy, that they scarcely cleared away
from his path. In the yearning of his heart for
society, he meditated, as he passed on, that he
would imprison some of these beautiful birds, and

[figure description] Page 084.[end figure description]

domesticate them, in whatever place he should select
as his residence. To find that place, was now
his first object of pursuit. There were various objections
to the place where he had passed the last
night. Though it might exclude the dew, he could
not promise himself, that it would afford a perfect
shelter from the rain. Besides, he could not spread
his bread to dry there, unless he watched it continually,
to drive away the birds. A spring was
near, over which, as is invariably the case in such
circumstances, rose a thicket of trees, filled with
these gay tenants of the woods, as though it were
an aviary. The open covert of trees could afford
no security from these plunderers, from wild beasts,
from savages, or the more certain assaults of the
elements. Another day elapsed in unavailing researches
after a place of shelter; and the youthful
solitary returned once more to his bed of grass in
the shade.

This night was passed in wearying dreams of
imagining himself at home, and seeing the dear
faces, and hearing the loved accents of his parents.
So vivid and distinct were these images of his sleep,
that he awoke in the effort to embrace these illusions.
He arose, and went abroad. He heard the dismal
cries of the kangaroo, and the hooting of a hundred
owls, in a language as different from those of
his own country, as that place was distant from
home. Flashes of lightning glared in the direction
of the sea. The deep murmur of the waves indicated,
that the sea felt the premonition of an

[figure description] Page 085.[end figure description]

approaching storm. The forest blazed in every
direction with countless myriads of fire flies. He
returned to his bed of grass, and slept quietly until
morning.

When he arose, he found himself stiff and feverish
from the damp of the night dews, and clearly
instructed by his feelings, that a repetition of such
exposure, must soon subject him to sickness. He
had hitherto confined his surveys of the country to
the region east of the point where he had been cast
ashore. He determined this morning, to take a
western range. Accordingly, he repaired to the
shore, and enjoyed sea-bathing at the same time
that he gathered his morning sustenance from the
treasures hid in the sand. He was painfully aware,
from inspecting his bread, that in a short time it
would be entirely spoiled. The loss of this invaluable
possession was an apprehended disaster, the nature
of which can be fully comprehended only by a
person placed precisely in his situation. With the
leaves of a low and shrubby tree, at once of immense
size and exceedingly tough and stringy, and
fastened with filaments of bark, the whole wrought
with a pen-knife, the only implement of civilization
that remained in his possession, he made a coarse
but convenient kind of verdant sack, which, by the
same filaments, he suspended from his shoulders.
He took as much of the bread as he could conveniently
carry, in order to commence the process of
endeavouring to save it, by separating and drying
it, and enough oysters to serve as animal food, and

[figure description] Page 086.[end figure description]

commenced an early morning survey of the country
to the west.

He reached the perpendicular and volcanic wall
at the base of the mountains, without making any
new discoveries. He walked leisurely at the base,
carefully scrutinizing the smooth and shining surface,
to discover if there could be found in no part a
ragged and retreating face, or chasms in the rock,
which might serve as flights of steps, by which to
ascend to the second terrace. He proceeded more
than a mile in this direction, finding the side of
the wall every where alike smooth, lofty, and inaccessible.
At length, to his inexpressible joy, appeared
a huge chasm in the wall, to which there
was an ascent by a flight of natural steps. The
chasm seemed to retreat from a small grass-covered
terrace, dotted with shrubs, herbage, and long
wreaths of creeping vines, tufted with flowers. The
terrace was elevated from the base, about fifty feet.
He mounted the steps, his heart throbbing with the
anxiety of suspense. Ten paces from the front of
the terrace, was a circular opening to a cave,
which his eye could easily penetrate, but scarcely
of sufficient size to admit his body. Beneath the
cavity, fissures in the rock evidenced, that with the
aid of a crowbar and his single strength, he could
have disengaged these pieces, and have created a
chasm sufficiently large to give an entrance into a
chamber, which seemed to promise to his eye all
that he could desire. Immediately he spread his
bread to dry on the surface of the terrace, and

[figure description] Page 087.[end figure description]

descended to search for something in the form of a
lever, which might serve him in lieu of an instrument
of iron, to enable him to detach the fragments
from the orifice of the cavern, so as to enlarge it
for entrance. After a long and ineffectual search,
in which the advantages of civilization, and the
necessity of its means, union and strength, were
painfully forced upon his mind by his present forlorn
and feeble condition, he came at length upon
a tree which had been splintered by lightning. A
fragment of the solid trunk had been disengaged.
It was of a convenient length, form, and size, to answer
as a substitute for an iron crowbar. It was
heavy, firm, and inflexible. He eagerly ascended
to the entrance of the cave. It was a work of
hours to make the enlargement, and disengage the
fragments of the rock that impeded the entrance.
But the work was a length performed. The fragments
were reduced to such a size, as that they
might be rolled away. Too eager to allow himself
rest from his exhausting toil, and drenched as he
was with perspiration, he entered through the
chasm created by his own labour, a grotto, which
might have served as a retreat for Calypso and her
nymphs. An immense vaulted chamber, whose
roof towered a hundred feet aloft, spread before
him; huge pillars supported it in various points.
Here were projections, and there were recesses. As
the external surface was black, the feeble light admitted
to this chamber showed columns of basalt,
some of purple, some green, and some compounded

[figure description] Page 088.[end figure description]

of all the colours. The floor was of living stone.
Blocks of basalt, strewed around in various directions,
might have served as seats for multitudes of
visitants. This apartment received its chief light
from the aperture by which he had entered. Beyond
it spread another, and another. On one side
of the last, a chasm of an hundred feet in length
obliquely opened to the west, showing a kind of
beautiful skylight, which admitted only the oblique
rays of the setting sun, the air, and sufficient light
to shed a dim and pleasing lustre upon the sides of
an apartment of immense extent, and whose pillars,
recesses, and seats, exhibited a variety of striking
and brilliant aspects. The air within was dry. It
was safe. It admitted light and air, excluded the heat
and the elements, and a little labour of defence at
the entrance would barricade it impregnably against
a host of savages. The skylight was of a slope
too steep and smooth for admittance of an enemy,
even had not the elevation, to which it opened, been
inaccessible. A small spring of pure water, yet
sufficient for all purposes of supply, slowly trickled
along the stone floor, fell into a natural fountain at
the angle of the apartment, overflowed it, and disappeared
through a fissure of the rock.

The joy of the heart of the youthful solitary may
be imagined. Here was not only a retreat, but a
spacious and a splendid one. It was a place in
which nymphs might have resorted for residence.
Its solitary splendour and magnificence would have
been agreeable circumstances, had there been a

[figure description] Page 089.[end figure description]

single human being to share it with him. As it was,
to look round upon this kind of subterranean palace,
and see, that with its commodiousness it possessed
beauty and grandeur, could not but add to
the pleasure of finding such a desirable shelter.
Here, where the evening sun fell on the floor, he
could spread, dry, and preserve his bread. Here,
in another place, should he ever obtain fire, he could
arrange his apparatus for cooking. In another
point he could spread his bed of grass. From the
terrace he could survey the first rays of morning
purpling the ocean, the beautiful belt of grass and
shade, and an immeasurable extent of sea. He could
make his bed where the last sunbeams rested. He
could drink unmolested, even in case of a siege by
savages, from a pure fountain, which his own apartment
commanded. When his cask of bread, could
it be preserved, was stored there, he would have a
supply of food for any length of time, which it
might be calculated that savages would besiege
him. There was there every thing that a solitary
could desire but society. In this respect there was
still an aching void. For a young man, in the
earnest vigour of youthful impulses and sentiments,
to lie down alone in a vast, vaulted, volcanic cave,
with a superincumbent mountain above his head;
to consider himself in this strange place, in an uninhabited
island, in the wastes of the South Sea,
were, after all, circumstances sufficiently chilling.
“Courage,” said he to himself, as he looked round
the strange and splendid grotto palace, “Courage;

[figure description] Page 090.[end figure description]

for deprived of all other friends, thou wilt have
none but God with whom to commune, and thou
wilt have no alternative, but intercourse with the
greatest and best of beings.” He fell on his knees,
and consecrated his future life with earnest prayers,
and with eyes streaming with tears, as he implored
God for cheerfulness, patience, and hope, to sustain
him in his lonely sojourn.

The distance from his grotto to the cove where
he was cast ashore, where was his bread, and where
was the only chasm in the iron-bound shore, through
the rampart of cliffs, for a considerable extent to
the right and left, was something more than half
a league. It was a morning and evening walk
only of sufficient extent for exercise. His first business
was to bring all his bread to his grotto. This
he brought in four trips, which occupied the day.
Before night, all his bread, broken into small fragments,
was thoroughly dried in the sun, and so
hardened as to be in a state of preservation, to receive
no further injury from keeping. At his last
trip, he bathed as usual, took his evening repast
from the treasures hid in the sand, and returned to
his grotto for sleep, which the great and exhausting
labours of the day now rendered so pressing a
want, that he could hardly keep his eyelids from
closing, until he had carried to his resting place a
sufficiency of grass to shield his body from the
hardness of his couch of stone. He threw himself
at his length, at a point of the grotto whence the
skylight admitted a view of a portion of the western

[figure description] Page 091.[end figure description]

hemisphere. The moon was distinctly visible, as
she sloped amidst her throne of clouds, towards the
western sea. He prayed on his bended knees, laid
himself down, thought of his lonely position, and
his eyes swam, as he contemplated the queen of
night, now stooping through clouds, and now wending
along the blue. The hoarse murmur of the
sea died on his ear; and his slumbers were as profound,
as those of the monarch sleeping on purple
and down, and surrounded by battalions and guards.

After his morning thanksgivings for shelter, and
sound and refreshing sleep, and his customary resort
to the cove, which contained his magazine of
food, whence he took enough not only for his morning
repast, but to serve him, along with his bread,
through the day; he determined to devote the day
to discovery, with a purpose, meanwhile, not to
stray so far, as not to be able to return to his grotto
to spend the night. It might happen, that he
might discover that he was already on the continent
of New Holland, or an island that was inhabited,
and that by the aid of the natives he might escape
to some civilized settlements. Having taken a
hearty breakfast, therefore, he commenced his
morning journey, cheered, as he proceeded, with
the beauty of nature, the verdure and the music of
the groves, through which he passed.

He traversed the belt of grass nearly a league to
the west, without seeing any thing worthy of remark.
Here he came to the margin of a brook of
considerable size, which carried much more water

[figure description] Page 092.[end figure description]

than any he had yet seen. Its waters were pure
and transparent, and skirted with a compact margin
of shrubbery and trees, containing varieties and
kinds which he had not yet seen. Some were
loaded with berries, which promised, that they
might serve as fruit, or food. The fear that they
might be poisonous, prevented his tasting them.
The stream meandered from the mountains to the
sea. He followed its windings at a distance; for
the tangle of shrubs and vines prevented his proceeding
on the banks. At no great distance towards
the mountains, he came upon a most beautiful
lake, or pond, with a margin of white sand,
without tree or shrub on its borders. The eye
looked down its pellucid depths—for it seemed
bottomless—with delight. Myriads of fishes of
every form and size were sporting in the waters,
slumbering in the sunbeams, or darting to the surface
to catch the insect, or fly, as they fell exhausted
in the water. He sat down to admire the beauty
of one of the loveliest landscapes that imagination
can conceive. Near this beautiful lake were congregated
innumerable birds, some singing among
the branches, some pursuing their rival loves, some
building their nests, and some resting with matronly
patience on their nests. The most whimsical and
splendid variety of water fowls swam in the lake.
Pidgeons of a splendour of plumage, unlike any
thing he had yet seen, rested on the branches in
flocks. A number of kangaroos seemed to have
been allured to contemplate the beauty of the

[figure description] Page 093.[end figure description]

spectacle. They stood erect on the shore at no great
distance, almost mocking his eyes for a moment
with the aspect of his fellow beings. As he walked
towards them, they slowly retired from his path,
occasionally taking one of their prodigious leaps,
and then turning to contemplate the new and strange
guest, that had thus intruded upon their solitude.

He rested a moment in the shade on the shore,
beholding with delight this solitary scene of beauty,
this congregated bustle, this movement and joy of
animal life. With a gun and a hook and line, what
supplies of food might not this place furnish? But
he wanted not food. He had no implement for ensnaring
and destruction. Who could meditate such
a purpose in such a place? The lake was formed
by the stream, and that appeared to issue from the
mountains. He followed it to the bases. It came
rushing down in a sheet, leaping from cliff to cliff;
and here, to his surprise and joy, he discovered a
break in the continuous regularity of the wall that
fronted the mountains. It seemed as though nature
had rent a passage between them, to furnish a
channel for this little stream. The ascent here
was steep, but easily accessible. He paused, and
took food and a draught of water from the mountain
stream, and began to ascend.

It required both labour and danger to mount the
cliffs. Sometimes he crawled on his hands and
knees along sharp declivities of stones, not daring
to look down the dizzying eminence which he had
gained. At other times, he held fast to small bushes,

[figure description] Page 094.[end figure description]

rooted in a tender soil, threatening to yield from
their roots, and precipitate him down the sides of
the mountain. As he ascended, the prospect opened
before him. Distances diminished. The chasm
in the cliffs at the cove, seemed directly at the foot
of the mountain, and it appeared as if, by a few
paces, one could step from the foot of the mountains
to the sea. The rounding of the shore now more
distinctly indicated, that he was cast on an island,
and that of no great extent. On every side, in the
direction of the sea, nothing could be seen, but the
quivering, blue surface, wave beyond wave, scintillating
with the splendours of a sun, now almost
culminating from the zenith. At a distance, which
seemed reduced to nothing, but which by comparison,
he judged might be four or five miles from
the cove where he was cast ashore, was another
chasm in the cliffs, which gave promise of being a
larger and better harbour, than the former.

At an elevation, as he judged, of two thousand
feet, he sat down under the shade of some stinted
shrubs, which were rooted in a little area, covered
with a thin surface of soil. From this soil oozed a
small spring of water, deliciously cool. He took
food, quenched his thirst, and looked round him.
The mountain air was pure, fresh, and exhilarating.
The grandeur and loneliness of his position thrilled
him with a feeling of inexpressible sublimity. He
felt as though he were alone in the universe, and
engaged in an attempt almost impious, to ascend in
the flesh to the empyrean regions. Grandeur,

[figure description] Page 095.[end figure description]

immensity, and solitude were spread upon every side
of him. The fleecy clouds, as they sailed through
the air, hovered but just above his head. New
wonders opened upon him at every ascending step.
He continued to clamber from height to height,
until he reached a table eminence. His eye glanced
over the summit almost fearfully. On the side of
the mountain, opposite that which he had ascended,
was the smoking crater of a volcano, from which
rose vast bursts of ruddy smoke in spiral columns.
The conical and bottomless crater seemed to open
a passage to the central depths; and the crater surmounted
a distinct, cone-shaped eminence, that rose
from a basis a thousand feet below him. The island
was elliptical in shape, and in its remotest diameter
the eye could just catch the indistinct blue beyond
the termination of land. The prospect, as he
looked off in that direction, was enchanting: a
beautiful and basin-shaped vale opened in the interior
of the island, accurately and strangely defined
on three sides by the black and undulating summits
of these mountains. On the fourth side was a narrow
chasm cut through these hills, as it appeared,
by the hand of nature for the escape of the waters
of the valley. Beyond that opening, a dim, blue
mixture of the horizon with the level surface indicated,
that there commenced the same trackless
waste of waters, as on the opposite side of the mountains.

All doubt was thus removed. His eye traced
the whole outline of an island, and without a

[figure description] Page 096.[end figure description]

harbour, as was probable; a mere volcanic shell, which
had arisen, in the ages of the past, from the depths
of the ocean, with a narrow sloping belt round its
edge, and inscribed with an elliptical line of mountains.
It was not only an island—but a mere unsheltered
rock in the sea, detached, unexplored, unvisited,
affording scarce a gleam of probability of
escape, and leaving him the sad prospect of having
here to finish his journey alone. Such were the
sad convictions, that rushed upon his mind at the
moment that his eye traced an entire outline of sea
on every side. He called in aid all his fortitude.
He cast his eye from summit to summit, along the
line of mountains, many of which threw up immense
columns of smoke towards the sky. He
looked towards the point of the sky, where he supposed
his native country was situated; and exerted
an effort to stretch his thoughts over the immeasurable
wastes of sea, between it and himself. All was
dreary, vast, and out of relation with him and his
thoughts. There was something terrific in the eternal
fires, that steamed up their columns of smoke into
the upper regions of the air, showing him the nature
of the power that was operating these irresistible
energies of nature in her great work-shop in the
depths beneath. “Lonely, feeble insect,” said he,
“even nature herself is too vast, too infinite, too
intent upon her own grand works to commune with
thee. It is one of thy kind, an insect, like thyself,
speaking thine own words, and sharing thy little
joys, wants and sorrows, that would be infinitely

[figure description] Page 097.[end figure description]

more to thee, than all this grandeur and vastness.
With God and with man art thou formed to commune;
and far from man thou must here finish thy
solitary pilgrimage.”

He raised his eye from the smokes, the mountains,
and the sea, to the Invisible, whose throne
and whose habitation are on high, and a sense of his
feebleness, littleness, desertion, and an earnest longing
for society, filled his eyes with tears.

The sun was now declining, and cast a radiance
of inexpressible softness and beauty upon the sloping
declivities of the mountains, on the side opposite
that which he had ascended. Unlike that side,
it descended in shelving benches, covered with trees
of every form and size, height and shade of foliage.
The configuration of their tops, and the bluntness
of their stems, gave promise that they were fruit-bearing
trees. At intervals there were small, open
grass plains, of the most charming smoothness,
amenity and verdure, as seen from his elevation.
It was, indeed, impossible for him to form precise
ideas of the landscape; for enough only was manifest
to the eye, to give impulse to the imagination.
It seemed the land of fairies and nymphs.
There was such an infinite variety of slopes; such
diversified beauty in the general configuration of
the descending shelves; such tufted splendour in
the circular eminences, that bore on their summits
parterres of verdure; there was such freshness and
vividness in the colouring, indicating the effect of
copious irrigation, purifying mountain air, a rich

[figure description] Page 098.[end figure description]

soil, and a tropical sun; as caused the beauty of
the scenery almost to be felt on the eye.

The thought of his grotto and his grassy couch,
so far below him, came upon him with something
of the feeling of home; and there was a chill in
the idea of spending the night on this sublime
elevation, in the midst of these smoking mountain
summits. He felt himself weary and exhausted.
His food was spent. There was no water. The
mind, that had been looking abroad upon this
elevating spectacle, felt that it was in a frail and
feeble tenement, that required the sight of its kind,
and food and rest. He began to descend, contemplating
from time to time the effect of the shadows
of evening falling upon the mountains. It
was already dark when he passed the beautiful
lake, so animated with life the preceding morning.
Owls now hooted from their hollow trees.
Amphibious reptiles screamed and crooked with
discordant and appalling cries. The dismal and
plaintive lament of the kangaroo rung through the
woods, and echoed from the mountains. Fire flies
of every size, from a brilliant electric point, to the
size of a shooting star, kindled an ever-varying
blaze upon the trees and shrubs. The young solitary
held on his course, warned of his direction by
keeping near the base of the mountains, bewildered
with the strange spectacle before him. Well might
his imagination present to his thoughts—in the midst
of these forests, these strange fires, these thousand
cries of reptiles and unknown animals—beasts ready

[figure description] Page 099.[end figure description]

to devour, serpents hissing under his feet to sting,
and unknown and terrific beings peopling the darkness.
His heart throbbed, as he passed fearfully
along amidst a darkness illumined only by a few
faint stars, and the glaring brilliance of the fire
flies. His heart arose to Him who maketh darkness
his pavilion, and he reached his grotto in safety.
But there was no friend, no human being, no candle,
or torch, no ray of light, not even a dog to find
his master by his instinct of smell, and to fondle on
him in the darkness. But he felt his way to his
grassy couch, threw himself on it, repeated the
cheering and affectionate words, which he had so
often uttered after his mother as she had stood over
his nocturnal couch, “Our Father, who art in heaven,”—
and his sleep was sweet, and dreamless.

When he went forth from his grotto the next
morning, the sun was high in the heavens, and the
matin song of nature had been sung while he slept.
He gazed round him for a moment; and although
the irrational tribes had finished their morning
devotions, he determined to sing his hymn of praise,
though unaccompanied. He sang to his favourite
air the beautiful words, “When all thy mercies, O
my God,” &c. Who can tell the feelings of his
heart, as the closing words of these sweet stanzas
came back in the plaintive note of echo, again and
again, melting away in the distance. It seemed as
if these black and frowning mountains sympathized
with him in his loneliness, devotion and songs.
Two lines of a well remembered sacramental hymn

[figure description] Page 100.[end figure description]

sounded more sweetly in the voice of echo, than
any other.

It was thenceforward his practice, invariably to
close his morning and evening devotions with these
words; and they soon became so familiar to his
ear, as they came back softened from the woods
and the cliffs, Going home! Going home! that he
took comfort in the idea of personifying echo, until
he thought at least of one shadowy but sympathizing
being, that pitied and answered, and encouraged
him to wait patiently for that last home.

His first want was fire. Siliceous stones were no
where seen. He remembered the expedients of Juan
Fernandez. He rubbed sticks, but his strength
failed before he could even produce smoke. A
thousand and a thousand projects were examined,
and rejected. He understood the principle of kindling
fire by percussion. The thought gave him
courage. “I can surely find,” said he, “somewhere
a reed, a rod and a sponge, and I can kindle
fire by percussion. I will watch the thunder cloud,
and where the lightning falls I will find fire from
heaven.” An association brought to his thoughts
the volcanic fires, from one of which, long columns
of ruddy smoke, as if mixed with fires, streamed
off in horizontal pillars over the sea. “I will ascend,”
said he, “to their summits. I will kindle
a fire to cheer my solitary nights, from the central

[figure description] Page 101.[end figure description]

fires.” Such thoughts animated him, as he walked
to his sea-bathing and to his treasures “hid in the
sand.”

Having bathed, and breakfasted, and recovered
from the fatigues of the former day, a feeling like
cheerfulness and joy sprung up in his bosom. “I
will imprison some of these beautiful birds,” said
he. “I will learn them to love me, and to be my
companions from choice.” Hares, of a large size,
and variegated and beautiful colours, playing in
the grass, scarcely seemed disposed to get out of
his way as he passed along. Flamingos, and purple
pidgeons, and gray parrots, and parroquets of
green and gold, and cardinals with their high crimson
tufts, and an astonishing kind of bustards, almost
of the size of a sheep, with hair instead of feathers,
and wings not unlike those of a bat, were
visible on all sides in his walks; water fowls, of
exquisite form and beauty, sailed in the little fresh
water lake that he had discovered. Kangaroos,
though not so common as the other animals, were
often seen. He never wearied, in viewing their
singular forms, intermediate between the baboon
race and man. They walked erect. Their strange
cry was almost human. Their prodigious activity
in leaping, surpassed his conceptions. “I will take
of each a pair,” said he, “I will learn them to love
me, and to be satisfied with my grotto, and basin
within it, and the little area in front of it.”

But he found in the experiment, how much easier
it was to form a picture in the imagination, than to

[figure description] Page 102.[end figure description]

consummate his project. The birds and the animals
had appeared so tame, that by their chattering and
congregating about him, he deemed it only necessary
to make an effort, to imprison as many of them
as he would. The rabbits would skip away a half
a dozen paces from him, stop, and prick up their
ears, and gaze at him, until his hand was within a
few feet of them, when they would lightly trip
away, and sit at the same distance again. The
birds fluttered at a fathom's distance, chattered,
and nodded their heads, and still kept the same distance
from his hand. The kangaroos allowed him
even to touch them—but his touch, as an electric
shock caused them to bound away almost a rood
at a single spring. He repaired to the lake, undressed,
and plunged in, thinking to take some of
the beautiful varieties of the water fowls, that had
seemed tamer than even the other animals. But they
pattered their broad bills in the water, plied their
webbed feet once or twice in the yielding element,
and just preserved their customary distance from
him. When he was still, so also were they; and
they rested in the water, nodded their heads, and
gazed upon him. They seemed to be discussing
the point, with most annoying volubility, what new
and strange monster of nature had intruded himself
into their society; and he could not forbear
thinking, that their chattering and strange movements
were their modes of ridiculing the uncouth
animal who manifested dispositions to make too
free with them.

[figure description] Page 103.[end figure description]

Wearied, and discouraged with the useless effort
to take even a single bird, or quadruped, he was
returning in disappointment towards his grotto,
when a pair of those huge birds, with hair for feathers,
stalked past him in the grass with a flock of
their young between. Monsters as they were, he
determined to seize some of the young. He sprang
into the midst of the flock, and seized one of the
young in either hand. The dams raised a loud and
appalling whistle, and flew upon him with their bat
wings extended, dealing him such blows as almost
stunned him; at the same time they pounced their
beaks into his forehead. Glad to escape from this
warfare with his eyes, he released his prey, and
the parents of the young moved slowly away, croaking
defiance as they went, and leaving him
scratched and bleeding. Such was the issue of his
first half days experiment at making companions of
these free tenants of the solitude.

“Ah!” said he, as he returned in the sorrow of
disappointment, and in the bitterness of his spirit,
“they know by instinct, that man is a cruel tyrant
to their kind. He has always found the necessity
of fraud, and snares, and traps, and gins.” The
idea of their distrust and hostility removed the pain
of the thought of depriving them of their liberty.
“I will take time,” he reflected, “and attain my end
by more certain means. I will make snares, and
pit-falls, and I will imprison them without compunction,
since they fear and fly me.”

Three or four successive days passed without any

[figure description] Page 104.[end figure description]

particular incidents, to vary them. Every moment,
except when he slept, was spent in preparing such
implements as could be furnished by sea shells, the
ligaments of the shrubs, or plants, the arrangement
of his couch, and a chimney, in which to cook,
when he should obtain fire from the volcano. His
arrangements had a particular reference to the
journey, which he meditated for that purpose. His
knapsack of palm leaves and filaments from the
tall hemp-grass, was neatly preapred. Nooses and
springs for the taking of animals and birds were
prepared. With a scollop-shell, firmly fixed to a
strong reed, he made a convenient spade, with
which he purposed to dig a pit-fall, in which he
hoped to take a pair of kangaroos. He had prepared
oysters and bread for his intended journey
of the following morning, when he intended, before
the rising of the sun, to be on his way over the
mountains to the volcano.

But at midnight he awoke in a burning fever.
He arose from his couch, and it was the extent of
his strength, to be able to reach his grotto fountain
and quench his raging thirst. He crawled back to
his couch, feebly articulating a line of his favourite
stanza, “And dying is but going home.” That
mystery in our nature is inexplicable, which causes,
that the death which, perhaps, in health we courted,
brings dismay and horror when it comes in the
form of sickness and gradual approach to dissolution.
To die in unalleviated sickness, and to lie
in this strange sepulchre, was at first an abhorrent

[figure description] Page 105.[end figure description]

and afflicting thought, from which his heart recoiled.
But he said to himself, “Thy will, O God,
be done;” and the agitation of his thoughts subsided
and he laid himself calmly down, to live, or die, as
God should ordain. It were useless to trace his
thoughts or feelings through his three days of fever,
in which his weakness was so great, that, although
he agonized with thirst, and could hear the cool
spring falling into the fountain basin near him, he
could not rise and reach it. On the fourth day,
his apprehensions, pains, and thirst, were alike
quietted in utter insensibility.

From this long sleep he at length awoke, calm,
feeble and perfectly free from sickness and pain.
He felt that God had other trials for him yet to endure;
and he humbly blessed Him that had ransomed
his life from destruction. Having refreshed
his thirst, and taking a little of his unsavory bread
to relieve the exhaustion of hunger and disease, he
retired to his couch, and passed the day in self-examination,
prayer, and communion with God.

The next day, before the sun arose from the sea,
he dragged his feeble steps to the cove, and took
his customary sea-bathing and repast. He felt
himself not yet sufficiently strong to scale the mountains
to obtain the volcanic fire. He determined,
therefore, to make a circuit of the shore, as far as
he thought his strength would allow, in order to
enable him to reach his grotto again that night.
He passed the small stream below the lake, and at
the distance of half a mile from the shore. The

[figure description] Page 106.[end figure description]

sun came up in his glory from the ocean. The
dew drops glittered on the trees. Every thing that
had life hailed the glad morning. Never had a
more beautiful day dawned upon the earth. Never
were verdure, and flowers more fresh and ambrosial.
The solitary, just restored from a violent
paroxism of fever, felt the calm, elevated, and delightful
consciousness of renovated existence, so
natural, and so joyous a feeling in similar cases.
The creation smiled upon him in a freshness and
novelty, as though he had now seen it for the first
time. He went slowly on his way rejoicing. “These
are thy works,” said he, “Parent of good.” Devotion
cheered his thoughts; and gave him the
presentiment of happy discoveries.

In crossing the stream which has been described,
he was compelled to make his way with difficulty
through the tangle of shrubs, and vines, and briars,
that fringed its borders. A considerable tree before
him bent its branches over the stream, and he
remarked, that they were charged with a fruit of
the most inviting appearance and of great size. He
remembered to have read, that birds never prey
upon poisonous fruits. He remarked, that this tree
was covered with birds, the larger classes driving
away the smaller with incessant chattering, as they
preyed upon it themselves. Some of the lower
branches were within his reach. He gathered two
or three of the fruits. He remarked with joy and
triumph, that they exactly resembled the engravings
of the bread fruit. With this double ground of

[figure description] Page 107.[end figure description]

assurance in its favour, he brought it to the test of
his taste. It had the luscious flavour of the fresh
fig, and created the satisfying sensation from eating
bread. What a treasure to a man, whose appetite
had returned with devouring force after sickness,
and whose only food had hitherto been uncooked
shellfish, and bread that had been moulded by heat,
and wet with sea water! Never had epicure such a
repast. He feasted thankfully, and blessed the
Giver with eyes moistened with tears of gratitude.
He looked round on all sides to see if there was no
other tree of the kind in sight. This was all that
appeared; and it seemed as if the birds would soon
rob this of all it bore. The birds were driven off
only to return to the charge, and settle on the fruits
again. He had satisfied his morbid appetite with
the delicious food. But he felt the pangs of a
miser, at being robbed of his gold, in seeing the
birds plunder his future treasures. There was no
resource, except to remain constantly under the
tree; and even then, it was only by unremitted exertion
that he could drive away the flights of plunderers.
At length he reflected, that though he had
seen but this single tree, in a climate congenial to
the fruit there must certainly be more, and that
time and future search must discover them. Cheering
himself with this thought, he took two or three
fruits to serve him on his way, and he continued
his journey of discovery.

He determined to visit the cove, which he had
discovered from the top of the mountains. He

[figure description] Page 108.[end figure description]

reached it by ten in the morning. The first object
that struck him, was a large box, lying partly in
the water and partly on the sand. It required the
exertion of all his strength, to give it two or three
turns, so as to raise it above the danger of being
carried away by the waves. As he was searching
for the fragment of a rock, with which to beat it
open and examine its contents, he discovered on
the beach detached planks, and shivered timbers,
which left not a doubt that here were the shattered
remnants of the skeleton of the Australasia. He
stumbled a moment after upon another box, smaller
than the former, which he also removed up the
beach. He still advanced with eager curiosity,
until his senses informed him, that he was near still
more melancholy marks of the wreck. He sickened
at the thought of seeing the bodies of his ill fated
companions. The next step, he started back with
horror; for by the form and dress, rather than by
the horribly disfigured countenance, he recognized
the body of the lately beautiful Katharine Olney,
the victim of lawless passions. Could it be, that
this object of loathing and horror could have been
the pursuit of illicit love, so beautiful, so interesting,
even after her fall! Could it be, that what was
now before him, had trilled the song, “Farewell,
ye green fields,” but a few days before, with such
exquisite melody and effect? He hastened away,
faint and recoiling, only to encounter another, and
another spectacle of the same kind. He sickened,
and retreated from the beach, and traversed the

[figure description] Page 109.[end figure description]

curve of the cove, at a distance from the shore,
to avoid the chances of these appalling spectacles.
At the upper extremity of the beach, he ascended
a cliff, which surmounted it fifty feet above the
level of the sea. Here he saw a considerable section
of the hulk of the ship, wedged between two
projecting rocks, and raised so high above the
waves, as to be barely dashed by the brine. His
senses warned him, that here was the mass of the
bodies of his shipwrecked companions.

The whole scene created such a faintness, that
he hurried from the cliff to a grove at no great distance
from the shore. The burning thirst of his
fever came upon him; and as he dragged his steps
to the shade, he envied the repose of those, whose
toils and sorrows were thus ended. The shade was
surrounded by a clean white sand, in which the
slightest mark would be distinctly visible. Every
nerve of his frame thrilled, as he saw the manifest
impress of a human footstep in the sand. It was a
small, and apparently a female footmark. His
agitation was such, that the alternate shivers and
throbbings threatened to renew his fever. The
person had evidently walked backward and forward,
and the footsteps were fresh and recent. He
raised his voice to its utmost pitch, and cried,
Friend! friend! He held in his breath, until the
distant echoes from the mountains had died away,
and repeated the cry, and again waited for the response
of echo.

The next thought, was to trace the direction of

[figure description] Page 110.[end figure description]

the footsteps. They soon failed on the firm green
sward. No savage of the American forest, ever
more eagerly applied all his powers to discern, if
possible, the slightest trace of the imprint of human
foot on the grass, than he did on this occasion.
More than once he entirely lost the clue, and returned
with a sinking despondence, to retrace the
direction again. After the search of an hour, he
found the same footstep beyond the open glade,
marked in the soft black ooze, which indicated the
vicinity of a spring. Through this ooze the person
had evidently passed and repassed frequently.
Here he again raised his cries, in hopes that this
forlorn being might hear and answer, and in breathless
suspense awaited a reply. The footsteps were
searched again, and traced to a spring. From the
spring the trace was marked towards the mountains.
It then traversed a patch of sward again. Beyond
that, it was again recognised in a spot of wet and
black earth, destitute of herbage. Every moment
added to the eagerness of his search, and the frequency
of his cries, and the terror of his apprehensions,
lest the desolate and unprotected being, who
had passed there, had perished in utter destitution
and misery. His anxiety at times almost amounted
to distraction. The sun was at the zenith, and he
was still ineffectually striving to find among the
trees and grass, the ultimate course which the
wanderer had taken.

At length he came on the footsteps again, and
they appeared to lead towards a single detached

[figure description] Page 111.[end figure description]

tree with a huge trunk, and but a moderate height,
and which, in the distance, exactly resembled an
American live oak, except that the immense size of
the foliage made it more like the palm in that respect.
This tree stood alone in an open area. Its
branches curved downwards, in the form of an open
umbrella, and in creating an impervious shade,
seemed almost to have formed a roof, that promised
to shed the rain. An involuntary tremor
seized him, as he approached this tree. Near it
was high grass, through which such a course had
been trampled, as by a body that had been dragged
through it, to the shelter of this tree. The limbs
formed a curve so near the ground, that he was
obliged to lift them up, and then to stoop, in order
to enter. The reader may imagine his sensations,
when the first object which he discovered by the
dim light of the dark brown shade was a female
figure, apparently lifeless, lying at the trunk of the
tree, and who seemed to have sought this covert,
that maidenly modesty might here find the nearest
covering to the decency of the sepulchre that could
be found above the soil.

Terrified and trembling, he approached the figure,
and instantly recognised the once proud and beautiful
Augusta Wellman. It would be folly to attempt
to depict his sensations. Her countenance wore
the paleness of death. Her eyes were sunken and
hollow. Her form was emaciated to a skeleton;
but there was no mistaking the dress, the countenance,
and contour. He grasped her chill hand,

[figure description] Page 112.[end figure description]

which had not at least the coldness of death; and
as he felt her wrist, a slight tremulousness of the
artery gave him unquestionable evidence, that, however
near the vital spark was to extinction, she still
lived. As he bent over her, he gently pronounced
her name. The sounds awaked consciousness, and
she half opened her eyes. The tumultuous throbbings
of his own heart may be imagined, as he
ejeculated, “Thank God, she lives! she lives!” She
gave a kind of convulsive sob, and raised her hand
to her face, but neither opened her eyes, nor appeared
to have the least distinct consciousness;
though she murmured some low and incoherent
words, the purport of which seemed to be, to ask
for drink. She moved her lips, as if between sleeping
and waking, or in the low insanity that precedes
death in the last stage of fever. From the
dryness of her parched lips, and from her frequent
mention of water, it was manifest that she suffered
extreme thirst. Various circumstances obviously
showed, that, until recently, she had made her way
to the adjacent spring for water; and that she had
recently become incapable of that effort, either
from sickness or inanition.

He sprang to the spring, scooped up water in his
hands, and kneeling over her, opened her parched
lips, to enable her to swallow the water. As soon
as she was conscious of the presence of the needed
element, nature asserted her rights. She manifested
extreme thirst, and repeatedly swallowed all that
he could bring in his hands. He was aware of the

[figure description] Page 113.[end figure description]

danger of allowing her too much at once; and when
he withheld the supply, she called distinctly, in a
low and complaining murmur, for more water. She
appeared to have considered herself addressing her
maid. He bent over her, and in a gentle and affectionate
tone of voice, told her that she was not well,
and that the physician forbade her having more
water. She turned her face, and murmured inaudibly
in reply, and seemed disposed to sleep. In a
moment he had gathered soft and dry grass and
leaves, and made a comparatively comfortable
couch. He raised her in his arms from her uncomfortable
position on the damp hard earth, and placed
her on the bed of grass.

At this emergency, what would he have given
for wine, or the proper nutriment for such a person,
apparently reduced to this forlorn condition by exhaustion!
He had bread, but it was wretchedly
unpalatable. He had bread-fruit, and the pulp, he
judged, would be at once nutritive and proper for
her case. The thought flashed upon him, who
knows what may be in those boxes? He left her,
and ran to the boxes on the shore, distant from the
tree less than half a mile. It may be imagined he
did not count his steps. He eagerly knocked open
the first and largest one with the first stone he
could find. It was chiefly filled with clothes, and
other multifarious contents, but nothing to meet
the present emergency. He flew to the smaller box,
and knocked off the upper cover. It contained
wine and cordials, the very articles he would have

[figure description] Page 114.[end figure description]

selected from a million! He blessed God in his
heart, and received it as an omen that the poor sufferer
would be raised. Marine shells, of convenient
and beautiful forms, were easily found on the shore,
for vessels. He was soon beside his patient, his
heart palpitating at once from haste and anxiety,
lest she might have expired in his absence.

To his gentle calls she now opened her eyes;
but her thoughts evidently wandered, as to her
place and condition. He bruised the pulp of a
bread-fruit, poured wine upon it, and macerated the
pulp, until the wine had imbibed the juice and the
nutrition. He applied the liquid to her lips, and, as
before, she eagerly swallowed it, apparently as considering
it water. He felt that his duties of nurse
and physician in the case were responsible, and no
motive can be imagined, which did not operate in
all its force, to inspire him with the utmost caution,
and to excite him to call up all his recollections of
nursing and medicine.

He ventured to administer, in the first instance,
nearly a glass of wine so prepared. Although she
complainingly ordered more, he paused to witness
the effect of what he had already administered.
He had the satisfaction to perceive, directly, that
the wine and nutriment had taken effect. An
evanescent hue of the rose revisited her pallid
cheek. She became more energetic in her remonstrances
as she called for more water. After an
interval of a few minutes, he mixed some of the
pulp of the breadfruit with some of his bread, and

[figure description] Page 115.[end figure description]

mixed the paste with wine. He administered this,
and she swallowed it readily. In this way he gave
her as much food and wine as he dared administer
in the case, and then felt, that, as a judicious nurse,
though a thousand other expedients to hasten her
restoration forced themselves upon his thoughts, it
was necessary to wait a while, and leave nature to
her course; he meanwhile diligently watched her
indications.

He made the most sage and judicious determinations;
but, as happens in cases of such anxious
suspense, with no measure of time but the extreme
earnestness of hope and the bitter alternations of
fear, he probably measured a quarter of an hour
for an hour. Her eager calls for drink increased
his impatience. He gave her wine so much and so
frequently, that he began to perceive a feverish
flush in her cheek, and to feel it in her hand. Taxing
himself bitterly with childish impatience and
inconsideration, he came to a resolute pause. The
mother, who is sitting at midnight and alone over
her sick first-born, suspended between life and
death, may enter into the agony of his suspense
during this interval.

At this anxious moment, a new cause of terror
manifested itself. It was drawing towards evening.
The patient could not be removed. The weather,
which had been calm, and the sky cloudless, since
he had been on the island, now began to change.
The murky atmosphere promised a stormy night.
The lightning flashed from all quarters of the sky,

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and thunder rumbled among the mountains. In
the present state of the patient, whatever had been
the cause of her present debility, there could be no
doubt, that a drenching rain would completely extinguish
the almost expiring lamp of life. It was
obviously necessary, that he should use prompt and
energetic measures to shelter her, if possible, from
the rain. He recollected, that the first package
which he had opened on the shore contained pieces
of linen, laces, and female dresses, enveloped in
canvass. He brought the canvass and linen, broke
down small bamboos, and in less than an hour, had
raised over her a tent impervious to the rain.

Scarcely had he completed these important arrangements,
and sheltered his patient under a tent
of sufficient dimensions, also, to cover himself, before
the lightning glared through the trees, and the
thunder burst in deafening echoes in the mountains.
The winds roared. The trees bent their heads.
The ocean-surges lashed the rock-bound shore.
The hollow sounds of torrents, formed in the mountains,
rushed precipitously down the perpendicular
sides, and the rain continued to come down in torrents.
The thick foliage of the tree completely excluded
the fury of the wind, and almost formed a
roof against the rain. The drops that sifted through
the leaves were completely arrested by the tent, and
no other result followed, but a delicious coolness in
the atmosphere. As the thunder burst, and the rain
poured, how humbly did he thank the Almighty,
that he had been enabled thus to shelter his forlorn

[figure description] Page 117.[end figure description]

patient. It seemed, as if Providence had thus given
warrant, that the gracious Being, who had thus
marvellously interposed for her, would complete
the begun graciousness, and would restore her to
health. How did he long for fire and light, that
he might watch the variations of her countenance?
But this might not be. The darkness, except when
the lightning glared through the gloom, was total.
Who can tell the colour of his thoughts, as he contemplated
her countenance by the gleams of lightning?
He held her burning hand in his, and was
painfully aware, that whatever were the original
causes of her feebleness, she was now labouring
under distinctly formed fever. It had, probably,
failed to manifest its symptoms, in consequence of
her extreme weakness, and of having no aliment,
on which to feed. Sustenance and wine had called
it into external action. She murmured continually,
in that half intelligible strain, which indicated low
but fixed insanity.

Scarcely had he indulged the hope that her
complaint was no more than that of exhaustion,
when this new source of terror, apprehension that
she would die of fever, opened upon him. During
this long night of thunder, tempest, and darkness,
that passed over these desolate beings, alone, as it
were, in the universe, the human heart can be supposed
capable of few emotions of hope, fear, anxiety,
and suspense, that did not successively agitate his
bosom. The red and dismal glare of lightning,
shed upon her pallid and deathlike countenance all

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the light by which to confirm the one emotion or
the other. Often, when her quick and laborious
respiration no longer caught his ear, did he give
himself up to the agonizing thought, that she had
ceased to breathe.

But even this night, which seemed an age, at
length wore away. The clouds vanished. The
mountain-tops were rolled in mist. The broad
disk of the sun was seen rising from the sea. A
thousand animals uttered their morning cry of joy.
The birds sang, and the rain-drops pattered from
the leaves. The air was pure, bland, and balsamic;
and the steaming fragrance of every tropical leaf,
plant, and flower, was mingled with the atmosphere.
But the light of this beautiful day confirmed his
worst apprehensions touching his patient. The
paleness of death sat on her countenance. Her
strength was sunk to such infantine weakness, that
she was scarcely able to move her hand. She lay
still and motionless, and from her low and short
respiration alone, it was manifest that she yet
lived. But every symptom and every appearance
indicated, that this could be the case but a little
longer. It was in vain, that every moment he applied
wine to her lips. She no longer swallowed,
or appeared conscious that it was there.

He felt that nothing remained for him, but to
watch by her side in such submission and patience
as he might obtain, until the fearful suspense was
terminated. The idea of seeing this fair and frail
flower cut down under his eye, and from such

[figure description] Page 119.[end figure description]

expectations as finding her alive had raised, to be
left thus doubly desolate and alone, was indeed a
terrible one. His only resource was to besiege the
throne of the divine mercy, in earnest and importunate
prayer. The day passed without bringing
change or hope. The dark and dreary night
closed over them again, and again his spirits sank
with the light, and he gave himself up to complete
despondency. But He who never slumbers
watched over her sleep. She slept deep, tranquil,
and motionless. The short and feeble respiration
of an infant alone manifested that she still held to
life.

In the morning, hope dawned again in his breast;
for although from her countenance it might have
been supposed that she slept the sleep of innocence
and the tomb, an occasional smile passed over her
lovely face, which did not seem the precursor of
death. But the day passed, like the former, without
bringing one visible change. All that long day
he watched beside her in the same agonizing suspense,
every moment expecting to see her suffer a
short spasm, and yield her last breath. The sun
was descending, and his oblique beams penetrated
beneath the deep verdure, and threw a religious
light upon the scene; and he was on his knees
wrestling with Him who only could help, that
sparing mercy might be extended to his patient.
As he raised from his posture of prayer, she opened
her eyes and awoke. In a voice feeble but articulate,
she asked, “How came I here?”

[figure description] Page 120.[end figure description]

With a face almost as pale as her own, he bent
over her, and answered gently, that if she would be
calm, he would soon explain all the circumstances
of her case to her; but that she was now too weak
to hear them; and he begged her to compose herself,
and be perfectly still. “Only tell me,” she
feebly rejoined, “where I am, and call my maid,
and I will be quiet.” To this he answered, that she
was safe, and under the care of a friend, and he
begged her again to compose herself, with a voice
so earnest and affectionate, as appeared to inspire
her with confidence and submission. She drew her
hand across her forehead, and tears filled her eyes.
“I understand it all,” said she; “I have not been
used to the attendance of men in sickness. But I
remember your countenance, and I feel safe in your
care. I begin to comprehend my situation, and
will endeavour to submit to it.” As if exhausted
with this feeble effort, she turned and slept again.
Through this night she was feverish and delirious,
but manifested increasing strength.

The morning dawned, and with its light all his
hopes revived. She awoke, and spoke calmly.
She asked him if he were not the ship's steward.
“I am,” was the reply. She held her hand to her
forehead, and the distress of her countenance evidenced
that she was retracing the most afflicting
recollections. The tears trickled down her cheeks,
as she said, “Dear, dear father! why should I
mourn thee? How gladly would I have shared thy
lot! We are alone, steward, in this desolate place,

[figure description] Page 121.[end figure description]

are we not? I have been sick. I was perishing
with hunger and terror, and you found me, and
have saved me. Is it not so?” He answered her,
that some of her conjectures were right; but that
many of the ship's company had escaped in the
boats; that her father, in all probability, was among
them; that when she was more able to hear the
ground of his hopes, he should be able to convince
her of the probability that he had been saved. He
implored her to be tranquil, assuring her that she
was yet in extreme weakness and danger; and that
the slightest agitation would bring back her fever
and danger. He assured her, that there was no
sacrifice that he would not make to serve her, and
that if she would be composed, and allow him to
use means for her complete restoration, he would
find some way in which to convey her to New
Holland, or perish in the attempt. In reply, she
thanked him for the kindness of his efforts already,
and for his generous offers for the future. “Oh!
steward,” she added, clasping her hands, “is not
this what I used to hear from the pulpit? Is not this
terrible reverse and humiliation a just punishment
imposed upon my pride! Oh, how art thou fallen!
Was ever condition so forlorn! But I remember
you well. I am sure of your principles and your
honour. How kind you must have been! and
what exertions you must have made to save me! I
remember being tossed about upon the sea. I remember
holding to a plank as the waves rolled
over me. I remember seeing dead bodies on the

[figure description] Page 122.[end figure description]

shore. I remember the dreary feelings at my heart
as I saw myself wholly alone, and dead bodies
around me on the shore. I remember being faint
and hungry, as I wandered about in search of water.
I remember calling for help; but there was none to
answer.” A suffocating burst of tears here came to
her relief.

He was alarmed, lest this paroxysm should bring
back her disease; and earnestly begged her to
compose herself. When she had regained her
strength, he assured her, that he should then request
her to relate all. She replied, “Allow me to tell
you what a dreadful feeling it was, when I found
myself thus desolate and alone. I wished earnestly
to die. I wandered about seeking for death: But
it fled from me; and I continued to live against my
will. In what a condition you must have found
me! and how kindly you must have nursed me
through my long and painful dream, and my longer
state of insensibility! I feel that I am again returning
to life. You are right. My head feels
confused and swimming. Be kind enough to tell
me about my condition, after I was insensible, and
how you found and relieved me.”

Seeing her painful and eager curiosity, he deemed
that it would be most likely to tranquillize her
mind, to relate to her plainly, all that he knew
about her case. He gave her a clear and succinct
account of the wreck, of his own escape, of his finding
food and a place of residence, and in what
manner he afterwards discovered her. He dwelt

[figure description] Page 123.[end figure description]

upon his own anxiety and her extremity. He enlarged
upon the probability of her father's escape,
particularly dwelling on the circumstance, that his
body was not among those cast on the shore. He
mentioned, that a part of the wreck was still near,
and the chance that offered from that circumstance,
that he would yet be able to construct a boat, by
which he might convey her to New Holland, and
enable her to rejoin her friends.

Her tears flowed freely at the recital, and they
seemed tears of relief. “Dear father,” she said,
“thou art happy, even if buried in the ocean; a
thousand times happier to have been buried in the
abysses of the ocean, than to be thus thrown upon
this desert shore, and placed in a situation like
mine.” The agony of her thoughts and recollections
here became so intense, that an access of fever
and delirium returned upon her, and continued for
the greater portion of the day. Towards evening
a distinct remission of the fever ensued again. She
was again exhausted. He persuaded her to take
wine and food, in the best form in which he was
able to prepare it; and she slept soundly until
morning. During this period of her sleep, he performed
all his necessary duties, such as preparing
food, examining the contents of the boxes, and
spreading the damp articles to dry, procuring shellfish
and bread-fruit, and making all the arrangements
requisite to enable him to be constantly
ready to attend her, when she awoke.

It was nearly meridian before she awoke; but

[figure description] Page 124.[end figure description]

she was calm, collected, free from fever, and complained
of hunger. He immediately placed before
her bread, bread-fruit, and wine, regretting that he
had not fire, and that his means of affording nourishment,
proper for her case, were so limited.
“What is your name, steward?” asked she. He
informed her. “Shall I then constantly call you
Arthur?” said she. “Call me Arthur, or by what
name you choose,” he replied; “or why not by the
more affectionate name of brother? Providence
has levelled the barriers between us, only to enable
me to offer the devoted and affectionate services of
a humble brother, who will be ready to serve you,
even unto death.” She smiled at his energetic proffers,
and held out her hand to him. “I will always,
then,” said she, “call you Arthur, or brother; and
I will believe you kind and considerate; and I will
trust implicitly in your honour.” Saying this, she
eagerly partook of the bread-fruit, which was indeed
delicious. He was obliged to caution her
against the immoderate indulgence of her appetite,
which was ravenous. She drank claret mixed with
water. The flush of convalescence suffused her pale
cheek, and began to beam again in her languid eye.

No words will be necessary, to explain the
mutual embarrassment of the novel position in
which these young people, so different in condition,
but so alike in the nobleness of their natures, were
thrown thus together, and their destinies, at least
for a time, so identified by the mysterious decree
of Providence. Each was reluctant to commence

[figure description] Page 125.[end figure description]

the explanations that were so indispensably necessary.
One day and another elapsed; and still,
while she slept, he made all the necessary arrangements,
touching their mutual wants. She, meanwhile,
convalesced rapidly. The blood revisited
her cheek, and strength and agility her frame.
Nor could the assiduous and tender attentions, and
the considerate and guarded delicacy of her nurse,
fail to excite her gratitude; nor to call up strongly
the associated feelings.

The extreme inconveniences of their mutual
position under the covert of a tree, and confined to
a narrow awning, hastily and rudely constructed,
was apparent to both. The air was damp; and
nothing but the continuance of a clear sky, and
pleasant weather, could have ensured her convalescence
in that place at all. The aspect of the
sky became threatening. An explanation was necessary.
It began with the young lady. It was
long and confidential. Gratitude, pride of birth,
maidenly modesty, and the union and opposition of
various feelings, that may be much more easily
conceived than explained, were freely avowed in
her case. Her preserver was instructed, that he
must never for a moment forget, that the barriers,
which had formerly interposed between them, still
existed. He was to believe, that she viewed him
with sentiments of inexpressible gratitude; that she
had an entire reliance upon his honour and good
principles; that she felt herself charged upon him,
as a helpless being, who would increase his burdens,

[figure description] Page 126.[end figure description]

without being able to share his labours; who must
be under daily and hourly obligations, in addition
to the preservation of her life, and yet who saw no
prospect of ever being able to make any adequate
return; who must cling to him, as she smilingly
said, like an evil conscience, through helplessness
and timidity; through not only the grounded terrors
of savages and wild beasts, but even the ideal
terrors of loneliness and darkness, and a defective
education; and yet, as a young man, he was never,
with the reasoning appropriate to vanity as such,
to view this unwillingness to be left alone, this desire
to share even his walks and his labours, with
any other interpretation, than that she was a useless,
timid, proud, and spoiled woman. Moreover,
he was to precede her, and fit up the inner apartment
of the grotto for her residence; and he was charged
and pledged, by whatever is sacred or honourable,
to keep guard in the exterior apartment.

Such were the injunctions of this beautiful young
girl, who felt all the delicacy and difficulty of imposing
such severe laws upon one, to whom she
felt, that she had been already indebted for life, and
whose whole future residence there, whether longer
or shorter, must be a continual and hourly recurrence
of obligations. The contract on the other
part was prompt, explicit, and complete. He assured
her, that she should be convinced, that the
most scrupulous and gentlemanly honour could
exist in conditions, where she had not dreamed
that it was ever found. He begged her to measure

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the respectable young men, in the middle conditions,
in his country, by his honour, tact, and delicacy in
fulfilling all the stipulations which she had imposed;
and to think better of the middle walks of
life, and of human nature, as he proved himself intelligent
to comprehend, and faithful to discharge,
all the duties of this relation so strangely imposed.

It was engaged, then, that on the fourth day of
her convalescence, that is to say, the morning subsequent
to this conversation, he should start immediately
after their morning meal, to prepare the
grotto for her reception. The distance was nearly
five miles. He was to return in season to enable
her, in the cool of the declining afternoon, to accompany
him to her new habitation. The morning
came. The breakfast was prepared before the
rising of the sun. Her eye filled with tears, and
the paleness of apprehension was on her countenance,
as she held out her hand to him and wished
him a pleasant day, and above all, to return early
in the afternoon to his lonely charge.

It may be imagined that, to a timid and helpless
maiden, her prospects were sufficiently sad, in reference
to spending this day thus by herself. He,
on his part, hurried away to duties, which, he felt,
required a week, instead of a part of a single day.
From the larger box, he carried linen and other
articles, as much as his strength would enable him
to bear. He came a second time, for a second
load of the same articles. He gathered long moss
from trees, near the grotto. He spread a couch,

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not only comfortable, but, remembering the occupant,
it was even splendid; for the moss was
covered with linen of the whiteness of snow, and
the whole was overspread with damask, intended
for the furniture of a mansion at New Holland.
Palm branches, in all the freshness and splendour
of their verdure, were hung round the variegated
and lofty walls of the grotto; and wreaths of flowers
were suspended, wherever the eye could turn. The
floor was strown with flowers; and even the basalt
pillars, of living stone, that were to serve as chairs
and tables, were covered and cushioned with
flowers. There are few, who cannot readily enter
into the motive, which caused him thus to task his
invention, and apply all his industry and powers,
to render this magnificent grotto a pleasing abode
to the ill fated maiden, whose pride had been so
strangely humbled, and who had so little ground to
hope, in that desert island, to find an abode, not
only commodious, but fitted up with reference even
to magnificence and beauty.

At the assigned hour he returned to his charge,
who appeared to make efforts to disguise the manifest
pleasure which overspread her countenance at
his return. The day had been sultry, and it was
obvious, from his countenance, that he had laboured
severely. While she complimented him for his
punctuality in the observance of the hour, she found
occasion to blame him for his appearance of being
fatigued, and having evidently tasked his exertions
too far. They partook of their rustic fare together.

[figure description] Page 129.[end figure description]

She praised the delicious flavour of the bread-fruit,
while he spoke cheeringly of the comforts of their
table, and of their evenings, when fire should add
the varieties of flesh, fish, and fowl to their food,
and light to their grotto. She spake, in turn, with
admiration of the charming tropical landscape
spread around, and her heart manifestly opened to
joy, with the feelings natural to the sunguine character
of youth, the elastic freshness of a happy
consciousness of existence, and the increased susceptibility
of pleasure, which ordinarily accompanies
the first day of convalescence from acute disease.

He admonished her that it was time they were on
their way. While he struck the tent, and laid the
canvass, and all the articles which he did not now
take to the grotto, carefully by for future use, she
had wandered to the spring, and all those well remembered
places, where, in the first desolation of
her being cast on shore, she had travelled about in
faintness, terror, and despair. When she returned,
her glistening eyes had evidently been filled with
the tears of remembrance and thankfulness.

Her guide carefully led her away from the shore,
where she could only encounter sights of horror.
The day had been sultry; but fleecy clouds now
tempered the glow of the declining sun, and a
fresh and balmy breeze whispered from the east.
Birds, and animals, and refreshed nature, all gave
sign that they felt the change and the deliciousness
of the hour. Hares of variegated colours every
moment moved from their path. Scarlet pigeons

[figure description] Page 130.[end figure description]

fluttered on the trees. Paroquets flew from palm
to palm, in the splendour of their green and gold.
Flamingos sailed away through the air, leaving
the appearance of a long gleam of flame behind
them. The prodigious hairy bustards were conducting
their flocks of young through the grass.
Squirrels of surprising beauty and variety sported
among the branches. Here and there a solitary
kangaroo, stalking erect, and uttering its plaintive
cry, at first alarmed her, until she was apprised of its
timid and harmless character, when its prodigious
springs and its uncouth form afforded sufficient
scope to her curiosity. She was in admiration at
the freshness and grandeur of the scene. Never had
she conceived before the richness and magnificence
of nature in these regions of the south. She had
hitherto lived amidst factitious luxury, and the forced
and unnatural creations of art. Pride, plied with
indulgence, and pampered by wealth, had perverted,
but not destroyed, the feelings of a rich and noble
mind. All the peculiar circumstances of her case
contributed to develope a new nature; and amidst
this creation of genuine natural grandeur and
beauty, to place her in the very bowers of imagination
and poesy. Her delight was pictured on her
countenance. Her admiration was too deep and
genuine to waste itself in words.

From the box he loaded himself with such articles
as were yet requisite to complete the new establishment.
Wine was deemed necessary for the convalescent.
She, on her part, seeing him overloading

[figure description] Page 131.[end figure description]

himself, and already fatigued, gaily insisted upon
sharing the burdens. To all his anxiety lest the
walk should fatigue her and renew her sickness, and
to all his remonstrances against her charging herself
with carrying any part, she answered, that she
never felt herself in more perfect health, and that
she hoped ere long to prove to him, preposterously
as she had been reared for such expectations, that
she did not intend to be entirely a useless burden on
his hands.

They passed the bread-fruit tree. He explained
to her its value. Both saw, with regret, that the
supply was almost exhausted; and, as usual, that
birds were preying upon the remainder. As much
of this fruit as they could carry was added to their
burden, and to alleviate the pain of seeing the
failure of this supply so near, he reminded her of
the inexhaustible store of food in their treasures
“hid in the sand.” He assured her that he would
soon have fire, and then that their future fare would
be various and abundant, and that, in probability,
more trees of the same kind would be discovered.

The little lake, as usual, teemed with waterfowls,
of a number, variety, and gaudiness of plumage,
to mock all description. All the customary
varieties of animals played round its margin, as if
admiring its pellucid waters, and the freshness of
its shore. Both gazed with unsated delight upon
the myriads of fishes, of all sizes, forms, and tinges
of brilliant colouring, that were sporting in its
transparent depths. Every succeeding step opened

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new views of freshness and beauty, and the fair
convalescent felt and expressed the admiration of a
poet amidst these primeval scenes of novelty and
enchantment. “Oh!” said she, “one thing is yet
wanting. Were my dear father here, and could he
content himself with this bland air, and this beautiful
nature, I should want nothing more to spend
the remainder of my days in this charming retreat.

When they reached the grotto, the sun had almost
disappeared behind the trees. She was fatigued,
and rejoiced to have reached the end of her
walk by the light of the sun. Her guide aided her
up the steps, to the flowering terrace. She paused
a moment, in admiration of the mixed views of
mountains, woods, verdure, sky and sea, and entered
the magnificent grotto, holding to the hand
of her guide. Here was new cause for admiration
and astonishment. It needed, she said, but torch
light, to be a magnificent saloon, and she gaily
chided him for having selected the most beautiful
apartment for himself, being convinced, as she
said, that he could not show her another division
of the grotto, equally commodious and magnificent.
But when she followed him through the narrow
division, removing from the passage palm branches
wreathed with flowers composing a door of fragrace
and verdure, into the interior compartment,
now gilded with the last rays of the sun, pouring
their oblique effulgence from the summits of the
trees; when she looked round upon the polished
sides of the grotto, hung with beautiful branches

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and flowers; upon the huge green and purple basalt
columns, springing up to the arched roof; when
she saw a couch spread for her, covered with
damask; when she saw the basin of cool waters,
and heard the gentle murmur of the fall of their
overflow in a corner; when she sat down upon a
seat, spread over a prostrate pillar with moss and
flowers, and saw her evening repast spread before
her on a basalt table, whose shining surface and
peach-blow hue were gilded with the last rays of
the sun, she held up her hands in astonishment.
“My brother,” said she, “you have indeed brought
me to the halls of the genii. Why, kings have no
grandeur like this! All this looks like magic, and
the effect of supernatural aid.” And, while she
thanked him for his kindness, and his care of her,
and congratulated him on his good fortune in finding
this astonishing retreat, and his labour and
taste in fitting it up, she assured him, that she was
not the insensible, or ungrateful character, not to
wish to aid him, not to strive to be cheerful, and to
enliven the solitude with all the patience, and resignation
to her lot, which her stinted discipline and
philosophy would allow her to command.

They took their repast together. The eyes of
both were heavy with weariness. With a look
that reminded her of his remembrance of their
pledged covenant, he wished her a good night, removed
the palm branches, and retired to the exterior
division of the grotto.

CHAPTER III.

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Whoever has read the delightful romance of
Robinson Crusoe, can more readily imagine the
thoughts, and occupations, and pursuits of this
young and solitary pair, a kind of Adam and Eve,
in these charming solitudes. What was so delightfully
imagined in that book, was here carried into
practical operation. Innumerable arrangements
for comfort and convenience were dictated by their
daily wants. To get home every thing of value
from the boxes, was the work of three or four days.
This was deemed an employment of more importance,
than even the journey over the mountains for
fire. The dead cast on the shore, he felt to be a
solemn, though a painful duty, to sink in the water.
The clothes, necessary for his own apparel, and for
hers, hard necessity compelled him to lay by for
emergency and for future use. Much, which the
habits of his fair companion would have required
in another society, and another order of things—
such as laces, splendid dresses, and female ornaments—
was found in the larger box, and delivered

[figure description] Page 135.[end figure description]

over to her. It was a painful privation, when their
bread-fruit entirely failed. Its delicious flavour and
nutritive qualities, rendered it pleasant to the one,
and almost necessary to the other. Actual necessity
is a powerful teacher. To her this breakfast
of uncooked oysters, and spoiled and pulverized
bread, was hard and unsavoury fare. But, though
her countenance evinced that she felt the unpleasantness
of the necessity, this food would sustain
life. After a few trials, it even became a matter
of jesting between them, which should partake of
this unpalatable bread with the least repugnance;
the young man, always accustomed to plain and
humble fare, or the spoiled beauty, used to all the
luxuries and indulgences of wealth. But the more
gaily she sustained these privations, the more anxious
was he to obtain fire, and with it light for the
evening in the grotto, and the means of using animal
food. A thousand comforts could be had from
that source, which could come from no other. Of
course the journey over the mountains, with a view
to obtain the volcanic fire, was a project set for the
experiment of an early day.

Prior, however, in order of importance even to
that project, he deemed the necessity of examining
the hulk of the Australasia, which, when he left
the tent where he found and saved his companion,
was still remaining wedged in between the rocks.
To swim through the breakers to the wreck, the
only means of arriving there, was an arduous task,
and not without danger. There were, probably, a

[figure description] Page 136.[end figure description]

mass of bodies of the drowned; and he thought it
not unlikely, that of the father of his companion.
But there were a thousand things, which he hoped
to obtain, of prime and indispensible importance
to his comfort and security. Then, he expected he
might obtain guns and gunpowder, and the means
of furnishing that fire, which was so much sought,
and so necessary to their comfort and sustenance.

But his fair companion soon taught him, that
we may change our climate and our sky, and experience
the most complete reverses, and be placed
in the most humiliating positions, without changing
the mind, the habits, and dispositions. For a few
of the first days of their residence together, the
beauties of the scenery, the novelty of their situation,
and the variety of their occupations filled her
desires, and rendered her cheerful and happy. She
accompanied him on his necessary excursions,
chatted cheerfully of the past, related all that she
had seen in the gay circles in which she had formerly
acted so important a part, and evidently
manifested chagrin, that her companion could relate
her no corresponding narratives of interest in kind.
The grandeur of the scenery soon palled upon her
eye. She wearied of their unsavoury food, and
repined most of all at the Egyptian darkness of
their nights. Night had long been to her the scene
of show, splendour, and all the artificial excitement
of the high circles in which she had mixed. The
enjoyment had passed, but the craving of habit
remained. Though enjoined to leave her part of

[figure description] Page 137.[end figure description]

the grotto, immediately upon the departure of the
sun, she apparently felt not sufficiently thankful,
that he was punctual to his part of the contract, to
the very letter. She explained to him, not without
blushing and tears, that she could not endure the
hopeless and silent gloom of the long evenings, and
that she saw no reason of decorum or duty, that forbade
their passing the hours, until the time of their
retirement, together. When he gaily remarked, that
this was an evil of easy and certain remedy, she
seemed to suffer, on the other hand, from the apprehension,
that he would consider this complaint
the result of rudeness, or undue condescension.

As the day after this conversation was assigned
for the projeet of going on board the wreck, and
as she had questioned him on the subject, until he
had confessed, that he considered the effort not
without hazard; with the authority of her former
days, she positively forbade the attempt, and told
him, that she would cheerfully accompany him on
his expedition up the mountain for fire. To this he
objected the extreme fatigue, and the difficulty
which she would experience, in clambering up such
steep and dangerous precipices, as composed the
ascent of those precipitous elevations. In reply
to this she objected to his frequent and long absences,
under the name and pretence of business,
declaring, that any conceivable danger and toil
were preferable to the heart-wearing dreariness of
her condition, when left alone. The conversation
ended in chiding complaints and tears. She

[figure description] Page 138.[end figure description]

requested him, in marked vexation—although the customary
hour of his retirement had not come—to
leave her division of the grotto.

The next morning he determined to make the
experiment of a visit to the hulk of the ship. Accordingly,
having left her breakfast in readiness,
he departed by early dawn for the western cove.
He judged the rocks, on which the wreck was cast,
to be three hundred paces from the shore. He left
his coat and hat on the shore, bound his head with
a handkerchief, and committed himself fearlessly to
the water. It was a calm morning, and the sea
was as a mirror. He found no difficulty in reaching
the wreck. He clambered up the rocks, upon
which it was raised many feet above the level of
the calm sea, and entered it with shuddering. The
hulk of the ship was almost entire. After it had
capsized, as has been related, appearances were,
that it drifted on the mountainous sea to these
rocks, near which it must have been, when that
event took place. It must have been borne on the
mountain-billows between the two rocks, which held
it fast. The storm subsided soon afterwards, and
left it raised high above the ordinary level of the
sea. When the surface of the sea became calm,
the water drained from the ship, leaving it perfectly
dry. It seemed to have been washed a second time
by the spray on the night of the thunder storm,
which has been described. A few bodies only were
found in the hulk. The cattle and sheep, he remembered,
had been cast adrift at the

[figure description] Page 139.[end figure description]

commencement of the storm. Most of the people, that had
not taken to the boats, appeared to have perished
in the surf, in attempting to reach the shore. The
spectacle, as it was, affected him with sickness and
horror. Every thing, that had not been washed
away by the waves, remained, as it had been left.
There was every thing on board, that he could
have desired,—furniture, beds, clothing; articles of
show and luxury for the opulent colonists, among
which articles were the whole of the very expensive
preparations of Mr. Wellman, for a residence in
New Holland. There was merchandize for the
merchants at Port Jackson; and there were implements
of every sort, for commencing forming establishments,
which he valued highest of all. Most
of these articles were packed in water-proof enclosures.
The hulk had so soon parted with its water,
through the fissures, made when the ship struck on
the rocks, that none of the articles were much damaged
by the sea.

The first reflection was an obvious one. How
valueless was all this wealth and luxury to those
unfortunates, whose bodies were stretched before
him! How invaluable would they be to him, if he
were destined to spend his days on the island! The
unpleasant reflection immediately followed, that
the hulk was distant five miles from his grotto—
that between it and the shore was a surf, in times of
the slightest commotion of the sea, impassable—
and even were the articles all landed, it would be
the work of a year, to convey such of them as he

[figure description] Page 140.[end figure description]

needed, by hand to his grotto. Another unpleasant
reflection, naturally associated with this, and it was,
that the first severe storm would probably carry
away the hulk, and bury all these invaluable treasures
in the deep.

His first duty was, to commit all the bodies to
the waves. His next, to imagine some expedient,
by which he could convey to the shore two or three
muskets, a quantity of gun powder, flints and steels,
and all the necessary apparatus for kindling, and
renewing fire. To construct a skiff, would be a
work of time. To remain on board over night,
would be to inflict the most cruel apprehensions
upon the companion of his solitude. A raft, large,
strong and convenient, such as he could manage
with a sail, and of materials to live upon the water
by their own buoyancy, this was his first and most
obvious thought. No time was to be lost. He
was strong, active, and expert in the use of tools.
There was every thing at hand, requisite for the
construction which he meditated. He let down by
levers four spare spars, spiked them strongly together,
and overlaid them with plank. This was
accomplished by noon. A number of muskets, a
small but complete assortment of farmer's tools, a
set of carpenter's implements, two boxes of clothing,
cloths, and articles of luxury, intended for his companion;
a box of books and stationary, a barrel of
gunpowder, and two or three barrels of the ship's
stores, let down on to the platform by a tackle, formed
the first load. A thousand things were suggested

[figure description] Page 141.[end figure description]

to his memory, as necessary or useful. But he
reflected, that the more he loaded his raft, the
deeper it would sink, and the more unmanageable
it would become, and the less probability there
would be of his reaching the eastern cove, distant
five miles, by the light of the sun. The whole was
ready by two in the afternoon. He erected a sail
in the centre, and prepared a sweep, in the form of
a rudder, behind; took advantage of a whispering
western breeze; looked up to the sky for success;
unloosed the fast, by which his raft was connected
to the hulk; and sped away before the wind. He
was at once assured, that his rudder commanded
the direction of his frail craft; but to him, whose
anxiety for her whom he had left behind, caused
him to wish for the wings of the wind, the progress
was vexatiously slow. He was well aware,
too, that the slightest storm would instantly shake
his raft in sunder. It may be supposed, therefore,
that he watched the clouds with trembling apprehension,
and that an hour seemed to him, in the
measure of time, as a day. Providence had destined
him a safe arrival. The sun, indeed, was
behind the western mountains, just as he neared the
two projecting cliffs, between which was the cove.
The wind and the current were both in his favour.
He happily calculated the medial distance, and
entered safely; and in a few minutes, with a heart
palpitating with joy and triumph, completed his
hazardous experiment, by laying his raft beside the
shore. To fasten his raft, and to place all his

[figure description] Page 142.[end figure description]

treasures on the shore, were but labours of a moment.
Such was his impatience to reach the grotto, that,
fatigued as he was, by such great exertions through
the day, he sprang away with only implements for
kindling fire, and food of the ship's stores, together
with coffee and sugar, to prepare a supper of such
a comparatively sumptuous kind, as his new resources
allowed; and with quick step, he eagerly
pressed on with his load for the grotto.

The dusk of twilight, enabled him to discover
his companion standing on the terrace. “Courage,”
he cried, “my sister. I have brought you fire,
food, comforts, light for your evenings, and books
for your solitude.” It was with difficulty, that he
laboured up the steps with his heavy load. She
held out her hand to him, and said, “I suppose I
must welcome you, though you have manifested
the cruelty to leave me unwarned, and with only
grounds to suppose, that you had found means to
escape from the island, and leave me to perish
alone.” As she said this, the resentment which she
seemed to have striven to keep up, in aid of pride
and firmness, failed her, and she burst into an
agony of tears.

This, it is true, was a damping reception after
an absence of so much hazard, and an adventure
of such complete success. He felt, that he had
been in fault, for allowing a momentary resentment
of the preceding evening to sway him to
venture on this absence, without forewarning her
of his purpose. He confessed his fault, and asked

[figure description] Page 143.[end figure description]

her pardon, assuring her at the same time, that one
inducement to attempt the adventure without forewarning
her, was, that she had absolutely forbidden
it; and that he was reluctant to enter on a project,
however indispensable, which she not only disavowed,
but forbade. “But I have accomplished
it,” said he, “and with the most complete success.
Hence forward,” he continued, “my sister, if you
will allow your humble friend to use that affectionate
title, you can have all the comforts of
civilization. You can concentrate your thoughts
in reading and study, and have every thing but
society. The Almighty is my witness, that you
shall never be reminded by me, that you are not
skreened by the sanctity of a mother's protection.
All I ask of you is, to trust me. I have convinced
myself, that your father is not among those who
perished. When the boats were taken in the last
extremity, the shore was near. It is possible, it is
even probable, that your father may be on this
island. Or, more probably, they landed here,
waited until the storm abated, and then departed in
the long boat for New Holland, which cannot be
far distant. Courage, then, my fair and unhappy
sister. I have been reared both modestly and religiously.
You shall find me a chevalier Bayard,
without reproach at least, if not without fear. All
I desire, is your entire confidence. That I can
hope to win only by time; and I will so conduct,
with such scrupulous regard to honour and duty,
that I will compel you to grant me that in the end.”

[figure description] Page 144.[end figure description]

To this speech, if such it may be called, the first
he had made, and which was now extorted from
him in the joy of his success in the hazardous adventure
of the day, she replied by drawing herself
up, and assuming the indignant air of a proud and
injured belle. “This is fine, Mr. Steward,” said
she, “very fine. You have been among the Houri
to-day, I should suppose, and possibly you have
made free with nectar on ship board. I have no
fears on the score, to which you have with so much
gallantry, alluded. I have already given you full
credit, either for honour or insensibility. But, I
put it to your humanity, sir, to inform me, how,
with all your capacity for making such a speech
as you have just done me the honour of addressing
to me, and proffering such a show of exceeding
sentimentality, I ask, how you could reconcile it to
your humanity, to go off this morning, without
giving me notice of your intended purpose? What,
think you, must have been the colour of my
thoughts, through this long day? I do not doubt,
sir, that you carry courage to the point of rashness.
You are the first person, whom I have ever known
before, uniting courage with cruelty. You found
me, you will say, and saved my life. I grant you
so. But a thousand times would I rather have
perished with you on your raft, than have been left
in this great and splendid sepulchre, to die a long
and living death. I have only one more remark,
sir. If you mean to leave me alone again, unwarned,
kill me, sir, before you depart. I can but

[figure description] Page 145.[end figure description]

add the homely, but strong adage, `poor company
is better than none.' ”

He could not fail to remark, amidst this apparent
irony, anger, and seeming grief and resentment,
that kind feelings, forgiveness, and even triumph
and joy, were in her countenance. Such language,
too, it must be admitted, came with a better grace
from a young and beautiful woman, in the conscious
charms of loveliness of form and countenance,
and graceful indignation, and in the grief and helplessness
of her peculiar condition, than it would
have had in different circumstances. He received it
with apparent complacence; and gaily replied, that
he would hope that happier hours would bring
happier dispositions, and that he was exhausted
with fatigue and hunger, and must prepare supper
for himself. He hoped, however, that she would
manifest her magnanimity and forgiveness, by
sharing it with him.

So saying, he descended, and soon returned
with fuel, which he placed in his hearth. Next
candles and candlesticks were produced. The fire
flickered and blazed brightly on the hearth. Candles
were lighted, and placed in both divisions of
the grotto. The gorgeousness and splendour of
these grand basaltic apartments, when thus brilliantly
illuminated, creating in a moment an enchanted
palace, may be imagined, but cannot be
described. The brilliance, the inspiring cheerfulness,
the imposing effect of the spectacle, was irresistible.
It reminded her of the fetes of London.

[figure description] Page 146.[end figure description]

Nothing but the society and the music were wanting.
The revulsion, the transition, in inspiring
joy and cheerfulness, banished gloom, and chagrin,
and ill-feeling, if any remained. She held out her
hand. “You have behaved badly, my brother,”
she said; “but I must forgive you, in consequence
of the benefits you have procured us. Promise me
only that you will never undertake another enterprise
without forewarning me, and allowing me to
share it with you, if I choose, and I will immediately
show you that I am not altogether a useless
being in existence. I am not much used, you must
suppose, to the duties of the kitchen; but I will be
your housekeeper. You shall see how comfortably
I will arrange every thing that belongs to the interior
of your establishment. Indeed,” she added,
looking up to the lofty vaulted summit of the grotto,
which was kindled with all the colours of the bow,
“we want nothing but two or three fine young
ladies and gentlemen to have a party.”

Rejoiced to see her more cheerful than he had
yet seen her, and glad to remark the departure of
gloom and resentment from her countenance, he
admonished her, that provisions and coffee might
be prepared, and that it was only necessary to
bring the requisite vessels from the shore. They
descended together to the shore. The necessary
vessels were selected and carried to the grotto. He
was amused and delighted with the grace and
promptness with which, for the first time probably
in her life, she put herself to the duties of the kitchen.

[figure description] Page 147.[end figure description]

It was cause for mutual jest and mirth between
them, to compare their comparative cleverness in
this new occupation to both.

But cheerfulness and mutual emulation were
successful. The coffee was parched and ground.
Pickled tongues and fresh oysters were produced.
Sweet and undamaged bread and butter were found
among the stores. Claret and water were at hand.
They were seated at a table, which would have
been comfortable under any circumstances; and it
needed little effect of imagination and contrast to
render it delicious here. He remarked, that he
had now the means of taking and domesticating
whatsoever animals or birds they should choose,
either for use or beauty; and that with a musquet,
and with hooks and lines, there could be henceforward
no want of food. She added, in a tone of
cheerful sincerity, that it would now be delightful
to explore the charming country about them for
the delicious bread-fruit. She concluded by saying,
that all she required, in reference to future visits to
the wreck was, that she might be allowed to accompany
him on the raft. This, she remarked, would
hinder him from attempting the voyage when the
weather was not safe; or, if danger occurred, would
expose them, as she earnestly desired it might be,
to perish together. Assured on this point, they
conversed long and cheerfully together, on a thousand
points of discussion, as interesting and pleasant
to them as they would be useless and tedious
in the detail to any but them.

[figure description] Page 148.[end figure description]

A couple of days ensued, in which the wind was
adverse to sailing the raft to the wreck, and in these
days they made excursions in the beautiful solitudes
that surrounded the grotto. Nature every where
speaks one language to the young, innocent, and
happy. She forgot her pride in the midst of these
flowering lawns, and gave up her heart to the joy
of health, and the beauty of nature and the animal
creation about her. It was evident, indeed, that
the pride which had been fostered by long habits
of luxury and indulgence, was only humbled, not
crushed nor subdued. It was evident, that amidst
these solitudes, feelings and thoughts natural in the
regions where they were inspired, but preposterous
here, arose every moment in her bosom. But,
during these days, in the first indulgence of comfortable
food, books, and the cheerfulness of fire,
and lighted apartments in the long tropical evenings,
she was all animation, gaiety, kindness, and
good will. She tripped by his side, with the fresh
vivacity, and in the splendour of beauty of the gay
birds that flitted about her. She gathered the flowers,
and admired their novelty, hues, and fragrance. She
never tired, in watching the beauty of the skipping
animals, that frolicked in their view. She admired
the verdure and prodigious foliage of the grand
palms. Every new tree, bush, or flowering shrub,
was an object either of curiosity or pleasure. Her
eye kindle with the genuine poetic fire, in view of
the black mountains, pouring their columns of volcanic
smoke from their cloud-enveloped summits,

[figure description] Page 149.[end figure description]

in spiral columns. The lovely lake, which they
visited, drew from her again exclamations of delight;
and she remarked, that its shores must be
the home of dryads and nymphs. While she was
thus happy, nature took the form and colouring of
her own thoughts and feelings; and every thing
was seen invested with the hues of the rainbow, and
showed as good and fair as she felt joyful.

It was not the least of his trials, to be thus placed
in relation to a woman so lovely, so graceful, so
highly educated, so capable of all that interests
the susceptible heart, or fills the youthful eye. The
peculiar duties of a relation, so without parallel,
was neither misunderstood or forgotten for a moment.
But to observe those duties scrupulously,
in thought, in word, in look, in action, and never
for an instant to overlook them, was not rendered
less difficult or trying, by remarking, what even
humility itself could not overlook, that consideration,
deference, and almost attentive kindness,
marked her deportment towards him, during the
happy rambles of these two days. The groves of
Eden, before sin had saddened them, were scarcely
more fresh. The seftness of the air, and the aspect
of the delightful scenery, were inspiring. The
young solitary felt, that these delicious hours might
end in disappointment. On the second day, they
had wandered so far, that she complained of fatigue,
and expressed a desire to repose in the shade. It
appeared that they were nearly opposite the chief
volcanic crater; for prodigious masses of smoke,

[figure description] Page 150.[end figure description]

like the burst from a whole park of artillery, fired
at once, arose from the summit. From the shade
where they sat, they mutually admired the magnificence
and sublimity of the prospect that was spread
before them, which commanded extensive portions
of the lawn upon either hand, fine views of the
peaks of the mountains, and a boundless prospect
of the broad sea, in some points of view rippling
in blue, and in others purpled with the richness of
the radiance of the declining sun. Here they reposed,
in silent admiration, for half an hour. They
then resumed their way home. In approaching it,
by a new route, they walked near the margin of
one of those prodigious basins, known by the name
“sink holes.” It appeared to include an extent of
a couple of acres, was as regular in its concavity
as a basin, with a depth, perhaps, of eighty feet.
At the bottom, as generally happens in these singular
cavities, gurgled a spring, which was encircled
with palmettos, and the tropical shrubs that delight
in a wet soil. His companion admired it
from above, and fancied that she discerned bread-fruit.
He instantly scrambled down its steep declivity,
and to his unspeakable satisfaction, discovered
not only one, but a cluster of bread-fruit
trees, loaded with fruit, and in a situation so peculiar
and secluded, or looking so suspicious to the
birds that prey on it, that not a fruit seemed to
have been touched. The supply was ample, and it
was situated but a moderate distance from the grotto.

As he came up with his hands loaded, and gave

[figure description] Page 151.[end figure description]

her the fruit, and related the chances of an easy
and constant supply, it seemed a circumstance of
peculiar gratification to her, that she had made the
discovery, and had proved that she was not wholly
useless, and that she sometimes brought good fortune.
Feeding upon this fruit had raised her from
her sickness. Her fondness for it, was probably
increased by association. “My dear brother,”
said she, “this is fortunate indeed. You know not
how much I admire this delicious fruit. What a
delightful abode would this island be, if my father
were only here!” This naturally led him to renewed
assurances of the means that he should now
possess, to build a boat that might carry them from
the island, and that he purposed to make that one
of his earliest efforts, in which he would either succeed,
or perish.

They returned, refreshed and delighted, to the
grotto. The cheerful fire blazed. The coffee was
prepared, and she seemed to manifest no offence,
when he compared her bustling round, in preparing
the arrangements for supper, to Eucharis in the cave
of Calypso. After this supper, prepared by themselves,
and for themselves, and which circumstances
rendered so exhilarating, a long and interesting conversation
ensued. The full and unrestrained disclosure
of the powers of her mind, showed it to be
of great vigour, compass, and richness; with dispositions
naturally good and amiable, and a heart
formed to admire, and practise excellence; but
spoiled by mismanagement, pride, and indulgence.

[figure description] Page 152.[end figure description]

This she confessed, and lamented with great frankness.
She entered into the history of her past life,
and ran through the names, as of a muster-roll, of
those who had composed the splendid circles, where
she had so recently shone preeminent. The want
of keeping of such remembrances, with all that now
belonged to her condition, struck her in its proper
light. At the same time, she confessed, that she
constantly resisted the inclination to converse
about these gone by scenes. She lamented the influence
of the views and habits of her former career;
admitted that she had been reared without energy,
or capacity for any useful pursuit or employment;
and that she had been trained only to dazzle others,
and gratify her own pride and vanity. She continued,
“in a healthy, and virtuous, and educated
woman of your own condition, and your own
country, you would have, Oh! what a treasure!
What have you,” she added, blushing deeply,
“what have you in me? A proud, spoiled, useless,
vain, capricious, and flattered thing, once called a
beauty. But, indeed,” she continued, “I will attempt
to reform. I will remember, that I am here
in the furnace. Aid me, my dear brother; for in
whatever condition you have been born, I well understand,
that you are both wiser and better than
myself; aid me, that I may come forth, as gold.”
To suppose, that after such a conversation, held
under such circumstances, he would not reply in a
manner somewhat corresponding, would be to suppose
him more or less than man. Indeed, he was

[figure description] Page 153.[end figure description]

proceeding in a strain, which reason and conscience,
and his rules, so rigidly prescribed by and for himself,
interdicted. He felt his danger and came to a
firm pause.

While they were engaged in this conversation,
which he felt ought not to be continued, they were interrupted
by the alarming and terrible phenomenon
of a volcanic eruption. The craters, as has been
remarked, were on the other side of the mountains;
and they could see the volume of ignited and
flaming lava, projected with the inconceivable
omnipotence of that Power, that we absurdly denominate
nature, into the higher regions. Feeble
efforts to paint the awfulness and sublimity of this
scene by words, would be thrown away. The
island rocked to its centre. Vivid lightning, followed
by tremendous peals of thunder, darted from
the dark crimson column of ascending lava. The
island, and the illimitable extent of the surrounding
sea, and the dark bosom of night received a lurid
and portentous crimson colouring, from the immense
mass of flaming matter, thrown up by this
incalculable force. The crimson column produced
an awful shadowing in the sea, as the scorching
volume rolled into its depths, the effect of which,
no pencil or words could reach. They both fled
to the open area in front of the grotto; and she,
with the paleness of death in her countenance, held
fast to his arm. In a few minutes the eruption
ceased; but the hollow roar of the ocean, continued
to evince, that the action of these central fires

[figure description] Page 154.[end figure description]

deeply agitated its heaving bosom. It was not
until the eruption had ceased for half an hour, that
she became assured, that the final catastrophe of
nature had not come.

The solemn train of thoughts, that ensued on
their return to the grotto, naturally introduced a
conversation upon the subject of religion. Her
heart was manifestly softened and penitent. It was
deep and affecting on both sides. Each expressed
the hope, that the peculiar discipline, trials, and
burdens, which Providence had imposed on them,
might prove salutary; and that, isolated, and
lonely, as they were, they might hold communion
with God, and endure all that was before them, as
they ought. The Bible was produced, from which
he read the beautiful hundred and fourth psalm;
and from the Episcopal service, which was that in
which she had been reared, he read a prayer and a
collect, suitable to the occasion. She joined her
sweet voice to his in an evening hymn; and whenever
the day terminated happily, and in good and
cheerful feelings on her part, this was his invariable
custom, before he retired to rest. The night passed
without any renewal of the terrific phenomena of
renewed eruption, though she shrieked at midnight
from ideal terrors in a dream, that the eruption was
renewed. Her cries instantly brought him to her
side. She became calm and assured, as she realized,
that she had only been dreaming.

In the morning, the wind was fair to sail again
to the wreck. Much that was there, would be

[figure description] Page 155.[end figure description]

essential to their mutual comfort on the island. To
save the planks, the iron, the cordage, the tools
and implements, would be necessary for the construction
of the boat, which he contemplated. The
beds were important for their mutual necessities.
The cloth would be required for a thousand uses,
that time would develope. A dispute ensued,
managed on her part not without bitterness. She
insisted, that they had already all that was necessary
for comfort and subsistence; that life, as it
was, had too many enjoyments to put at hazard,
on such a dangerous voyage; that if he had had
the fortune to perform it once in safety, there was
no sure ground to calculate thence, that it would
always be so, and that at any rate, existence there
alone, would be absolutely insupportable; and she
concluded by insisting upon sharing the voyage, if
he persisted in attempting it. When the question
bade fair to become too animated, at least on one
part, it was finally terminated by his postponing
the attempt, until he had built a skiff of the planks
already brought to land. He thought it scarcely
probable, that so sudden a gale could arise, as that
he might not be able to detach a skiff from the raft,
and row safely through the little distance that interposed
between the course of the raft and the
shore.

The next morning, then, saw him on the shore,
employed as a ship carpenter, and her under a contiguous
shade, with her paper and writing materials
spread before her, on a plank, which he had

[figure description] Page 156.[end figure description]

prepared as a table. She occupied herself in reading,
or writing, or embroidering; and he was earnestly
and intently engaged in building a firm and safe
skiff. On the third day the skiff was completed.
The wind was still favourable; and, according to
the compact, they both took passage together in
the skiff, attached to the raft, which moved slowly
out of the little cove, and was soon speeding to the
wreck before the breeze. They reached it in safety.
It was of course a melancholy spectacle to her to
revisit the scene of her misfortunes. But, having
overcome the first shock, she was not only cheerful,
but useful; for while he was intently engaged in
labours, she was occupied in judging and selecting
the most important articles for removal. Enough
planks for the contemplated boat was by him considered
as lading of the most essential importance,
and he determined that the half of that and each
succeeding cargo should be planks. The loading
was completed. Beds, clothing, books, and articles
of use for his purposes, or of convenience or ornament
for her, were selected. The wind, which
blew from the west in the morning, regularly shifted
to the east in the evening. When this breeze had
risen, they hoisted their sail, the parties occupying
the attending skiff, and sailed pleasantly and safely
into the cove. The cargo was landed as before.
It would require the succeeding day to bestow the
cargo of that day in the grotto. They had now
the comfort of beds, and tables, and chairs, and ottomans,
and sofas, and various articles of the kind,

[figure description] Page 157.[end figure description]

which often drew sighs from their fair present possessor,
as she meditated for what different places and
uses they were intended. With propensities, which
circumstances may modify, but not obliterate from
the female mind, her apartment, as it may be called,
was fitted up in a style of luxury and splendour, in
keeping with her former habits and tastes, and its
natural magnificence. He aided her with delight
in suspending her crimson curtains, in looping her
festoons, and arranging the splendid drapery of her
bed; for the costly hanging ornaments and furniture
which were intended for a number of the most
opulent families in New Holland, had all been ordered
and freighted in this ill-fated ship; and the
parties remarked, that their apartments were of a
size to require furniture and fittings sufficient for
the supply of a colony.

When it came his turn to have his apartment
furnished, her taste was to bestow upon it a magnificence
similar to her own. He smiled, and resisted
so firmly, that it received no other additions
than the plain and simple arrangements required
by comfort, and in keeping with the light of the
place, and his condition and circumstances. But
when by the light of evening he contemplated the
taste, the splendour, and drapery of hers, he could
not but experience the dazzling and imposing effect.
To render it still more striking, she presided at
their supper in a dress of taste and richness. While
she sat in this huge apartment, brilliantly lighted,
in all the pride of youthful beauty, heightened in

[figure description] Page 158.[end figure description]

its effect by one of those rich dresses which had
been intended to grace her first entrance into society
in Port Jackson, she seemed to have felt the illusion
of her own contrivance, and to be looking
round for the entrance of the numerous circle and
the brilliant party that was to grace her saloon.

But a single companion sat with her at a table.
He was modest and humble; but he was in the
pride of high principles, of manly beauty, of
guarded decorum and respect, where all laws but
those of honour and principle were unavailing. He
had saved her life. On all occasions, she saw him
constraining his will, sacrificing his wishes, and
lavish of exertions, and of every exposure, for her
sake. It will not be strange to suppose, that the
arbitrary distinctions and modes of thinking in
society may have given place, for a time, to kinder
and more natural emotions towards him, than she
had yet avowed to him, or to herself.

All that need be added to the history of their successive
voyages to the wreck is, that the uniform land
and sea breeze favoured the morning and the return
trip; that they continued to repeat them, until every
thing of the wreck was brought to the landing of the
grotto, that the remotest prospective views of their
future wants could indicate, as necessary for any
of his projected purposes. Most of the plank, and
articles of value or use, that were within his power
to remove, had been brought safely to the landing,
when, as they were making their customary entrance
to the harbour, a sudden storm arose, which

[figure description] Page 159.[end figure description]

immediately separated the raft, merged its contents
in the deep, and compelled them to detach themselves
from it, and to reach the shore, as they might,
in their skiff. The succeeding night they heard
the storm pour, and the torrents roll from the mountains,
and the thunders burst, and the winds howl,
and the seas dash upon the shore, while their cheerful
fire gleamed within, and their coffee issued its grateful
fragrance; and they contrasted the security and shelter
of their mountain with their own chances, had
that storm arrested them by day; and their sympathy
was excited, as they thought of the poor desponding
mariners struggling with the brute and terrific force
of that devouring and uncontrolled element.

When the morning sun again shone upon the
ocean, the trees, and the sky, the storm had past,
and nothing remained of it but the balmy freshness
of the air, and the countless pearls that glittered on
the foliage and the grass. They travelled together to
the region of the wreck, and, as they had supposed,
it was all swept away. He could only congratulate
himself, that he had made the most diligent use of
his time, and had saved from it all that present appearances
indicated could ever come in use.

Henceforward he determined to allot his time,
and to bend his efforts to three distinct purposes.
First, to build a boat of sufficient size to authorize
an attempt to navigate the distance between this
island and New Holland, and thus enter upon his
pledged purpose, to convey her, if possible, to the
British settlements in those regions; and in the

[figure description] Page 160.[end figure description]

second place, to prepare his residence for the utmost
degree of defence and resistance, in case they should
be assailed by savages, either inhabitants of the
island, or such as might casually land there; to
domesticate animals and birds, at once for use and
convenience, and to add the cheerfulness of domesticated
life around their habitation; and lastly, to
explore the island by crossing the mountains, as he
would have preferred, but aiding her to scale them,
if she would not consent to his making the expedition
without her company.

The first, as the most important, occupied the
first place in their plans. A canopy was prepared
under a tent, pitched beneath a spacious palm, near
the proposed ship yard. Her writing desk, and
table, and chair were placed there. And she occupied
herself, as she might, in reading, in writing,
in walking under the palms, in dreaming upon the
past, or possibly in thinking about new ornaments
of dress; for she seemed to be as studious upon those
points, and as particular in that respect as she had
been in the days of her triumph in London. Occasionally
she observed her companion in solitude,
busily employed, from hour to hour, and from day
to day, in his wearying and protracted employment.
More than once, when she remarked him perplexed
and embarrassed, or weary, and covered with perspiration,
would she repair to him, wipe away the
sweat from his brow, and request him to desist from
his toil, assuring him that she was content and
happy as she was, and was not at all sure that she

[figure description] Page 161.[end figure description]

should ever consent to allow the voyage to be undertaken,
even should he succeed in the vexatious
business. When she saw no other way of detaching
him from a labour that evidently wore upon
him, she would take him away, by insisting that
he should join her in a walk in the shade.

For variety and amusement, they sometimes angled
in the beautiful little lake, or took short excursions
on the water in their skiff, and drew up the
different species of fish from the sea. The varieties
that were found to be of the highest flavour only
were selected, and the rest returned to their native
element. With the advantage of traps and cordage,
and with pit-falls, and in other methods, they
soon had, as prisoners on the terrace, pairs of all
the animals and birds, that either for beauty, or
utility, or singularity of form, or habit, they desired
to domesticate. It was a study, equally pleasant
to both, to observe their various instincts and
habits, to hear their different songs and cries, to
remark the effects of kindness and gentle treatment
upon each, according to its nature. It was an instructive
spectacle, to mark the effect of training
and example, and the tendency, which so many
birds and animals together felt, to wear off the
strong points of their characters, and to assimilate
to each other. Every animal and bird manifested
something of the propensities of the mocking bird,
to lay some part of its own habits aside, and assume
something of what appertained to the rest. It was
equally amusing and interesting to mark, that pride

[figure description] Page 162.[end figure description]

and vanity has a place in the irrational creation, as
well as in man. Another important axiom was
drawn from this interesting study, and that was,
that there is nothing that has life and sensation, so
wild and brutal, as not to be susceptible of the influence
of kindly treatment. It was a menagerie
and an aviary, that for variety of form, and splendour
of plumage, and wildness of note, and amusing
singularity of habit and action, could hardly
find a parallel in the collections of wealth and
power.

The fair Augusta was almoner to these prisoners,
and the spectacle was equally amusing and ludicrous,
to see how soon they recognised her power,
and felt her kindness, and manifested a visible and
marked partiality for her over him. As soon as
she came forth, they croaked, or flapped their
wings, or nodded, or bounded, or in some way
uttered their peculiar demonstrations of affection
and joy. She, too, began to designate her favourites,
among which were a pair of kangaroos,
remarkable for their docility, a pair of scarlet
pigeons, and a hare distinguished for its brilliant
mottled spots. One inconvenience attended this
collection of animals. Their various notes and
cries, commencing after midnight, were at first exceedingly
annoying to the parties, and often disturbed
their morning slumbers.

These various pursuits, most of them of a cheerful
character, completely occupied their time, and
left them not to the endurance of ennui and a

[figure description] Page 163.[end figure description]

burdensome existence. The hours flew in their appropriate
duties, and the day seemed only too short
for their labours.

In the meantime, Augusta Wellman had not only
recovered completely from the effects of her sickness,
but pure air, healthful and nutritive food,
constant exercise, and the continual view of nature
in her repose and beauty, had given her a health,
and elasticity, and freshness, that she had never felt
before. No midnight vigils, and jealousies, and
revelries, and heart-burnings at the ball, or masquerade,
or opera, among the proud, and the opulent,
and the licentious, planted feelings in the heart,
that soon, or late, notwithstanding all that art, and
dress, and decoration can cover, or prevent, mark
the brow with ill temper, wrinkles, and care. The
re-action of returning health, a tranquillity and repose
of heart, corresponding to that of nature, imparted
to her a buoyancy and cheerfulness that she
had never known before. In such, the heart every
where speaks one language. The same inspiration
of nature, which makes the lamb skip among the
first flowers of spring, and the wild fawn bound on
the green slopes of its sylvan domains, filled her
young heart not only with joy, but unhappily with
those vague desires after more, with those remembrances
of the past, with those incompatible and
illimitable expectations and desires, that, manifested
in a thousand ways, began to be a never ending
source of vexation to the better regulated mind of
her companion. Calm, laborious, disciplined in his

[figure description] Page 164.[end figure description]

thoughts and tempers, and satisfied with a little,
their abundance, and range, and opulence, and repose
were to him all that he wished or desired. To
him this residence was not only peace and repose,
but it was happiness. He had thoughts and trials,
indeed, peculiarly his own, and which he hardly
dared to pass in review before his own mind. But
he was too generous, too much above the selfish
meanness of personal gratification, to wish enjoyments
purchased at the expense of the happiness of
another. He was not only aware that the companion
of his solitude was formed to grace, adorn,
and enjoy society, but that she belonged to it. He
felt, too, the strong teachings of reason and conscience,
that life was given to him for other purposes,
than to dream away existence in those charming
solitudes, though they were shared of necessity
by a woman, every way so fascinating and attractive.
Hence his invariable language to himself,
whenever his imagination tempted his thoughts and
purposes astray, was, Thou owest escape from this
island to her, to thyself, to duty, and to God. Thou
must persevere in thy purpose, or lose the applause
of conscience.

To have looked upon this singular pair, as an invisible
spectator, one would have thought, that
nothing could have been wanting to the happiness
of either. There was shelter, and comfort, and
beauty, and all that the imagination or the heart
could ask, save the single gratification of calling
other and foreign eyes to contemplate their

[figure description] Page 165.[end figure description]

enjoyments with them. Yet that eternal ingredient of
bitterness, that in the same way mingles in every
human cup, was there.

Months had elapsed in this tranquil order of
things. Every day added to their stock of comforts
or conveniences. The climate was generally mild,
and delightfully refreshed with the alternations of
the land and sea breeze. When the terrors of a
tropical storm came, the awful change in the sky,
and in the elements, only gave them a deeper and
more home-felt sense of the security of their shelter
under the strength and unchangeable munition of
the superincumbent hills over their heads, whence
they contemplated the fury of the passing storm.
A volcanic eruption only added sublimity to the
monotonous amenity and repose of the ordinary
state of things. Added to this, he was making
rapid progress in completing a decked boat, which
promised to be able to be managed by one person,
and yet to be capable of sustaining the ordinary
chances of the sea. To finish this great work was
his first and most earnest purpose, and he laboured
incessantly towards that point. He had motives to
stimulate him to exertion, which he disclosed only
to his conscience.

His companion, meanwhile, to his astonishment,
instead of manifesting the pleasure so naturally to
have been expected in her case, at the prospect of
a speedy chance of escape from the island, appeared
rather to view the progress of the work with an eye
of dissatisfaction and chagrin. When he was most

[figure description] Page 166.[end figure description]

intent upon the adjustment and completion of some
difficult constituent part, she would come to him
with a command, sometimes sportive, sometimes
apparently in chagrin, to call him away to walk
with her, to visit some favourite grove, to angle in
the lake, or to share in some of their customary
amusements. She seemed to have a system of
studied arrangements, to prevent the progress of
the work. When they spake of the proposed voyage,
she magnified the dangers, and diminished the
chances of escape in the estimation. Sometimes
she denied consent that the voyage should be
undertaken, and that she would accompany him.
Sometimes she sportively talked of remaining
behind, as a hermitess, to live and die alone. Always
she treated the project as rash and chimerical,
and founded upon too little knowledge of their
position, and the course they ought to take for the
chances of reaching New Holland.

Sometimes she manifested wishes to be alone,
and an inclination to avoid his society. He often
discovered her to have been shedding tears. Her
spirits fluctuated from the extreme of vivacity to
that of silence, dejection and gloom. Sometimes
her deportment towards him was of manifest and
delicate kindness. At other times, had he been
sufficiently acquainted with the modes of acting in
her walk of life, he would have phrased her conduct
coquetry; but more generally, it seemed a
disposition to rally and ridicule him; the simplicity
and rustic manners of his country; and his

[figure description] Page 167.[end figure description]

misfortune in wanting the tastes and habits, only
to be learned in the walks of distinction and fashion.
All this opened upon him a series of petty trials,
of daily and hourly vexations, the more harassing
from his inexperience in the modes, fashions, and
aspects of female manners. He had heard one of
the Latin saws in the school of his native village,
semper varium et mutabile, and bitterly he reflected
upon the meaning and truth of the adage. He
reasoned, and he sighed within himself. The more
he attempted to penetrate the mystery, and the
secret motives of this conduct, the more perplexing
and inexplicable it seemed. At one moment he
felt sure, that he had seized upon the thread of the
clue. A new aspect of the deportment of his beautiful
companion, scattered his profound theory to the
winds. There were even times, when his patience
was exhausted; and he had come to the internal
resolution, to break with her, and to give her clearly
to understand, that he would be the victim of her
caprices and changeable temper no longer. When
this purpose had ripened, and honour and manhood
had been invoked to hold him to firmness in his
purpose, she would come upon him in all the splendour
of studied dress, her fair hair bound with
wreaths of flowers, and her lovely face adorned
with smiles; her scarlet favourites fluttering upon
one arm, and holding him the other, while she invited
him to a walk in the groves. It was impossible,
that his angry purposes should not melt away
at the sight. What was most inexplicable of all

[figure description] Page 168.[end figure description]

was, that she seemed intuitively to comprehend
these mental storms, to know the secret of their
origin, and to understand exactly the hour, in which
to arrest their progress and developement. She
had lectured in the midst of her domesticated family
more than once, when she perceived these
thoughts burning within him. She manifested
peculiar pleasure and exultation in showing her
complete ascendency over the instincts of her animals
and birds. She called, and they came. She
commanded, and they showed a docile obedience.
“See,” she said, “I can tame and civilize a kangaroo.
I can learn docility and graces to a water
fowl of the south seas. Man is a monster, that
nothing can tame, and Americans most monstrous
of all. Indeed, you are of all my subjects most
hopeless.” The final result of his cogitations upon
the motive and origin of this fluctuation of temper
and caprice of deportment in his fair companion,
was resolved by him into her disappointment and
chagrin in the loss of society, and all operated only
to redouble his exertions to finish his boat, and his
deep purpose to succeed or perish in the attempt to
convey her from the prison of the island.

An incident occurred at this time, which, while
it served to vary the monotony of his thoughts,
added largely to his anxieties and apprehensions.
It was one of her days of gloom and seeming dissatisfaction
and purpose to be alone. She kept her
apartment, apparently occupied intently in reading.
He was pursuing his customary labours upon his

[figure description] Page 169.[end figure description]

boat. His horror may be imagined, when he saw
two large proas or periogues full of the most ugly
and inhuman looking savages, rowing past the cove.
He dropped behind the shelving covert of the rocks,
rejoicing that he was at the same time undiscovered,
and could mark all their movements. A chill perspiration
started upon him, at the apprehension that
they purposed to land in the cove. They seemed
stout, athletic people, and apparently warriors, as
they were armed with spears and slings. A few
women on board appeared to manage the sails and
oars. They were woolly headed, with broad faces,
high cheek bones, and seemingly of the most disgusting
and ferocious character. They paused
upon their oars in the midway distance between the
points of the cove, as it seemed, to remark upon the
novel aspect of the hulk of his boat. More than
once, they seemed disposed to turn their proas in,
and to land. A consultation was evidently held;
at the close of which they flourished their spears
over their heads, gave a terrible shout, as if in defiance
of their enemies, and turned their boats in
the direction to pass the cove. A few strokes of
their oars carried them behind the cliffs, and he
once more breathed at ease. When he deemed
them at such a distance, as not to discover him,
he mounted the cliff, and had the satisfaction of
seeing their boats gliding away in the distance.

It may readily be supposed, that this discovery,
and all the thoughts and reasonings consequent
upon it, were carefully concealed from his

[figure description] Page 170.[end figure description]

companion. He instantly perceived the necessity of
putting the grotto in the best possible state of defence.
Some of the requisite precautions could not
be taken, without exciting her curiosity and questioning.
Her sagacity and penetration easily apprehended,
as she saw him working a swivel by
tackles and ropes, from tree to tree, to the foot of
the cliff, and thence raising it with infinite labour
to the terrace, that this new kind of precaution was
not without some new cause of apprehension. She
discovered, that his magazines of gunpowder were
carefully dried, that cartridge boxes, with well prepared
cartridges, were distributed, and suspended,
as if for use, in his apartment; that many muskets
were carefully cleaned, and loaded, as if for action.
It was in vain that he assured her, that these were
precautions which common prudence dictated. The
question incessantly recurred—why not before?
The very secrecy and concealment, dictated by the
most benevolent regard to her happiness, became,
in consequence, a renewed cause for chagrin, dissatisfaction,
and complaint. She regarded this as
the unkindest cut of all, as she declared; and to
show her marked sense of the injustice of this apparent
want of confidence, she affected loneliness
more than ever. She not only declined her customary
occupancy of her tent near the boat, where
she used to stay while he was occupied in his labours,
but she strolled away at a distance in the
groves, and was sometimes absent the greater portion
of the day. The more he remonstrated, the

[figure description] Page 171.[end figure description]

more frequently she took these long absences. He
trembled with the apprehension, that the savages
might come upon her, seize her and carry her
away, or perhaps sacrifice her to their horrible appetites.

This dreadful supposition fixed his purpose, to
inform ner what he had seen. “Augusta,” said he,
“I am sorry to see, that you regard me with aversion
and distrust. I was reluctant to mar the little
tranquillity and comfort you might find in this dull
prison, by filling your mind with apprehensions.
I have seen savages, horrible savages, in great
numbers, and cannibals, I doubt not. Why will
you stray away so far from the protection of your
only friend, who, it is no profession, nor idle compliment
to say, would sacrifice a thousand lives in
succession, if he could possess them, to serve you?
This is the secret, and the sole one, for fortifying
the grotto. You may now conjecture, why I did
not divulge it before. But I had rather terrify, and
afflict you, than have you fall into the hands of
these horrible savages, by straying so far away
from my protection.”

He expected to see her become pale with apprehension
at this intelligence. But he was not prepared
for the great agitation, which it appeared to
produce in her. Her countenance rapidly fluctuated
between a feverish flush, and the paleness of death.
But kindness and good feeling towards him, seemed
to preponderate. She held out her hand to him.
“I confess my faults,” she said; “I have been

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perverse and froward. You need not remind me of
what you have done, by proffering what you are
ready to do. I know, and understand it all. I feel
all the kindness of your motives. I will follow you
as closely as your shadow; and, if the savages
come, I have the spirit of noble ancestors in me. I
will aid you to repel them. But, my dear brother,”
she continued, looking him steadily in the
face, “this is genuine gallantry. This proffering a
thousand lives, is the language of Hyde Park. I
shall train you, too, my dear brother, in time, to be
as docile as a kangaroo.”

Her manner and countenance on this occasion,
presented her in a new light. This voice and tone,
thought he, is more inexplicable than all I have yet
seen. I shall be able, it may be, in the end, to
sound these depths of female nature. He found the
renewed witchery of her smiles, and the returning
countenance of unrestrained benignity, and unbounded
confidence bringing a still severer trial,
than any he had yet experienced. To withhold admiration
from her, who, in all the loveliness of her
beauty, was the constant companion of his solitude,
was impossible. He felt, too, what sages, and men
who were no sages, have felt, that such a form and
such a countenance as hers, informed by such a
mind, was a dangerous object of contemplation
any where; and much more in the strange position,
in which he was constantly placed with her. If he
was obliged, against himself, to see her lovely in
her caprices, in her unreasonable sullenness and

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ill-humour, he much more strongly felt, that she would
be irresistible in her confidence and her kind feelings.
Then he communed with honour, with conscience,
and a high sense of duty. “She may
escape,” said he, to himself. “I would not win her
kind thoughts, even if I might. The only remedy
is for us both to fly.”

The remainder of the day in which this conversation
occurred, was passed in preparing a barricade,
in front of the entrance to the grotto, and
other defences, to be guarded by the swivel. He
felt assured, on a review of the whole ground, that
there could be no danger in a place, rendered
almost impregnable by nature against a host of
unarmed savages; and after an evening passed in
unwonted mutual tenderness of manner, it was
agreed, that the next day should be devoted to a
journey over the mountains, to satisfy themselves, if
they might, whether the island was inhabited or not.
She insisted so earnestly to accompany him, that
he felt it would be cruel to think of leaving her
behind. She had, indeed, made him more than
once aware, that in point of agility, and power to
travel and sustain fatigue, she had by practice and
perfect health, become no mean competitor with
him.

Accordingly, having provided every requisite
refreshment for passing the night from home, if
necessary, he clad with a soldier's knapsack, and
stored with wine, and a musket slung over his
shoulder, and she, dressed like Diana in the

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engravings, started together at the early dawn. An
ample supply of food was left for her numerous
domesticated animals, most of which no longer required
confinement to retain them at the grotto.
Before the sun began to burnish the boundless
wastes of sea, and the dark sides of the mountains,
they commenced their attempt to scale them. The
song of a thousand birds, and the balmy freshness of
morning, cheered their first efforts of ascent. His
fair companion seemed to have imbibed the general
hilarity of nature; and she bounded gaily from
cliff to cliff, with an alacrity which bade fair to out-strip
his efforts, burdened as he was with a considerable
weight. She mounted the table-rocks
before him, saying, “this is the way the ladies
climb in England,” and held down her hand, to
help her wearied brother, as she called him, advance
to her level. The glow of this exercise, the
inspiring scenery, every moment beautifying and
broadening in their eye, the mountain air, and all
the united circumstances of the excursion, kindled
in her cheek a radiance of beauty, which he had
never seen before. Her spirits were exuberant, and
her delight in gazing at the grand scene below,
above, and around them, unsated. They still clambered
on, mounting hill above hill, and still contemplating
the black and frowning precipices, towering
still higher above them, until they seemed to
prop the sky. When they had reached half the
elevation of the mountain, they came upon a small
table-plain, where was a shade and a spring, and

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where he had rested on his first ascent. They there
stopped for shade and repose; and he, with a look
which possibly said more than he intended, and
more than the strictness of his mental determinations
allowed, reminded her, how differently he had
felt on a former ascent, when he had supposed himself
the only human being on the island. He was
repaid by unalloyed kindness.

It was nearly mid-day, before they sat down on
a seat of stone on the most elevated pinnacle of the
ridge. It is difficult to imagine, and still more difficult
to describe, the feeblest outline of that view,
which opened in its immensity under their eye. In
front, and all around, was the boundless sea. At
the foot, the forest showed only as slight inequalities
on a ground of verdure. Just below them, on
the other side, was the smoking and bottomless
crater of the volcano. They could look down its
dark and pitchy depths, as though it were down the
funnel of some immense chimney. Beyond the
base of the volcano was the beautiful vale, which
had the appearance of an enchanted garden under
their feet. Little meadows dotted with wood, cascades,
whose falling sheets seemed white ribbands
suspended from the rocks, and all the varieties of
light and shade, as clouds flitted over the sun were
interspersed on its surface. The chasm through
the elliptical lines of mountains, by which the vale
discharged its waters to the sea, was distinctly visible.
The atmosphere was still more transparent
than when he had contemplated the scene before,

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and the blue outline of ocean beyond the island was
still more clearly perceptible.

It was natural for them to reflect, in this strange
spot, upon the cast of fortune which had there seated
a young man from the shores of lake Champlaine,
and a lady from the highest circles of London,
on the pinnacle of volcanic mountains, in a
lonely and undescribed isle, in the depths of the
south seas. They were, probably, the first mortals
that had contemplated this grand and impressive
scenery, since its creation. His inward respect for
his fair companion was not diminished by discovering,
that their position, and what they saw, produced
sensations and thoughts in her, corresponding
to his own. He saw, that she entered with her
whole heart into the sublime of the scene. He
noted her entranced look, as her eye kindled. It
was not expressed in the voluble phrase and the
hackneyed technics of the tourist, nor in the common
exclamations of an ordinary mind; but in
silence, and an expression of thrilling awe and rapt
admiration. Her eye occasionally turned towards
the soft and delicious blue of the sky, canopied
here and there, with fleecy clouds, which seemed
almost floating within touch of their heads. After
a long and expressive silence, she inquired, if he
had ever read Gessner's Deucalion and Pyrrha?
Are we not,” she asked, “Deucalion and Pyrrha?”

To break off the dangerous train of feeling,
inspired by this singular question, he proposed
leaving her there, while he descended to a lower

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point of another eminence, not far distant, where
he judged a more perfect view of the vale might be
had. But she declared herself not at all fatigued,
and insisted on sharing all the fatigues and dangers,
as well as honours and pleasures of the journey
of discovery. When they reached that point, as
he had apprehended, a panorama of the vale was
spread before them; and the great point of investigation,
for which the journey had been chiefly undertaken,
was settled in a moment. The island was
inhabited! An exclamation, arising from a variety
of feelings, burst from each at the same moment.
We are not alone! Smokes arose from human
habitations in various points. The vale seemed
even populous. “God be thanked,” said he!
“This opens surer prospects of escape for us. I
have now a double chance. We will first take a
voyage of discovery, cruising the island, and still
keeping in view the chances of return to it. If
such a voyage open no prospect of escape, I will
fortify our castle, and leave you there, and sojourn
among these islanders, and conciliate them, and
learn the position of adjacent islands, or procure
them to transport us to New Holland in their
proas.” “My brother,” she replied, “you never
thaw from your wanted stoicism, and say a thing
that seems like the language of others, but you
immediately spoil all, by propositions like these.
Who seems so constantly anxious to escape from
this island? Is it I? Do I complain of solitude?
It is true, we have not the attractions of a London

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circle. But we have many good things even here;
a charming residence, an abundance of all that our
wants require; beautiful birds, a fine country and
climate, docile kangaroos, and who knows to what
accomplishments my brother may yet be trained,
under my forming hands?”

Having discovered, that the island was actually
inhabited, and having laid a sure foundation for
all the reasonings and calculations, that could be
based upon that discovery, they commenced their
return. The descent was accomplished without
incident, and they reached the grotto, just as the
sun left the sky. Every thing was, as when they
departed in the morning. No savages, as they
feared, had visited it. Their animals and birds
crowded about them, and received them with so
many demonstrations of joy and welcome, that they
might almost imagine themselves returning to the
bosom of a family.

CHAPTER IV.

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The human heart is an unfathomable fountain;
and though but few of its deeper secrets have ever
been understood by any but the Omniscient, yet
the history of its more visible movements, is one of
exhaustless interest. A volume would not explain
the motives, thoughts, and purposes, that passed
beneath their bosoms every day. But, as mortals
are able to narrate history, a whole year of this
sort of existence, passed unmarked by any of those
incidents, which make up the ordinary details of
narratives of this kind. The days came, and went
in noiseless tranquillity. The calmness of nature,
and the whispers of the breeze, were sometimes
alternated with the terrible tropical storms; and
sometimes a volcanic explosion, bleached for a few
moments the fair face of Augusta. The number
of the entire domestication of their family of birds

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and animals, had become a spectacle of unfailing
interest, to minds that could be pleased with the
simple pleasures of nature. Their table was regularly
spread with eggs, and fish, and flesh, and fruit,
and was not only abundant, but luxurious.

The fair solitary was for the most part cheerful,
and sometimes even gay; and had in some measure
worn off the evidently painful influence, of taking
her share in the duties of the kitchen. However
she felt this burden, she always took it in good
part; and so far from complaining, often regretted
that she could not aid her brother more. But there
were times, and they recurred with a heart-wearing
frequency for the companion of her solitude, when
the remembrance of the past, and the society from
which she was banished, seemed to come over her
mind with an insupportable gloom. Still, in the
manifestation of these feelings, and in her general
deportment, there often appeared a caprice, a kind
of sullenness, and occasional humours of shutting
herself up in her apartment, which always involved
her motives in a mystery, which he attempted in
vain to solve. Often, where he saw no cause for it,
she received him with a frankness of kindness, that
went direct to his heart; and at another time, when
by earnest assiduity of attention, and by unusual
efforts to anticipate her desires, he felt as if kindness
would have been the only return, she was cold,
reserved, and distant. He always said to himself,
“I shall learn, as I live. I shall finally reach the
mystery.”

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