The Crater, James Fenimore Cooper [good book club books TXT] 📗

that he naturally fell into an obvious and healthful communion with the stars.

So far as the human mind has as yet been able to penetrate the mysteries of our condition here on-earth, with the double connection between the past and the future, all its just inferences tend to the belief in an existence of a vast and beneficent design. We have somewhere heard, or read, that the gipsies believe that men are the fallen angels, oiling their way backward on the fatal path along which hey formerly rushed to perdition. This may not be, probably is not true in its special detail; but that men are placed here to prepare themselves for a future and higher condition of existence, is not only agreeable to our consciousness, but is in harmony with revelation. Among the many things that have been revealed to us, where so many are hid, we are told that our information is to increase, as we draw nearer to the millennium, until "The whole earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea." We may be far from that blessed day; probably are; but he has lived in vain, who has dwelt his half century in the midst of the civilization of this our own age, and does not see around him the thousand proofs of the tendency of things to the fulfilment of the decrees, announced to us ages ago by the pens of holy men. Rome, Greece, Egypt, and all that we know of the past, which comes purely of man and his passions; empires, dynasties, heresies and novelties, come and go like the changes of the seasons; while the only thing that can be termed stable, is the slow but sure progress of prophecy. The agencies that have been employed to bring about the great ends foretold so many centuries since, are so very natural, that we often lose sight of the mighty truth in its seeming simplicity. But, the signs of the times are not to be mistaken. Let any man of fifty, for instance, turn his eyes toward the East, the land of Judea, and compare its condition, its promises of to-day, with those that existed in his own youth, and ask himself how the change has been produced. That which the Richards and Sts. Louis of the middle ages could not effect with their armed hosts, is about to happen as a consequence of causes so obvious and simple that they are actually overlooked by the multitude. The Ottoman power and Ottoman prejudices are melting away, as it might be under the heat of divine truth, which is clearing for itself a path that will lead to the fulfilment of its own predictions.

Among the agents that are to be employed, in impressing the human race with a sense of the power and benevolence of the Deity, we think the science of astronomy, with its mechanical auxiliaries, is to act its full share. The more deeply we penetrate into the arcana of nature, the stronger becomes the proofs of design; and a deity thus obviously, tangibly admitted, the more profound will become the reverence for his character and power. In Mark Woolston's youth, the great progress which has since been made in astronomy, more especially in the way of its details through observations, had but just commenced. A vast deal, it is true, had been accomplished in the way of pure science, though but little that came home to the understandings and feelings of the mass. Mark's education had given him an outline of what Herschel and his contemporaries had been about, however; and when he sat on the Summit, communing with the stars, and through those distant and still unknown worlds, with their Divine First Cause, it was with as much familiarity with the subject as usually belongs to the liberally educated, without carrying a particular branch of learning into its recesses. He had increased his school acquisitions a little, by the study and practice of Navigation, and had several works that he was fond of reading, which may have made him a somewhat more accurate astronomer than those who get only leading ideas on the subject. Hours at a time did Mark linger on the Summit, studying the stars in the clear, transparent atmosphere of the tropics, his spirit struggling the while to get into closer communion with that dread Being which had produced all these mighty results; among which the existence of the earth, its revolutions, its heats and colds, its misery and happiness, are but specks in the incidents of a universe. Previously to this period, he had looked into these things from curiosity and a love of science; now, they impressed him with the deepest sense of the power and wisdom of the Deity, and caused him the better to understand his own position in the scale of created beings.

Not only did our young hermit study the stars with his own eyes, but he had the aid of instruments. The ship had two very good spy-glasses, and Mark himself was the owner of a very neat reflecting telescope, which he had purchased with his wages, and had brought with him as a source of amusement and instruction. To this telescope there was a brass stand, and he conveyed it to the tent on the Summit, where it was kept for use. Aided by this instrument, Mark could see the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn, the ring of the latter, the belts of the former, and many of the phenomena of the moon. Of course, the spherical forms of all the nearer planets, then known to astronomers, were plainly to be seen by the assistance of this instrument; and there is no one familiar fact connected with our observations of the heavenly bodies, that strikes the human mind, through the senses, as forcibly as this. For near a month, Mark almost passed the nights' gazing at the stars, and reflecting on their origin and uses. He had no expectations of making discoveries, or of even adding to his own stores of knowledge: but his thoughts were brought nearer to his Divine Creator by investigations of this sort; for where a zealous mathematician might have merely exulted in the confirmation of some theory by means of a fact, he saw the hand of God instead of the solution of a problem. Thrice happy would it be for the man of science, could he ever thus hold his powers in subjection to the great object for which they were brought into existence; and, instead of exulting in, and quarrelling about the pride of human reason, be brought to humble himself and his utmost learning, at the feet of Infinite Knowledge and power, and wisdom, as they are thus to be traced in the path of the Ancient of Days!

By the time his strength returned, Mark had given up, altogether, the hope of ever seeing Betts again. It was just possible that the poor fellow might fall in with a ship, or find his way to some of the islands; but, if he did so, it would be the result of chance and not of calculations. The pinnace was well provisioned, had plenty of water, and, tempests excepted, was quite equal to navigating the Pacific; and there was a faint hope that Bob might continue his course to the eastward, with a certainty of reaching some part of South America in time. If he should lake this course, and succeed, what would be the consequence? Who would put sufficient faith in the story of a simple seaman, like Robert Betts, and send a ship to look for Mark Woolston? In these later times, the government would doubtless despatch a vessel of war on such an errand, did no other means of rescuing the man offer; but, at the close of the last century, government did not exercise that much of power. It scarcely protected its seamen from the English press-gang and the Algerine slave-driver; much less did it think of rescuing a solitary individual from a rock in the midst of the Pacific. American vessels did then roam over that distant ocean, but it was comparatively in small numbers, and under circumstances that promised but little to the hopes of the hermit. It was a subject he did not like to dwell on, and he kept his thoughts as much diverted from it as it was in his power so to do.

The season had now advanced into as much of autumn as could be found within the tropics, and on land so low. Everything in the garden had ripened, and much had been thrown out to the pigs and poultry, in anticipation of its decay. Mark saw that it was time to re-commence his beds, selecting such seed as would best support the winter of that climate, if winter it could be called. In looking around him, he made a regular survey of all his possessions, inquiring into the state of each plant he had put into the ground, as well as into that of the ground itself. First, then, as respects the plants.

The growth of the oranges, lemons, cocoa-nuts, limes, figs, &c., placed in rows beneath the cliffs, had been prodigious. The water had run off the adjacent rocks and kept them well moistened most of the season, though a want of rain was seldom known on the Reef. Of the two, too much, rather than too little water fell; a circumstance that was of great service, however, in preserving the stock, which had used little beside that it found in the pools, for the last ten months. The shrubs, or little trees, were quite a foot high, and of an excellent colour. Mark gave each of them a dressing with the hoe, and manured all with a sufficient quantity of the guano. About half he transplanted to spots more favourable, putting the cocoa-nuts, in particular, as near the sea as he could get them.

With respect to the other plants, it was found that each had flourished precisely in proportion to its adaptation to the climate. The products of some were increased in size, while those of others had dwindled. Mark took note of these facts, determining to cultivate those most which succeeded best. The melons of both sorts, the tomatoes, the egg-plants, the peppers, cucumbers, onions, beans, corn, sweet-potatoes, &c. &c., had all flourished; while the Irish potato, in particular, had scarce produced a tuber at all.

As for the soil, on examination Mark found it had beer, greatly improved by the manure, tillage and water it had received. The hogs were again let in to turn it over with their snouts, and this they did most effectually in the course of two or three days. By this time, in addition to the three grown porkers our young man possessed, there were no less than nine young ones. This number was getting to be formidable, and he saw the necessity of killing off, in order to keep them within reasonable limits. One of the fattest and best he converted into pickled pork, not from any want of that article, there being still enough left in the ship to last him several years, but because he preferred it corned to that which had been in the salt so long a time. He saw the mistake he had made in allowing the pigs to get to be so large, since the meat would spoil long before he could consume even the smallest-sized shoats. For their own good, however, he was compelled to shoot no less than five, and these he buried entire, in deep places in his garden, having heard that earth which had imbibed animal substances, in this way, was converted into excellent manure.

Mark now made a voyage to Loam Island, in quest of a cargo, using