which he has just manufactured, clearing the ground, digging,
transplanting young fruit-trees, or sowing the seeds which he is soon
to see spring up and prosper. Every thing grows rapidly in these
climates.

When the garden-spot is marked out, dug, sown, planted, not forgetting
the kitchen vegetables, and especially the _coca_ and
_petunia-nicotiana_, Selkirk, with his arms folded on his spade,
thanks God with all his heart,--God who has given him strength to
finish his work.

He has never felt so happy as when, with his hands behind his back, he
walks smoking, among his beds, in which nothing has as yet appeared;
but he already sees, in a dream, his trees covered with blossoms;
around these blossoms are buzzing numerous swarms of bees; he reflects
upon the means of compelling them to yield the honey of which they
have just stolen from him the essence. It is a settled thing, on his
farm he will have hives! After his bees, still in his dream, come
flocks of humming-birds to plunder in their turn. The happy possessor
of the garden will exact no tribute from them, but the pleasure of
seeing them suspend, by a silken thread, to the leaves of his shrubs,
the elegant little boat in which they cradle their fragile brood.
Nothing seems to him more beautiful than his embryo garden; here, he
is more than the monarch of the island; he is a proprietor!

Thanks to the garden, Selkirk sees with resignation the two long
months of the rainy season pass away. When the heavy torrents render
the paths impassable, he consoles himself by thinking that they aid in
the germination of his seeds, in the rooting of his young plants.
Sometimes, between two deluges, he can scarcely find time to procure