The Wonder Island Boys | Page 6

the wagon for the night, and then proceed home early in the morning. To take the wagon would be an impossibility.
They really learned to love the patient yaks. For fully five months they had been daily companions, and were now so well trained that some discouragement was felt at being compelled again to break in others. They had an ample supply of good material in the herd to pick from, but it took time and patience to develop such a team as had been lost.
During the entire night one of the trio kept watch, not so much from a feeling of fear as in the hope the yaks would return during the night; but they were doomed to disappointment. Morning came, but the yaks did not, and after gathering together the most useful belongings, and putting them into convenient bundles for carrying purposes, set out for home.
The first question taken up by the boys after their return was the selection of a pair of young steers for the new team; and the work of making a new pair of yokes was carried forward with energy. They were in the midst of the planting season which had been interrupted when the last journey was undertaken.
Hitherto it had been the custom to devote at least one day each week to hunting, on which occasions they also made trips to such points in the island as had not been previously visited; and it was also a part of their duty to examine the woods and the fields to find new specimens of plants, fruits and flowers; and among the hills and ravines were many kinds of ore, some of which they had been fortunate enough to find on their entry to the island.
The metals thus found were utilized, because they had set up a workshop alongside the sawmill, and in it had a crude lathe adapted to work in wood or iron. It will thus be seen that each tour was for prospecting purposes, to supply their needs, as well as to learn what the island contained.
Each evening it was the habit to have a general discussion concerning the events of the day, or with reference to matters of moment about the work to be done on the morrow.
George was much interested in the planting program. "What kinds of vegetable would it be most advisable to plant in the space we have prepared?"
"One of the important points to consider in the planting of all crops is whether the soil is adapted for it. When the United States were first settled it was a surprising thing that many of the original settlers would go miles inland, exposed to every sort of danger, to find land, when there was plenty nearer the seashore or close to civilization. There was a reason for that which we are only now beginning fully to understand. Plants have a habit of growing in soil adapted for their needs, and it would be an interesting study in going over our island to consider the habits of plants in this respect."
"Is that the reason why different countries have such different kinds of plants?"
"Yes; plants select their soil, and owing to these habits, every variety of soil, in every climate, supports its own vegetable tribes. Of the five thousand flowering plants of central Europe, only three hundred grow on peaty soils, and those are mainly rushes and sedges. In the native forests of northern Europe and America, the unlettered explorer hails with joy the broad-leaved trees glittering in the sun among the pines, as a symptom of good land, which he knows how to cultivate. The rudest peasant in Europe knows that wheat and beans seek clay soils; the northern German knows that rye alone and the potato are best adapted for the blowing sands of that country; the Chinese peasant, that the warm sloping banks of light land are fitted for the tea plant, and stiff, wet, impervious flooded clays for his rice. Even the slaves in the Southern States were aware that open alluvial lands were best suited to cotton; and the degraded slaves of Pernambuco know that the cocoa grows only on the sandy soils of the coast, just the same as in west Africa the oil palms flourish on the moist sea sand that skirts the shore, and the mangroves where muddy shallows are daily deserted by the retiring tide."
"Some time ago you stated in one of our talks that soil was the necessary thing to select in order to propagate, or make good fruit and grain out of the poor or wild kind. Were all our vegetables and grains originally wild?"
"Originally nothing in the way of fruit, flower, grain or garden vegetables was anything but wild and unproductive, or bitter, tasteless or unprofitable. Chemical changes are made