From all points of the compass ships with various flags entered the circle of reefs that surrounded Meliora, and set down their strange passengers on that beautiful shore. A land large enough for all, fertile as a garden of romance, perfect in climate, and abounding in all they could need for food, clothing and shelter, what more could the outlaws desire? [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER II. “Exile is when a man is for a crime condemned to depart out of the dominion of the commonwealth, or out of a certain part thereof, and during a prefixed time, or for ever, not to return to it; and seemeth not in its own nature, without other circumstances, to be a punishment; but rather an escape, or a public commandment to avoid punishment by flight.”—HOBBES’ _Leviathan_. The first to land in Meliora were a company of English Socialists, with whom a few of the best who so called themselves were careful to cast in their lot. These were men of forethought and resource, and the truth that the circumstances of men are made by their inner natures was never more clearly seen than in the difference which soon appeared in the homes of the new settlers. The leader of this elect company was an old Scholar who in his younger days had distinguished himself in many ways, but, from a genuine belief that the medicine of a sick world lay in a socialist creed, had laid aside all that had gained him fame and credit for this one dream, and sealed his choice with the brand. To him in his old age, after years of desolate wanderings, the thought of a home in a new Atlantis was welcome indeed,—the soft sweet air of the southern seas, the beautiful vegetation and strange fantastic story of the Island awakened the old poetic feelings of his youth, and it seemed as if his mission to the world would here meet fulfilment and find its lost harmony with the earlier longings of his genius and fancy. Through his help and counsel the first settlement of the land was organized, houses suitable to the climate were built, Indian corn and other crops for which they had brought a common stock of seed were sown for the coming season, and to each was allotted an equal share of the fruitful land on which there was only so much need to labour as Adam found in Milton’s Paradise. Some of course were more industrious, some more ingenious, than others. Some had less bodily vigour; among these were those of whom I have spoken as the elect few—the old Scholar and a little company of young clerics, “Priests” of the Church of England. This Church from the time of its disestablishment had begun a new life—it had at once shown its vitality by casting off some of its old disused organisms and by adapting itself in quick sympathy to the needs of a changed order of things.