e years and ten, is but a craven habit.
So, Babbalanja! may you never die. Yoomy! my sweet poet, may you live
to sing to me in Paradise. Ha, ha! would that we floated in this
glorious stuff, instead of this pestilent brine.--Hark ye! were I to
make a Mardi now, I'd have every continent a huge haunch of venison;
every ocean a wine-vat! I'd stock every cavern with choice old
spirits, and make three surplus suns to ripen the grapes all the year
round. Let's drink to that!--Brimmers! So: may the next Mardi that's
made, be one entire grape; and mine the squeezing!"

"Look, look! my lord," cried Yoomy, "what a glorious shore we pass."

Sallying out into the high golden noon, with golden-beaming goblets
suspended, we gazed.

"This must be Kolumbo of the south," said Mohi.

It was a long, hazy reach of land; piled up in terraces, traced here
and there with rushing streams, that worked up gold dust alluvian, and
seemed to flash over pebbled diamonds. Heliotropes, sun-flowers,
marigolds gemmed, or starred the violet meads, and vassal-like, still
sunward bowed their heads. The rocks were pierced with grottoes,
blazing with crystals, many-tinted.

It was a land of mints and mines; its east a ruby; west a topaz.
Inland, the woodlands stretched an ocean, bottomless with foliage; its
green surges bursting through cable-vines; like Xerxes' brittle chains
which vainly sought to bind the Hellespont. Hence flowed a tide of
forest sounds; of parrots, paroquets, macaws; blent with the howl of
jaguars, hissing of anacondas, chattering of apes, and herons
screaming.

Out from those depths up rose a stream.

The land lay basking in the world's round torrid brisket, hot with
solar fire.

"No need here to land," cried Yoomy, "Yillah lurks not here."

"Heat breeds life, and sloth, and rage," said Babbalanja. "Here live
bastard tribes and mongrel nations; wrangling and murdering to prove
their freedom.--Refill, my lord."

"Methinks, Babbalanja, you savor of the mysterious parchment, in
Vivenza read:--Ha? Yes, philosopher, these are the men, who toppled
castles to make way for hovels; these, they who fought for freedom,
but find it despotism to rule themselves. These, Babbalanja, are of
the race, to whom a tyrant would prove a blessing." So saying he
drained his cup.

"My lord, that last sentiment decides the authorship of the scroll.
But, with deference, tyrants seldom can prove blessings; inasmuch as
evil seldom eventuates in good.