ay stretched on the scorching sands, were only
sun-baked rocks, and the scattered bones and skeletons of former
travellers, who had perished by the same dreadful, lingering agony
through which I was, apparently, doomed to die.

After a time, I thought I could distinguish the murmuring of waters more
plainly; and, stay--did I not perceive a stately grove of palms in the
distance? The water must be there!

I totter to my feet: I bend my feeble steps thither, and sink down
beneath the welcome shade. I hear a sweet voice calling to me: I see an
angel form stretching out a goblet of crystal water to my parching lips;
and, as I reach my hand forth to grasp it, I see that the face is that
of Min! I give vent to a cry of ecstasy; but, at the same moment, the
goblet falls from my shaking hand, shattering into a thousand pieces on
the sands of the desert; and--the vision fades away from my gaze.

All is darkness again. I am awake!

Once more the kaleidoscope of my dream changed.

I am now floating in a battered boat, without either sails or oars, on
the boundless waters of the ocean. I can hear the lap, lapping of the
sobbing sea against the sides of my frail craft; and the ripple of the
current, hurrying along in its devious course the boat, which is as
powerless to resist its influence as a straw upon the stream.

Presently the current spins onward faster and more furiously. I see the
faint outlines of purple hills breaking the vacant curve of the horizon.
A delicious fragrance from tropic flowers fills the air--the perfumes
of the jessamine, the magnolia, the cereus. A sweet, delicious languor
creeps over me. I feel a vague sense of rest and happiness, which, to
my onlooking self, seems almost unaccountable; for, there am I, still
all alone on the ocean, swept onward towards the purple hills in the
distance, over the smooth-flowing surface of azure liquid, while, not a
sound is to be heard, save the restless murmuring of the many-voiced
sea.

The boat glides on.

Now I find myself encircled by radiant groups of picturesque coral
islands, all covered with palm-trees, whose waving branches are entwined
with varied-hued passion-flowers. Lilies and ferns, narcissi and
irises, are intermingled in one chaos of beauty, skirting the velvet
sward that runs down to the water's edge.

On each tiny islet, the lavish wealth of nature, freely outpoured,
seemed to make it a perfect paradise. Brilliantly-plumaged birds
fl