ting
in aether, at various distances and of various tints. Ere the showery
fire-flies have ceased to shine, and the blue lights to play about the
tremulous horizon, amid the voices of a thousand birds, the dancers
solace themselves with the rarest fruits, the most delicate fish, and
the most delicious wines; but flesh they love not. They are an innocent
and a happy, though a voluptuous and ignorant race. They have no
manufactures, no commerce, no agriculture, and no printing-presses; but
for their slight clothing they wear the bright skins of serpents; for
corn, Nature gives them the bread-fruit; and for intellectual amusement,
they have a pregnant fancy and a ready wit; tell inexhaustible stories,
and always laugh at each other's jokes. A natural instinct gave them the
art of making wine; and it was the same benevolent Nature that blessed
them also with the knowledge of the art of making love. But time flies
even here. The lovely companions have danced, and sung, and banqueted,
and laughed; what further bliss remains for man? They rise, and in pairs
wander about the island, and then to their bowers; their life ends with
the Night they love so well; and ere Day, the everlasting conqueror,
wave his flaming standard in the luminous East, solitude and silence
will again reign in the ISLE OF FANTAISIE.

CHAPTER 2

The last and loudest chorus had died away, and the Islanders were
pouring forth their libation to their great enemy the Sun, when suddenly
a vast obscurity spread over the glowing West. They looked at each
other, and turned pale, and the wine from their trembling goblets fell
useless on the shore. The women were too frightened to scream, and, for
the first time in the Isle of Fantaisie, silence existed after sunset.
They were encouraged when they observed that the darkness ceased at that
point in the heavens which overlooked their coral rocks; and perceiving
that their hitherto unsullied sky was pure, even at this moment of
otherwise universal gloom, the men regained their colour, touched the
goblets with their lips, further to reanimate themselves, and the women,
now less discomposed, uttered loud shrieks.

Suddenly the wind roared with unaccustomed rage, the sea rose into large
billows, and a ship was seen tossing in the offing. The Islanders, whose
experience of navigation extended only to a slight paddling in their
lagoon, in the half of a hollow trunk of a tree, for the purpose of
fishing, mistook th