uelty. Can you
imagine that creatures of this kind, armed only with such miserable
weapons as you may see in our museum of antiquities, clumsy iron tubes
charged with saltpetre, have more than once threatened with destruction
a tribe of the Vril-ya, which dwells nearest to them, because they say
they have thirty millions of population--and that tribe may have fifty
thousand--if the latter do not accept their notions of Soc-Sec (money
getting) on some trading principles which they have the impudence to
call 'a law of civilisation'?"

"But thirty millions of population are formidable odds against fifty
thousand!"

My host stared at me astonished. "Stranger," said he, "you could not
have heard me say that this threatened tribe belongs to the Vril-ya; and
it only waits for these savages to declare war, in order to commission
some half-a-dozen small children to sweep away their whole population."

At these words I felt a thrill of horror, recognising much more affinity
with "the savages" than I did with the Vril-ya, and remembering all I
had said in praise of the glorious American institutions, which Aph-Lin
stigmatised as Koom-Posh. Recovering my self-possession, I asked
if there were modes of transit by which I could safely visit this
temerarious and remote people.

"You can travel with safety, by vril agency, either along the ground or
amid the air, throughout all the range of the communities with which
we are allied and akin; but I cannot vouch for your safety in barbarous
nations governed by different laws from ours; nations, indeed, so
benighted, that there are among them large numbers who actually live by
stealing from each other, and one could not with safety in the Silent
Hours even leave the doors of one's own house open."

Here our conversation was interrupted by the entrance of Taee, who came
to inform us that he, having been deputed to discover and destroy the
enormous reptile which I had seen on my first arrival, had been on the
watch for it ever since his visit to me, and had began to suspect that
my eyes had deceived me, or that the creature had made its way through
the cavities within the rocks to the wild regions in which dwelt its
kindred race,--when it gave evidences of its whereabouts by a great
devastation of the herbage bordering one of the lakes. "And," said Taee,
"I feel sure that within that lake it is now hiding. So," (turning to
me) "I thought it might amuse you to accompany me to see the way