," she answered, "several. The outer dress I wear indoors is
made of a fibre found inside the rind of the fruit of the algyro tree,
and the stalks of three or four different kinds of plants afford
materials almost equally soft and fine."

"And your cloak," I asked, "is not that made of the skin of some
animal?"

"Yes," she replied, "and the most curious creature I have heard of. It
is found only in the northern and southern Arctic land-belts, to which
indeed nearly all wild animals, except the few small ones that are
encouraged because they prey upon large and noxious insects, are now
confined. It is about as large as the Unicorns, and has, like them,
four limbs; but otherwise it more resembles a bird. It has a bird's
long slight neck, but a very small and not very bird-like head, with a
long horny snout, furnished with teeth, something between a beak and a
mouth. Its hind limbs are those of a bird, except that they have more
flesh upon the lowest joints and are covered with this soft down. Its
front limbs, my father says, seem as if nature had hesitated between
wings and arms. They have attached to them several long, sharp,
featherless quills starting from a shrivelled membrane, which make
them very powerful and formidable weapons, so that no animal likes to
attack it; while the foot has four fingers or claws with, which it
clasps fish or small dragons, especially those electric dragons of
which you have seen a tame and very much enlarged specimen, and so
holds them that they cannot find a chance of delivering their electric
shock. But for the _Thernee_ these dragons, winged as they are, would
make those lands hardly habitable either for man, or other beasts. All
our furs are obtained from those countries, and the creatures from
which they are derived are carefully preserved for that purpose, it
being forbidden to kill more than a certain number of each every year,
which makes these skins by far the costliest articles we use."

By this time we had reached the utmost point to which the carriages
could take us, about a furlong from the platform on which I had rested
during my descent. Seeing that the Regent and his companion had
dismounted, I stopped and sprang down from my carriage, holding out my
hand to assist Eveena's descent, an attention which I thought seemed
to surprise her. Up to the platform the path was easy enough; after
that it became steep even for me, and certainly a troublesome and
difficult ascent for