n of streams, the
meshes of which are represented by islands in all the various stages
of consistency between water and dry land. Sometimes we floated along
the lovely curves of canals which flowed underneath ravishing arches
formed by the meeting overhead of great trees which leaned to each
other from either bank; while again our course led us between shores
which were mere plaits and interweavings of the long stems and
broad leaves of gigantic water-plants. The islands were but little
inhabited, and the few denizens we saw were engaged either in fishing
or in the manufacture of salt from the brackish water. Once we landed
at a collection of huts where were quartered the laborers of another
company which had been successfully engaged in prosecuting the same
experiment of rice-culture which our friend had just undertaken. It
was just at the time when the laborers were coming in from the fields.
The wife of the one to whose hut my curiosity led me had prepared his
evening meal of rice and curry, and he was just sitting down to it as
I approached. With incredible deftness he mingled the curry and the
rice together--he had no knife, fork or spoon--by using the end-joints
of his thumb and fingers: then, when he had sufficiently amalgamated
the mass, he rolled up a little ball of it, placed the ball upon
his crooked thumb as a boy does a marble, and shot it into his mouth
without losing a grain. Thus he despatched his meal, and I could not
but marvel at the neatness and dexterity which he displayed, with
scarcely more need of a finger-bowl at the end than the most delicate
feeder you shall see at Delmonico's.

The crops raised upon the rich alluvium of these islands were
enormous, and if the other difficulties attending cultivation in
such a region could be surmounted, there seemed to be no doubt of
our friend the babou's success in his venture. But it was a wild and
lonesome region, and as we floated along, after leaving the island,
up a canal which flamed in the sunset like a great illuminated baldric
slanting across the enormous shoulder of the world, a little air came
breathing over me as if it had just blown from the mysterious regions
where space and time are not, or are in different forms from those
we know. A sense of the crudity of these great expanses of
sea-becoming-land took possession of me; the horizon stretched away
like a mere endless continuation of marshes and streams; the face of
my companion was turned o