THE GAME OF THE WONDERFUL ISLANDS
In this game the floor is the sea. Half--rather the larger half because
of some instinctive right of primogeniture--is assigned to the elder of
my two sons (he is, as it were, its Olympian), and the other half goes
to his brother. We distribute our boards about the sea in an
archipelagic manner. We then dress our islands, objecting strongly to
too close a scrutiny of our proceedings until we have done. Here, in
the illustration, is such an archipelago ready for its explorers, or
rather on the verge of exploration. There are altogether four islands,
two to the reader's right and two to the left, and the nearer ones are
the more northerly; it is as many as we could get into the camera. The
northern island to the right is most advanced in civilization, and is
chiefly temple. That temple has a flat roof, diversified by domes made
of half Easter eggs and cardboard cones. These are surmounted by
decorative work of a flamboyant character in plasticine, designed by G.
P. W. An oriental population crowds the courtyard and pours out upon
the roadway. Note the grotesque plasticine monsters who guard the
portals, also by G. P. W., who had a free hand with the architecture of
this remarkable specimen of eastern religiosity. They are nothing, you
may be sure, to the gigantic idols inside, out of the reach of the
sacrilegious camera. To the right is a tropical thatched hut. The
thatched roof is really that nice ribbed paper that comes round
bottles--a priceless boon to these games. All that comes into the house
is saved for us. The owner of the hut lounges outside the door. He is a
dismounted cavalry-corps man, and he owns one cow. His fence, I may
note, belonged to a little wooden farm we bought in Switzerland. Its
human inhabitants are scattered; its beasts follow a precarious living
as wild guinea-pigs on the islands to the south.
Your attention is particularly directed to the trees about and behind
the temple, which thicken to a forest on the further island to the
right. These trees we make of twigs taken from trees and bushes in the
garden, and stuck into holes in our boards. Formerly we lived in a
house with a little wood close by, and our forests were wonderful. Now
we are restricted to our garden, and we could get nothing for this set
out but jasmine and pear. Both have wilted a little, and are not nearly
such spirited trees as you can make out of fir trees, for instance. It
is for these woods chiefly that we have our planks perforated with
little holes. No tin trees can ever be so plausible and various and
jolly as these. With a good garden to draw upon one can make terrific
sombre woods, and then lie down and look through them at lonely
horsemen or wandering beasts.
That further island on the right is a less settled country than the
island of the temple. Camels, you note, run wild there; there is a sort
of dwarf elephant, similar to the now extinct kind of which one finds
skeletons in Malta, pigs, a red parrot, and other such creatures, of
lead and wood. The pear-trees are fine. It is those which have
attracted white settlers (I suppose they are), whose thatched huts are
to be seen both upon the beach and in-land. By the huts on the beach
lie a number of pear-tree logs; but a raid of negroid savages from the
to the left is in the only settler is the man in a adjacent island
progress, and clearly visible rifleman's uniform running inland for
help. Beyond, peeping out among the trees, are the supports he seeks.
These same negroid savages are as bold as they are ferocious. They
cross arms of the sea upon their rude canoes, made simply of a strip of
cardboard. Their own island, the one to the south-left, is a rocky
wilderness containing caves. Their chief food is the wild-goat, but in
pursuit of these creatures you will also sometimes find the brown bear,
who sits--he is small but perceptible to the careful student--in the
mouth of his cave. Here, too, you will distinguish small guinea
pig-like creatures of wood, in happier days the inhabitants of that
Swiss farm. Sunken rocks off this island are indicated by a white foam
which takes the form of letters, and you will also note a whirlpool
between the two islands to the right.
Finally comes the island nearest to the reader on the left. This also
is wild and rocky, inhabited not by negroid blacks, but by Indians,
whose tents, made by F. R. W. out of ordinary brown paper and adorned
with chalk totems of a rude and characteristic kind, pour forth their
fierce and well-armed inhabitants at the intimation of an invader. The
rocks on this island, let me remark, have great mineral wealth. Among
them are to be found not only sheets and veins of silver paper, but
great nuggets of metal, obtained by the melting down of hopelessly
broken soldiers in an iron spoon. Note, too, the peculiar and romantic
shell beach of this country. It is an island of exceptional interest to
the geologist and scientific explorer. The Indians, you observe, have
domesticated one leaden and one wooden cow.
This is how the game would be set out. Then we build ships and explore
these islands, but in these pictures the ships are represented as
already arriving. The ships are built out of our wooden bricks on flat
keels made of two wooden pieces of 9 x 4-1/2; inches, which are very
convenient to push about over the floor. Captain G. P. W. is steaming
into the bay between the eastern and western islands. He carries heavy
guns, his ship bristles with an extremely aggressive soldiery, who
appear to be blazing away for the mere love of the thing. (I suspect
him of Imperialist intentions.) Captain F. R. W. is apparently at
anchor between his northern and southern islands. His ship is of a
slightly more pacific type. I note on his deck a lady and a gentleman
(of German origin) with a bag, two of our all too rare civilians. No
doubt the bag contains samples and a small conversation dictionary in
the negroid dialects. (I think F. R. W. may turn out to be a Liberal.)
Perhaps he will sail on and rescue the raided huts, perhaps he will
land and build a jetty, and begin mining among the rocks to fill his
hold with silver. Perhaps the natives will kill and eat the gentleman
with the bag. All that is for Captain F. R. W. to decide.
You see how the game goes on. We land and alter things, and build and
rearrange, and hoist paper flags on pins, and subjugate populations,
and confer all the blessings of civilization upon these lands. We keep
them going for days. And at last, as we begin to tire of them, comes
the scrubbing brush, and we must burn our trees and dismantle our
islands, and put our soldiers in the little nests of drawers, and stand
the island boards up against the wall, and put everything away. Then
perhaps, after a few days, we begin upon some other such game, just as
we feel disposed. But it is never quite the same game, never. Another
time it may be wildernesses for example, and the boards are hills, and
never a drop of water is to be found except for the lakes and rivers we
may mark out in chalk. But after one example others are easy, and next
I will tell you of our way of making towns.