"Those are the Delectable Mountains," he informed me; "and down on a
hollow between the two ranges is the Happy Valley."
"Where Rasselas lived?"
"Yes," he replied, "and beyond the Delectable Mountains, on the far
slope, lies Prester John's Kingdom, and there dwell anthropophagi, and
men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders. At least, so they say.
For my part, I have never seen any such. And I have now no desire to go
to Prester John's Kingdom, since I have been told that he has lately
married Pope Joan. Do you see that grove of trees there at the base of
the mountains?"
I answered that I thought I could distinguish weirdly contorted
branches and strangely shivering foliage.
"That is the deadly upas-tree," he explained, "and it is as much as a
man's life is worth to lie down in the shade of its twisted limbs. I
slept there, on that point where the trees are the thickest, for a
fortnight a century or so ago--but all I had for my pains was a
headache. Still I should not advise you to adventure yourself under the
shadow of those melancholy boughs."
I confess at once that I was little prompted to a visit so dangerous
and so profitless.
"Profitless?" he repeated. "As to that I am not so certain, for if you
have a mind to see the rarest animals in the world, you could there
sate your curiosity. On the shore, between the foot-hills and the grove
of upas, is a park of wild beasts, the like of which no man has looked
upon elsewhere. Even from the deck of this ship I have seen more than
once a drove of unicorns, or a herd of centaurs, come down to the water
to drink; and sometimes I have caught a pleasant glimpse of satyrs and
fauns dancing in the sunlight. And once indeed--I shall never forget
that extraordinary spectacle--as I sped past with every sail set and a
ten-knot breeze astern, I saw the phoenix blaze up in its new birth,
while the little salamanders frisked in the intense flame."
"The phoenix?" I cried. "You have seen the phoenix?"
"In just this latitude," he answered, "but it was about nine o'clock in
the evening and I remember that the new moon was setting behind the
mountains when I happened to come on deck."
"And what was the phoenix like?" I asked.
"Really," he replied, "the bird was almost as Herodotus described her,
of the make and size of the eagle, with a plumage partly red and partly
golden. If we go by the point by noon, perhaps you may see her for
yourself."
"Is she there still?" I asked, in wonder.
"Why not?" he returned. "All the game of this sort is carefully
preserved and the law is off on phoenixes only once in a century.
Why, if it were not for the keepers, there soon would not be a single
griffin or dragon left, not a single sphinx, not a single chimaera. Even
as it is, I am told they do not breed as freely now as when they could
roam the whole world in safety. That is why the game laws are so
rigorous. Indeed, I am informed and believe that it is not permitted to
kill the were-wolves even when their howling, as they run at large at
night, prevents all sleep. It is true, of course, that very few people
care to remain in such a neighborhood."
"I should think not," I agreed. "And what manner of people are they who
dare to live here?"
"Along the shore there are a few harpies," he answered; "and now and
then I have seen a mermaid on the rocks combing her hair with a golden
comb as she sang to herself."
"Harpies?" I repeated, in disgust. "Why not the sea-serpent also?"
"There was a sea-serpent which lived for years in that cove yonder,"
said the Captain, pointing to a pleasant bay on the starboard, "but I
have not seen it lately. Unless I am in error, it had a pitched battle
hereabouts with a kraken. I don't remember who got the better of the
fight--but I haven't seen the snake since."
As I scanned the surface of the water to see if I might not detect some
trace of one or another of these marvellous beasts of the sea, I
remarked a bank of fog lying across our course.
"And what is this that we are coming to?" I inquired.
"That?" Captain Vanderdecken responded, indicating the misty outline
straight before us. "That is Altruria--at least it is so down in the
charts, but I have never set eyes on it actually. It belongs to Utopia,
you know; and they say that, although it is now on the level of the
earth, it used once to be a flying island--the same which was formerly
known as Laputa, and which was first visited and described by Captain
Lemuel Gulliver about the year 1727, or a little earlier."
"So that is Altruria," I said, trying in vain to see it more clearly.
"There was an Altrurian in New York not long ago, but I had no chance
of speech with him."
"They are pleasant folk, those Altrurians," said the Captain, "although
rather given to boasting. And they have really little enough to brag
about, after all. Their climate is execrable--I find it ever windy
hereabouts, and when I get in sight of that bank of fog, I always look
out for squalls. I don't know just what the population is now, but I
doubt if it is growing. You see, people talk about moving there to
live, but they are rarely in a hurry to do it, I notice. Nor are the
manufactures of the Altrurians as many as they were said to be. Their
chief export now is the famous Procrustean bed; although the old house
of Damocles & Co. still does a good business in swords. Their tonnage
is not what it used to be, and I'm told that they are issuing a good
deal of paper money now to try and keep the balance of trade in their
favor."
"Are there not many poets among the inhabitants of Altruria?" I asked.
"They are all poets and romancers of one kind or another," declared the
Captain. "Come below again into the cabin, and I will show you some of
their books."
The sky was now overcast and there was a chill wind blowing, so I was
not at all loath to leave the deck, and to follow Vanderdecken down the
steps into the cabin.
He took a thin volume from the table. "This," he said, "is one of their
books--'News from Nowhere,' it is called."
He extended it towards me, and I held out my hand for it, but it
slipped through my fingers. I started forward in a vain effort to seize
it.
As I did so, the walls and the floor of the cabin seemed to melt away
and to dissolve in air, and beyond them and taking their place were the
walls and floor of my own house. Then suddenly the clock on the
mantelpiece struck five, and I heard a bob-tail car rattling and
clattering past the door on its way across town to Union Square, and
thence to Greenwich Village, and so on down to the Hoboken Ferry.
Then I found myself on my own sofa, bending forward to pick up the
volume of Cyrano de Bergerac, which lay on the carpet at my feet. I sat
up erect and collected my thoughts as best I could after so strange a
journey. And I wondered why it was that no one had ever prepared a
primer of imaginary geography, giving to airy nothings a local
habitation and a name, and accompanying it with an atlas of maps in the
manner of the _Carte du Pays de Tendre_.
(1894.)