LITMIR.BIZ

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of our state, and to adapt yourself to your new circumstances as well as you can. And," he added, "I believe you to be of sufficient intelligence to learn our ways rapidly, and, once you have mastered them, I venture to say you will not be disposed to return to the habits of your native land."

      "Indeed, sir," I said, "you make me extremely desirous to commence those studies which I am to go through in order to qualify myself for citizenship in your community. Everything I have observed since I first approached these islands has struck me with the most profound surprise. The tethered barking seals, the aquatic policemen speaking English which seems to be the language of the country, the beauty of your forests, with their gigantic fruit-laden trees, and their magnificent flowering shrubs, the gorgeous colours and varieties of your birds, are to me strange ​and novel; but the broiling, stifling heat and the plague of flies would soon render a residence in this land intolerable."

      "On the land, I grant you," interrupted the Instructor, "but we do not live on the land, but in the water."

      "You astonish me more and more," I exclaimed; "how is it possible for human beings to live in the water? Their shape and muscular development are but ill-adapted for swimming, and though some of us have overcome the disadvantages of nature and can swim as well as dogs, still, the inconveniences of always remaining in the water and the fearful heat the head must be exposed to from the burning rays of the sun in this hottest region of the world, would suffice to prevent a long sojourn in such a situation."

      "Doubtless," he replied, "if we kept our heads above the water, we should suffer, as you have rightly stated, from the heat of the sun, but we are exempt from this inconvenience, for we live under the water."

      "That crowns all the wonderful things I have seen and heard since coming here," I exclaimed. "But how can human beings live beneath the water like fishes? They cannot transform their lungs into gills; their eyes are so constructed that contact with water destroys all useful vision. Then their bodies are of such specific gravity, that, unless they use considerable exertion, they must rise perpetually to the surface. In short," I added, rather petulantly, "I cannot regard what you have told me otherwise than as an attempt to hoax me, and, excuse me, but I think you do no credit to the office you hold under your Government, if you attempt to palm off such sorry jokes on those confided to your care."

      ​He smiled good-humouredly, and replied,—"I am neither surprised nor offended that you refuse credence to what I have said, for it is all so contrary to your previous experience and knowledge that it must be difficult for a man of intelligence and education, which I perceive you are" [here I became somewhat mollified and bowed], "to regard what I have told you otherwise than as a bad joke. However, you shall shortly be convinced that by the ingenuity of man these seemingly insuperable difficulties are capable of being overcome, and that, when driven out of the air by the stifling heat and vermin you have noticed, he can adapt himself to an aquatic life, and prove therein as much superior to the proper denizens of the watery element, as he is, under other circumstances, to the inhabitants of the dry land."

      He spoke with so much sincerity and candour, and was so courteous withal, that I begged him to forgive my outburst of petulance, and promised implicit belief to all he was so kind as to inform me of; "for," I said, "what I have already seen is so surprising and incredible that I am not justified in refusing credence to what a gentleman of your courtesy tells me, however opposed it seems to my previous experience."

      Our intercourse having been thus put on a pleasant footing, I was fairly installed as his disciple, and he immediately, in reply to my inquiries, began to give me an account of the mysterious country where fate had cast me, and its strange inhabitants. I shall give the substance of our numerous conversations in my Instructor's words, as nearly as I can remember them.

      "Some suppose," he said, "that these islands were originally peopled by a shipwrecked crew of ​men and women emigrating to some other part of the world. But our most learned pundits cite many circumstances that militate against this idea, and refer our origin to a much more remote time and quite a different race of men. And this latter idea is borne out by the fact that, scattered throughout the islands, are many monuments which could never have been constructed by an English race, and these monuments are covered with hieroglyphical inscriptions which have been read by the learned and refer to quite other manners and customs than ever obtained among men of European or, at least, Anglo-Saxon blood.

      "That English was not always the language of the inhabitants is evident, not only from these monuments, but from numerous ancient documents preserved in our museums, and also from the presence in our spoken language of many words and forms of speech which were never derived from the English tongue.

      "It is believed that the general habit of speaking and writing English dates from only a few centuries back, and is chiefly owing to the great number of English-speaking men and women who have from time to time been added to our community by means of shipwrecks; and as, until a very recent period, men of English race formed the vast majority of the seamen and travellers of the world, this predominance of the English language among us is hardly to be wondered at. An additional reason for the adoption of this language is that it is a much more convenient vehicle for thought than the ancient language of the island could ever have been, and that our literature is chiefly derived from the libraries that came into our ​possession from the shipwrecked British and American vessels.

      "French and German are by no means unknown among us, and we have at various times received the crews and passengers of vessels from other countries than England. But, for the reasons I have given, English has come to be the only language spoken by us; and our knowledge of all the changes that from time to time take place in the English language is derived from the continued accessions of men and books the wrecks on our reef bring us.

      "It is probable that the aboriginal inhabitants were a thick-skinned race who could stand the heat and could bear with impunity the assaults of the insects, for we find throughout the islands many traces of their dwellings and monuments, which; show that at one time the land was occupied by human beings.

      "It is not known at what precise period the habits of the people underwent such a change as to lead them to forsake entirely the land, except for certain necessary operations which you will learn hereafter and to betake themselves to an aquatic life.

      "It is probable that this change took place gradually. It is supposed that, as the Anglo-Saxon infusion increased, the race became less and less able to withstand the heat and other annoyances of a land-life; that they found immersion in the sea-water spared them many of the discomforts they experienced in the air; and that gradually, by little and little, the genius of our engineers and chemists succeeded in rendering a permanent or quasi-permanent abode under the water not only possible but absolutely preferable to a residence on the land.

      "This faculty we found ourselves to possess of ​adapting ourselves to a subaqueous life, early drew the attention of our philosophers to the probable evolution of the human race from some aquatic ancestor; and although all the missing links have not been discovered, it is considered highly probable that an animal allied to the seal-tribe was our not very remote progenitor. Some of our philosophers pretend, from the presence in man of certain rudimentary parts, to trace our origin to a fish; and a few go still farther, and affect to believe his parentage can be traced back I to a mollusc."

      "Ah," I interrupted, "our own philosophers go quite as far as yours. From noticing the monthly phases of some of our normal and morbid actions, they pretend to deduce the origin of man from a littoral ascidian mollusc that must have been powerfully affected by spring-tides to account for these phenomena of monthly periodicity in its descendants."

      "But," he replied, rather testily—as he evidently did not like to be interrupted, or perhaps he was unwilling to admit that the speculations of our philosophers were worthy to be ranked with those of his countrymen,—"as spring-tides happen fortnightly, I don't see what they could have to do with phases of a monthly character."

      "But you are aware," I rejoined, "that fortnightly periodicity has a tendency to become monthly; thus, our Fortnightly Review now only appears once a month."

      "Bosh!" he exclaimed, raising his left elbow as high as his shoulder, which I afterwards learned was the gesture employed in

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