accomplishment which
naturally saved him the expense of stockings and shoes.

Presently, while the whole party from the boat was gazing at him with
mingled affection and disgust, he suddenly arose, and, in a somewhat
plumdomphious manner, hurried off towards the setting sun,--his steps
supported by two superincumbent confidential Cucumbers, and a large number
of Waterwagtails proceeding in advance of him by three and three in a
row,--till he finally disappeared on the brink of the western sky in a
crystal cloud of sudorific sand.

[Illustration]

So remarkable a sight, of course, impressed the four children very deeply;
and they returned immediately to their boat with a strong sense of
undeveloped asthma and a great appetite.

Shortly after this, the travellers were obliged to sail directly below some
high overhanging rocks, from the top of one of which a particularly odious
little boy, dressed in rose-colored knickerbockers, and with a pewter plate
upon his head, threw an enormous pumpkin at the boat, by which it was
instantly upset.

[Illustration]

But this upsetting was of no consequence, because all the party knew how to
swim very well: and, in fact, they preferred swimming about till after the
moon rose; when, the water growing chilly, they sponge-taneously entered
the boat. Meanwhile the Quangle-Wangle threw back the pumpkin with immense
force, so that it hit the rocks where the malicious little boy in
rose-colored knickerbockers was sitting; when, being quite full of
lucifer-matches, the pumpkin exploded surreptitiously into a thousand bits;
whereon the rocks instantly took fire, and the odious little boy became
unpleasantly hotter and hotter and hotter, till his knickerbockers were
turned quite green, and his nose was burnt off.

Two or three days after this had happened, they came to another place,
where they found nothing at all except some wide and deep pits full of
mulberry-jam. This is the property of the tiny, yellow-nosed Apes who
abound in these districts, and who store up the mulberry-jam for their food
in winter, when they mix it with pellucid pale periwinkle-soup, and serve
it out in wedgewood china-bowls, which grow freely all over that part of
the country. Only one of the yellow-nosed Apes was on the spot, and he was
fast asleep; yet the four travellers and the Quangle-Wangle and Pussy were
so terrified by the violence and sanguinary sound of his snoring, that they
merely took a small cupfu