vite me to come to the table
with them,) gave me still greater assurance, since I found it composed
wholly of fruits and cereals. After their dinner, during which it was
evident that they were engaged in a very lively discussion of their
visitor or captive, some of the family flew away, and in the course of
an hour returned, accompanied by half a dozen others, whom I afterwards
found were the most learned naturalists of my captor's acquaintance. I
was invited by pantomime to walk out into the open air, and of course
accepted the invitation. Never was there such a Babel of musical tones
as that which assailed my ears while these six learned--(what shall I
call them? since their own name is not expressible by the letters of any
alphabet)--learned men discussed me from every point of view. The mild
and inoffensive appearance of the people, and the evident kindness
mingled with their curiosity, had entirely disarmed my suspicions, and I
as gladly showed them what I could do as I watched to see their habits.
The whole afternoon was passed in exhibiting to these strange beings all
of the various gaits and modes of motion and gymnastic exercises which I
had ever learned.

After supper my captor led me to a separate arbor, and pointed to a bed
of soft, white straw, upon which I immediately stretched myself, and he
retired. Presently I arose and attempted to go out, but found that he
had fastened the door on the outside. It was not pleasant to find myself
a prisoner; but that subject was instantly driven from my mind as I
looked out through the lattice and saw Sagittarius, with no signs of the
planet Mars. I returned to my straw; and, after the excitement of the
day had subsided, I fell asleep and slept until after sunrise. My captor
soon after appeared, bringing a basket of delicious fruits and bread.
When I had eaten freely, he allowed me to wander at will, setting first
a boy on top of my arbor, apparently to watch that I did not wander out
of sight. I walked about and found that the homestead of my captor
consisted of seven arbors in a grove of fruit-trees, with about a dozen
acres of corn adjoining. This corn is a perennial, like our grass, and a
field once planted yields in good land fifteen or twenty crops with only
the labor of gathering. It then becomes exhausted, and the canes are
burnt at a particular season, which destroys the roots, and prepares the
ground admirably for fruit-trees. There were no stables about the pl