humble house, I would partake with keen appetite of the
precious fruits of my unlimited and self-producing garden.

In the neighboring streams were many kinds of fishes, some of which I
knew to be very good eating, and I could have caught and eaten as many
birds as I wished; but the fruits and nuts were so plentiful, and of so
many different sorts, that I cared for, and, indeed, needed, no other
kind of food.

Thus, several months passed away, and I was not weary of this paradise.
There was enough to occupy my mind in the examination of the structure
and mode of growth of a vast number of species of plants. Their
flowering, their fruitage, and their decay offered a boundless field
for thought, and kept up a never-flagging interest.

For the first four months the sun traced his course through the heavens
to the north of me; I knew, therefore, that I was almost immediately
under the equator. For several days at the end of the four months, the
sun rose directly in the east, passing through the sky in a line
dividing it almost exactly into halves north and south. After that, for
six months, I had the great luminary to the south of me.

In all this time there was but little change in the weather. A short
period without rain was the exception. Otherwise, the mornings and
evenings were invariably clear, with a refreshing rain of about two
hours' duration in the middle of the day. In the afternoon the sun was,
of course, away from my cavern, shining upon the opposite side of the
mountain of solid rock, which rendered my abode delightfully cool in
the greatest heat of the day. Toward the end of the short dry period,
magnificent thunder-showers passed over my domain. Nothing could be
more glorious than these electrical displays of an equatorial sky, as I
sat snug and safe within the rocky shelter. The heaviest shower could
not wet me, the water without ran with a swift descent, from the cave,
and over the precipice into the lake below. It was not likely that the
lightning would take the trouble to creep in under the rock and there
find me out. And as for the thunder, I was not in the least afraid of
it, but gloried in its loud peals and distant reverberations among the
encompassing mountains.

It was during the violence of one of these tempests that a parrot flew
into my comfortable quarters.

"Hallo! my fine fellow!" said I. "Where do you come from, and what do
you want here?"

It flew about the room looking for a place