nd sea.

Nothing then remained but to have a colony, and after much
consideration, long thought, and anxious deliberation, it was
announced to the chamber that the Belgians had a colony, and that the
colony was called "Guatemala."

When Sancho Panza appealed to Don Quixote, to realise his promised
dream of greatness, you may remember, he always asked for an island:
"Make me governor of an island!" There was something defined,
accurate, and tangible, as it were, in the sea-girt possession, that
suggested to the honest squire's mind the idea of perfect, independent
rule. And in the same way, the Belgians desired to have an island.

Some few, less imaginative, suspected, however, that an island must
always have its limit to importation quicker attained than a
continent, and they preferred some vast, unexplored tract, like India,
or Central America, where the consumption of corduroy and cast-iron
might have an unexhausted traffic for centuries.

Now, it is a difficult condition to find out that spot on a map which
should realise both expectations. Happily, however, M. Van de Weyer
had to deal with a kind and confiding people, whose knowledge of
geography is about equal to a blind man's appreciation of scarlet or
sky-blue. Not only, therefore, did he represent to one party, the
newly-acquired possession as an island, and to the other as a vast
continent, but he actually shifted its _locale_ about the globe, from
the tropics to the north-pole, with such admirable dexterity, that not
only is all cavil silenced about its commercial advantages, but its
very climate has an advocate in every taste, and an admirer in every
household. Steam-engines, therefore, are fabricated; cannon are cast;
railroads are in preparation; broadcloth is weaving; flax is growing;
lace is in progress, all through the kingdom, for the new colony of
Guatemala,--whose only inhabitants are little grateful for the
profound solicitude they are exciting, inasmuch as, being but rats and
sea-gulls, their modes of living and thinking give them a happy
indifference about steam-travelling, and the use of fine linen.

No matter;--the country is prospering--shares are rising--speculations
are rife--loans are effected every day in the week, and M. Van de
Weyer sleeps in the peaceful composure of a man who knows in his
heart, that even if they get their unwieldy craft to sea, there is not
a man in the kingdom who could, by any ingenuity, discover the
whereabout