, I was obliged to select only the smallest tusks, as not too
heavy for me. I was soon furnished and equipped with all these, and
commenced immediately, as private philosopher, my new course of life.

I roamed about the earth, now determining the altitudes of mountains;
now the temperature of its springs and the air; now contemplating the
animal, now inquiring into the vegetable tribes. I hastened from the
equator to the pole, from one world to the other, comparing facts with
facts. The eggs of the African ostrich or the northern sea-fowl, and
fruits, especially of the tropical palms and bananas, were even
my ordinary food. In lieu of happiness I had tobacco, and of human
society and the ties of love, one faithful poodle, which guarded my
cave in the Thebais, and, when I returned home with fresh treasures,
sprang joyfully toward me and gave me still a human feeling that I was
not alone on the earth. An adventure was yet destined to conduct me
back amongst mankind.

CHAPTER XI

As I once scotched my boots on the shores of the north and gathered
lichens and sea-weed, an ice-bear came unawares upon me round the
corner of a rock. Flinging off my slippers, I would step over to an
opposite island, to which a naked crag which protruded midway from
the waves offered me a passage. I stepped with one foot firmly on
the rock, and plunged over on the other side into the sea, one of my
slippers having unobserved remained fast on the foot.

The excessive cold seized on me; I with difficulty rescued my life
from this danger; and the moment I reached land, I ran with the utmost
speed to the Lybyan desert in order to dry myself in the sun, but,
as I was here exposed, it burned me so furiously on the head that I
staggered back again very ill toward the north. I sought to relieve
myself by rapid motion, and ran with swift, uncertain steps, from west
to east, from east to west. I found myself now in the day, now in the
night; now in summer, now in the winter's cold.

I know not how long I thus reeled about on the earth. A burning fever
glowed in my veins; with deepest distress I felt my senses forsaking
me. As mischief would have it, in my incautious career, I now trod on
some one's foot; I must have hurt him; I received a heavy blow, and
fell to the ground.

When I again returned to consciousness, I lay comfortably in a good
bed, which stood amongst many other beds in a handsome hall. Some one
sat at my head; people went th