appetites, were suddenly developed to a pitch beyond what I had ever
dreamed, and being thus at one and the same time gratified to the fullest
extent of their preternatural capacity, the result was a single harmonious
sensation, to describe which human language has no epithet. Mahomet's
Paradise, with its palaces of ruby and emerald, its airs of musk and
cassia, and its rivers colder than snow and sweeter than honey, would have
been a poor and mean terminus for my arcade of rainbows. Yet in the
character of this paradise, in the gorgeous fancies of the Arabian Nights,
in the glow and luxury of all Oriental poetry, I now recognize more or
less of the agency of hasheesh.

The fulness of my rapture expanded the sense of time; and though the whole
vision was probably not more than five minutes in passing through my mind,
years seemed to have elapsed while I shot under the dazzling myriads of
rainbow arches. By and by, the rainbows, the barque of pearl and jewels,
and the desert of golden sand, vanished; and, still bathed in light and
perfume, I found myself in a land of green and flowery lawns, divided by
hills of gently undulating outline. But, although the vegetation was the
richest of earth, there were neither streams nor fountains to be seen; and
the people who came from the hills, with brilliant garments that shone in
the sun, besought me to give them the blessing of water. Their hands were
full of branches of the coral honeysuckle, in bloom. These I took; and,
breaking off the flowers one by one, set them in the earth. The slender,
trumpet-like tubes immediately became shafts of masonry, and sank deep
into the earth; the lip of the flower changed into a circular mouth of
rose-colored marble, and the people, leaning over its brink, lowered their
pitchers to the bottom with cords, and drew them up again, filled to the
brim, and dripping with honey.

The most remarkable feature of these illusions was, that at the time when
I was most completely under their influence, I knew myself to be seated in
the tower of Antonio's hotel in Damascus, knew that I had taken hasheesh,
and that the strange, gorgeous and ludicrous fancies which possessed me,
were the effect of it. At the very same instant that I looked upon the
Valley of the Nile from the pyramid, slid over the Desert, or created my
marvellous wells in that beautiful pastoral country, I saw the furniture
of my room, its mosaic pavement, the quaint Saracenic niches in the