g, should come
like palmers,--scrip and staff! Oh Orienda! thou wert our East, where
first dawned song and science, with Mardi's primal mornings! But now,
how changed! the dawn of light become a darkness, which we kindle with
the gleam of spears! On the world's ancestral hearth, we spill our
brothers' blood!"

"Herein," said Babbalanja, "have many distant tribes proved
parricidal. In times gone by, Luzianna hither sent her prom; Franko,
her scores of captains; and the Dykemen, their peddler hosts, with
yard-stick spears! But thou, oh Bello! lord of the empire lineage!
Noah of the moderns. Sire of the long line of nations yet in germ!--
thou, Bello, and thy locust armies, are the present curse of Orienda.
Down ancient streams, from holy plains, in rafts thy murdered float!
The pestilence that thins thy armies here, is bred of corpses, made by
thee. Maramma's priests, thy pious heralds, loud proclaim that of all
pagans, Orienda's most resist the truth!--ay! vain all pious voices,
that speak from clouds of war! The march of conquest through wild
provinces, may be the march of Mind; but not the march of Love."

"Thou, Bello!" cried Yoomy, "would'st wrest the crook from Alma's
hand, and place in it a spear. But vain to make a conqueror of him,
who put off the purple when he came to Mardi; and declining gilded
miters, entered the nations meekly on an ass."

"Oh curse of commerce!" cried Babbalanja, "that it barters souls for
gold. Bello! with opium, thou wouldst drug this land, and murder it in
sleep!--And what boot thy conquests here? Seed sown by spears but
seldom springs; and harvests reaped thereby, are poisoned by the
sickle's edge."

Yet on, and on we coasted; counting not the days.

"Oh, folds and flocks of nations! dusky tribes innumerable!" cried
Yoomy, "camped on plains and steppes; on thousand mountains,
worshiping the stars; in thousand valleys, offering up first-fruits,
till all the forests seem in flames;--where, in fire, the widow's
spirit mounts to meet her lord!--Oh, Orienda, in thee 'tis vain to
seek our Yillah!"

"How dark as death the night!" said Mohi, shaking the dew from his
braids, "the Heavens blaze not here with stars, as over Dominora's
land, and broad Vivenza."

One only constellation was beheld; but every star was brilliant as the
one, that promises the morning. That constellation was the Crux-
Australis,--the badge, and type of Alma.

And now, southwest we steered, till another island