thers
that he uttereth warning. And at every gate is a marvel not credible
until beholden.'

And I gathered three friends and said to them: 'We are what we have
seen and known. Let us journey now and behold Babbulkund, that our
minds may be beautified with it and our spirits made holier.'

So we took ship and travelled over the lifting sea, and remembered not
things done in the towns we knew, but laid away the thoughts of them
like soiled linen and put them by, and dreamed of Babbulkund.

But when we came to the land of which Babbulkund is the abiding glory,
we hired a caravan of camels and Arab guides, and passed southwards
in the afternoon on the three days' journey through the desert that
should bring us to the white walls of Babbulkund. And the heat of
the sun shone upon us out of the bright grey sky, and the heat of the
desert beat up at us from below.

About sunset we halted and tethered our horses, while the Arabs
unloaded the provisions from the camels and prepared a fire out of
the dry scrub, for at sunset the heat of the desert departs from it
suddenly, like a bird. Then we saw a traveller approaching us on a
camel coming from the south. When he was come near we said to him:

'Come and encamp among us, for in the desert all men are brothers, and
we will give thee meat to eat and wine, or, if thou art bound by thy
faith, we will give thee some other drink that is not accursed by the
prophet.'

The traveller seated himself beside us on the sand, and crossed his
legs and answered:

'Hearken, and I will tell you of Babbulkund, City of Marvel.
Babbulkund stands just below the meeting of the rivers, where Oonrana,
River of Myth, flows into the Waters of Fable, even the old stream
Plegathanees. These, together, enter her northern gate rejoicing. Of
old they flowed in the dark through the Hill that Nehemoth, the first
of Pharaohs, carved into the City of Marvel. Sterile and desolate they
float far through the desert, each in the appointed cleft, with life
upon neither bank, but give birth in Babbulkund to the sacred purple
garden whereof all nations sing. Thither all the bees come on a
pilgrimage at evening by a secret way of the air. Once, from his
twilit kingdom, which he rules equally with the sun, the moon saw
and loved Babbulkund, clad with her purple garden; and the moon wooed
Babbulkund, and she sent him weeping away, for she is more beautiful
than all her sisters the stars. Her sisters come to her at