ward the mountains. Beside me frolicked a
laughing brooklet, hurrying upon its noisy way down to the silent sea.
In its quieter pools I discovered many small fish, of four-or
five-pound weight I should imagine. In appearance, except as to size
and color, they were not unlike the whale of our own seas. As I
watched them playing about I discovered, not only that they suckled
their young, but that at intervals they rose to the surface to breathe
as well as to feed upon certain grasses and a strange, scarlet lichen
which grew upon the rocks just above the water line.

It was this last habit that gave me the opportunity I craved to capture
one of these herbivorous cetaceans--that is what Perry calls them--and
make as good a meal as one can on raw, warm-blooded fish; but I had
become rather used, by this time, to the eating of food in its natural
state, though I still balked on the eyes and entrails, much to the
amusement of Ghak, to whom I always passed these delicacies.

Crouching beside the brook, I waited until one of the diminutive purple
whales rose to nibble at the long grasses which overhung the water, and
then, like the beast of prey that man really is, I sprang upon my
victim, appeasing my hunger while he yet wriggled to escape.

Then I drank from the clear pool, and after washing my hands and face
continued my flight. Above the source of the brook I encountered a
rugged climb to the summit of a long ridge. Beyond was a steep
declivity to the shore of a placid, inland sea, upon the quiet surface
of which lay several beautiful islands.

The view was charming in the extreme, and as no man or beast was to be
seen that might threaten my new-found liberty, I slid over the edge of
the bluff, and half sliding, half falling, dropped into the delightful
valley, the very aspect of which seemed to offer a haven of peace and
security.

The gently sloping beach along which I walked was thickly strewn with
strangely shaped, colored shells; some empty, others still housing as
varied a multitude of mollusks as ever might have drawn out their
sluggish lives along the silent shores of the antediluvian seas of the
outer crust. As I walked I could not but compare myself with the first
man of that other world, so complete the solitude which surrounded me,
so primal and untouched the virgin wonders and beauties of adolescent
nature. I felt myself a second Adam wending my lonely way through the
childhood of a world, searching