en, and how unpleasant from the
traces of its recent creation. The first man, quoth old Bardianna,
must have felt like one going into a new habitation, where the
bamboos are green. Is there not a legend in Maramma, that his family
were long troubled with influenzas and catarrhs?"

"Oh Time, Time, Time!" cried Yoomy--"it is Time, old midsummer Time,
that has made the old world what it is. Time hoared the old
mountains, and balded their old summits, and spread the old prairies,
and built the old forests, and molded the old vales. It is Time that
has worn glorious old channels for the glorious old rivers, and
rounded the old lakes, and deepened the old sea! It is Time--"

"Ay, full time to cease," cried Media. "What have you to do with
cogitations not in verse, minstrel? Leave prose to Babbalanja, who is
prosy enough."

"Even so," said Babbalanja, "Yoomy, you have overstepped your
province. My lord Media well knows, that your business is to make the
metal in you jingle in tags, not ring in the ingot."

CHAPTER XC
Rare Sport At Ohonoo

Approached from the northward, Ohonoo, midway cloven down to the sea,
one half a level plain; the other, three mountain terraces--Ohonoo
looks like the first steps of a gigantic way to the sun. And such, if
Braid-Beard spoke truth, it had formerly been.

"Ere Mardi was made," said that true old chronicler, "Vivo, one of
the genii, built a ladder of mountains whereby to go up and go down.
And of this ladder, the island of Ohonoo was the base. But wandering
here and there, incognito in a vapor, so much wickedness did Vivo spy
out, that in high dudgeon he hurried up his ladder, knocking the
mountains from under him as he went. These here and there fell into
the lagoon, forming many isles, now green and luxuriant; which, with
those sprouting from seeds dropped by a bird from the moon, comprise
all the groups in the reef."

Surely, oh, surely, if I live till Mardi be forgotten by Mardi, I
shall not forget the sight that greeted us, as we drew nigh the
shores of this same island of Ohonoo; for was not all Ohonoo bathing
in the surf of the sea?

But let the picture be painted.

Where eastward the ocean rolls surging against the outer reef of
Mardi, there, facing a flood-gate in the barrier, stands cloven
Ohonoo; her plains sloping outward to the sea, her mountains a
bulwark behind. As at Juam, where the wild billows from seaward roll
in upon its cliffs; much more at Ohonoo, in bi