such a clever young gentleman for his secretary, that he referred to
him to his friends as "my attache of legation;" nor did he lessen that
gentleman's dignity by telling anyone that the attache's salary was to
be five hundred dollars a year. His own salary was only fifteen
hundred dollars; and though his brother-in-law, Senator Rainsford,
tried his best to get the amount raised, he was unsuccessful. The
consulship to Opeki was instituted early in the '50's, to get rid of
and reward a third or fourth cousin of the President's, whose services
during the campaign were important, but whose after-presence was
embarrassing. He had been created consul to Opeki as being more
distant and unaccessible than any other known spot, and had lived and
died there; and so little was known of the island, and so difficult was
communication with it, that no one knew he was dead, until Captain
Travis, in his hungry haste for office, had uprooted the sad fact.
Captain Travis, as well as Albert, had a secondary reason for wishing
to visit Opeki. His physician had told him to go to some warm climate
for his rheumatism, and in accepting the consulship his object was
rather to follow out his doctor's orders at his country's expense, than
to serve his country at the expense of his rheumatism.

Albert could learn but very little of Opeki; nothing, indeed, but that
it was situated about one hundred miles from the Island of Octavia,
which island, in turn, was simply described as a coaling-station three
hundred miles distant from the coast of California. Steamers from San
Francisco to Yokohama stopped every third week at Octavia, and that was
all that either Captain Travis or his secretary could learn of their
new home. This was so very little, that Albert stipulated to stay only
as long as he liked it, and to return to the States within a few months
if he found such a change of plan desirable.

As he was going to what was an almost undiscovered country, he thought
it would be advisable to furnish himself with a supply of articles with
which he might trade with the native Opekians, and for this purpose he
purchased a large quantity of brass rods, because he had read that
Stanley did so, and added to these, brass curtain-chains, and about two
hundred leaden medals similar to those sold by street pedlers during
the Constitutional Centennial celebration in New York City.

He also collected even more beautiful but less exensive decorations for
C