in the scene is laid of many a play, because its laws and
its customs are exactly what every playwright has need of; but no poet
has visited it for many years. Yet the Grand Duchess of Gerolstein,
whose domains lie partly within the boundaries of Scribia, is still a
subscriber to the _Gazette de Hollande_--the only newspaper I take
himself, by the way."

This last remark of the Captain's explained how it was that he had
been able to keep up with the news of the day, despite his constant
wanderings over the waste of waters; and what more natural in fact than
that the Flying Dutchman should be a regular reader of the _Holland
Gazette_?

Vanderdecken went forward into the prow of the vessel, calling to me to
follow.

"Do you see those peaks afar in the distance?" he asked, pointing over
the starboard bow.

I could just make out a saw-like outline in the direction indicated.

"Those are the Delectable Mountains," he informed me; "and down on a
hollow between the two ranges is the Happy Valley."

"Where Rasselas lived?"

"Yes," he replied, "and beyond the Delectable Mountains, on the far
slope, lies Prester John's Kingdom, and there dwell anthropophagi, and
men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders. At least, so they say.
For my part, I have never seen any such. And I have now no desire to go
to Prester John's Kingdom, since I have been told that he has lately
married Pope Joan. Do you see that grove of trees there at the base of
the mountains?"

I answered that I thought I could distinguish weirdly contorted
branches and strangely shivering foliage.

"That is the deadly upas-tree," he explained, "and it is as much as a
man's life is worth to lie down in the shade of its twisted limbs. I
slept there, on that point where the trees are the thickest, for a
fortnight a century or so ago--but all I had for my pains was a
headache. Still I should not advise you to adventure yourself under the
shadow of those melancholy boughs."

I confess at once that I was little prompted to a visit so dangerous
and so profitless.

"Profitless?" he repeated. "As to that I am not so certain, for if you
have a mind to see the rarest animals in the world, you could there
sate your curiosity. On the shore, between the foot-hills and the grove
of upas, is a park of wild beasts, the like of which no man has looked
upon elsewhere. Even from the deck of this ship I have seen more than
once a drove of unicorns, or a herd of centaurs,