year, without planting. Our sweets are from the sap of a tree, even finer and more delicate of flavor than our northern maple. Wine we have from the wild grapes that ripen later in great abundance.

Within the palace I find many curious little lamps and torches, their provision against the long night. The walls and floors are draped with yielding fabrics, woven from the silken fleece of the goat, and from the long hair of the "skipteroon." Of feather work, too, I have seen some delicate examples. Their looms for weaving, their implements for harvesting, their utensils for preparing food, are ali of the simplest and most primitive form, such as our earliest ancestors might have employed, and as may be in use to-day in lands where mechanism has made little or no progress. Their one attempt in this direction is their invention for dispelling darkness, and this has not yet been shown to us, for the complaisant Prince has been quiescent since our arrival, and we have fallen into the way of it all, and are willing to procrastinate, and to keep on procrastinating while the circling sun dispenses the anodyne of eternal afternoon.

It is not strange that like the nations of the Incas these people should be worshippers of the sun. To them comes the fullest realization of its lifegiving glory, and the joyless stagnation of the death-breathing dark. We who sleep through

much of the sun's absence come naturally to regard it somewhat as a useful and not always agreeable adjunct to our lives. Yet even we, after days of dull weather-black nights and murky morningswelcome joyously the return of the life-giver, while to these people it would be strange indeed if the great luminary had not become at least the shining symbol of Infinity. The terrace form of their dwelling is, I think, suggested by the sun's gradual circling ascent and descent of the sky, and from the topmost step or story they assemble to bid it joyous welcome and reverential farewell. The world itself here appears to be a sort of terrace, the first step of which we ascended when we reached the Violet Fields. The next is the approach to the land ruled over by the Prince's serene sister, whom we are soon to see, for though we are loth to depart from this pleasant vale, we are daily required by a mental message from her to proceed farther on our journey.

To-morrow, therefore, or the next day, or the day after, we must ascend still higher this enchanted river and "pause not unduly, nor idly linger "-so her august message runs—until we shall arrive at the palace of the Lady of the Lilied Hills.

XXX.

THE LADY OF THE LILIES.

AND now, indeed, we are in the land of anodyne and oblivion. Once more we dream and forget, and the palace of the Prince dims out and fades, even as the barges that brought us drift back down the tide and disappear in the distant blue. Here is the world's enchanted and perfumed casket, and here within it lies the world's rarest jewel of sorcerythe Princess of the Lilied Hills.

We have been here but a brief time-I no longer keep a record of the days-and we are bound hand and foot, as it were, by the spell of this Circe of the South. In the first moment that we were ushered into her presence, and beheld her in her white robe of state, embroidered with the pale yellow flower of her kingdom, whatever remained to us of the past slipped away like water through the fingers. Chauncey Gale forgot that he had a yacht, and both of us that he had a daughter. Mr. Sturritt forgot everything but his packages of pink lozenges, which he reverentially laid at her feet, thereby earning her cordial acknowledgments and our bitter jealousy.

Ferratoni, however, was not long at a loss. He could converse with her, and it became evident almost from the start that he did not care to translate either fully or literally. He cut out, and revised, and stumbled. She detected his difficulty, of course, and seemed to reprove him. Then he gave up translating altogether, and the rest of us sat there, simply staring at her, until Gale got himself together and recited the "Burning Deck," while I suffered in spirit because reciting did not seem to be quite what I wanted to do, and I could remember no other tricks to perform.

I finally prevailed upon Ferratoni to tell her that it was I who had conceived the expedition, whereupon Gale hastily claimed credit for having made it possible, while Mr. Sturritt-Sturritt the timid and unassuming-boldly stated that without him and his tablets we should have perished by the wayside. It was altogether distressing to hear them.

When we were through, she looked fondly at Ferratoni, and then, still tenderly regarding him, expressed thanks to all of us with a fervency that was gratifying to him no doubt, but that to the rest of us seemed a poor reward.

She added, presently, that as I was interested in the central point of the kingdom-the South Pole, of course and that as Gale was interested in the people's homes and firesides, and Mr.

Sturritt in the matter of their food, she would have us escorted about with a view to our observation of these things, but that Ferratoni, whose life and aims were not so widely different from her own, would remain with her to discuss the problems in which they were mutually interested.

Perhaps she did not put it just in this way, but Ferratoni did in his translation; then they both turned away and forgot our existence. We were conducted outside, ere long, and there was a barge at the door into which it was indicated that we should enter.

We did not do so, however. The boatmen were in no haste and neither were we. There is no haste in this land. We lay down by the shore and looked serenely to the south where rose a lofty terraced temple, the top of which we had observed from a great distance. We had been told it was their chief temple of worship, and located exactly in the center of the sun's daily circuit. Resting thus on the earth's axis, it became for us the outward and material symbol of our objective point-of my life's ambition. It was the South Pole!

And now that we are here and it rises before us, the eagerness to set foot upon that magic point-to scale and stand triumphant on the apex of the pole itself, as it were, has passed.

"So that is the South Pole," murmurs Gale.