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THE VOYAGE OF CAPTAIN POPANILLA
by Benjamin Disraeli
This narrative of an imaginary voyage was first published in 1827.
CHAPTER 1
There is an island in the Indian Ocean, so unfortunate as not yet to
have been visited either by Discovery Ships or Missionary Societies. It
is a place where all those things are constantly found which men most
desire to see, and with the sight of which they are seldom favoured. It
abounds in flowers, and fruit, and sunshine. Lofty mountains, covered
with green and mighty forests, except where the red rocks catch the
fierce beams of the blazing sun, bowery valleys, broad lakes, gigantic
trees, and gushing rivers bursting from rocky gorges, are crowned with a
purple and ever cloudless sky. Summer, in its most unctuous state and
most mellow majesty, is here perpetual. So intense and overpowering, in
the daytime, is the rich union of heat and perfume, that living animal
or creature is never visible; and were you and I to pluck, before
sunset, the huge fruit from yonder teeming tree, we might fancy
ourselves for the moment the future sinners of another Eden. Yet a
solitude it is not.
The island is surrounded by a calm and blue lagoon, formed by a ridge of
coral rocks, which break the swell of the ocean, and prevent the noxious
spray from banishing the rich shrubs which grow even to the water's
edge. It is a few minutes before sunset, that the first intimation of
animal existence in this seeming solitude is given, by the appearance of
mermaids; who, floating on the rosy sea, congregate about these rocks.
They sound a loud but melodious chorus from their sea-shells, and a
faint and distant chorus soon answers from the island. The mermaidens
immediately repeat their salutations, and are greeted with a nearer and
a louder answer. As the red and rayless sun drops into the glowing
waters, the choruses simultaneously join; and rushing from the woods,
and down the mountain steeps to the nearest shore, crowds of human
beings, at the same moment, appear and collect.
The inhabitants of this island, in form and face, do not misbecome the
clime and the country. With the vivacity of a Faun, the men combine the
strength of a Hercules and the beauty of an Adonis; and, as their more
interesting companions flash upon his presence, the least classical of
poets might be excused for imagining that, like their blessed Goddess,
the women had magically sprung from the brilliant foam of that ocean
which is gradually subsiding before them.
But sunset in this land is not the signal merely for the evidence of
human existence. At the moment that the Islanders, crowned with
flowers, and waving goblets and garlands, burst from their retreats,
upon each mountain peak a lion starts forward, stretches his proud tail,
and, bellowing to the sun, scours back exulting to his forest; immense
bodies, which before would have been mistaken for the trunks of trees,
now move into life, and serpents, untwining their green and glittering
folds, and slowly bending their crested heads around, seem proudly
conscious of a voluptuous existence; troops of monkeys leap from tree to
tree; panthers start forward, and alarmed, not alarming, instantly
vanish; a herd of milk-white elephants tramples over the back-ground of
the scene; and instead of gloomy owls and noxious beetles, to hail the
long-enduring twilight, from the bell of every opening flower beautiful
birds, radiant with every rainbow tint, rush with a long and living
melody into the cool air.
The twilight in this island is not that transient moment of unearthly
bliss, which, in our less favoured regions, always leaves us so
thoughtful and so sad; on the contrary, it lasts many hours, and
consequently the Islanders are neither moody nor sorrowful. As they
sleep during the day, four or five hours of 'tipsy dance and revelry'
are exercise and not fatigue. At length, even in this delightful
region, the rosy tint fades into purple, and the purple into blue; the
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