‘As I was walking in the shade of a row of trees which lined the street, I was accosted by a very ancient merchant of the Parsee persuasion, who asked me if I had not come from England in the ship which arrived that morning. I replied that I had been a passenger in her, and we fell into conversation. The old gentleman was not nearly so offensive to the senses as are the European Yahoos, and he was perfectly well acquainted with the English tongue. I found that, in the exercise of his calling, he had travelled a great deal in divers parts of Asia; and, from his way of talk, I gathered that the Yahoos of those countries were fully as abominable in his eyes as the European specimens of the breed were in mine own. This common sentiment of loathing for our neighbours proved to ourselves an occasion of union, and before long there was between us as warm a friendship as two Yahoos are capable of entertaining for each other. ‘One day, as he was relating some of his adventures, he told me that, in the days of his youth, when travelling on mercantile business in the Himalayah Mountains, he chanced to meet a Thibetian gentleman named Koot Homi. Having on one occasion done a signal service to this Mr. Homi, it came to pass that the Thibetian, who was of a grateful turn of mind, had always showed himself a faithful friend to the Parsee. The old merchant further informed me that Homi was a man endowed with many and strange gifts; that the famous wonders worked by the Indian magicians or jugglers were the merest play of babies, when compared with the feats accomplished by Homi; and that if you only whispered his name into the ear of one of these magicians when engaged at his work, the magician would give a frightful howl, and run as if Beelzebub himself was in pursuit of him. ‘Among other wonders wrought by this Homi was one which struck me as the most notable of all. This was the power of moving himself, and various articles in contact with his person, in some inscrutable way from one district of the earth’s surface to another, no matter how remote, and apparently in an instant of time. I asked my friend whether he had ever visited Mr. Homi in Thibet. He told me that he had been there, but only once; that a long and terrible journey had to be undertaken; frightful mountain-passes had to be surmounted; that the country in which the magician’s abode was fixed was inhabited by a strange society or brotherhood, the members of which were endowed with many of the powers possessed by Homi himself, who was their chief; and that access, unless by a special permission, which was very rarely granted, was an absolute impossibility.