My absences from Camariss[a:] were of longer or shorter duration, but the love of my pursuit so grew upon me that only affection for my aging parents drew me to the arms ever ready to welcome me. Early in my fifty-second year my mother passed to our Spirit World. My father, grief stricken and aged beyond a century, quickly followed her, as, I then believed, into endless silence, but as I how know, into realms inconceivably glorious. Thus I became hereditary governor of Ondû. Much against the wishes of my parents I had not married, my pursuit affording me little time or inclination for the society of women. Then, too, early in my youth I had observed that the most poignant sorrows had their roots in human affection; that those who loved least, sorrowed least. With pitying eyes and a pained heart I had often had occasion to sympathize with those whose light of life went out, when death tore from their clinging arms their dearest ones, and I fully realized that should I allow myself the ecstasy of loving an adorable woman I should only be courting for her or for myself eventual despair. So I did not marry. On becoming governor of Ondû I learned that the duties of my office and other affairs left me insufficient leisure to care for the valuable collections of many years, and I resolved to add them to the already priceless treasures of the Syffondû (museum) of the Acclinum (zoölogical department) and the Rinvoh (aquarium). During my wanderings I had from time to time become possessed of strange creatures, some living, some dead. The water serpent, which I learn you already have seen, was captured in Tsoivan Cryfimo, which is one of a series of salt lakes, or, as De L'Ester terms them, inland salt seas, nearly on the opposite side of Ento. At the time of his capture Gandûlan[a:] was about one-third his present size and I had been governor of Ondû for quite forty years. Three years later I passed to our Spirit World, and my paternal uncle, Und[a:] Gamond[a:], became my successor, but only for a period of twelve years, when he followed me, and his son, Und[a:] Gamond[a:], became and at this time is governor of the Province of Ondû. Thus you may perceive that Gandûlan[a:] is not in his early youth. How long he may yet survive as the last of his species no one can say.