THESE halls of nutrition and medication were situated on a great promontory extending miles into the sea. It had been ledged and bastioned with lava walls, and round the gleaming edifice ran a balcony or rocky platform, which broke the fury of any ambitious billows that might threaten the crystal translucence of the walls. Here, overlooking the sea, the Limanorans could drink in its medicating breath; here in the vast hall could they take that restful exercise which is the first essential of all life; here they could commune with their own souls or with the stars and listen to the ever-changing rhythm of the waves as they broke into spray or climbed to the rocky wall beneath. They considered this chamber of the ocean and the stars as more medicant and alimentary than any they could make with human hands; hence it was that they had thrown out this great projection into the sea, where they could spend most of their hours of nutrition. Along its highest ridge ran a series of the noblest buildings that ever met my eye, unlike all other edifices I had ever heard of in style of architecture and method of grouping, but resembling in their bewildering variety and inherent symmetry the gleaming clusters of night. Countless points of fire aimed at the heavens from spires and towers which shone with rainbow fluctuation in the sun. There was a milky way of jewelled pinnacles; and around were strewn fire-flashing constellations of jewel minarets and domes. Innumerable centres of varied roof and aspiring form led the eye by their incompleteness to some great centre; and soon it rested calmly on the vast yet ever-broken and changing dome that like a snow-clad mountain-ridge mastered every spirit that was drawn to it. Alone this galaxy of clustered starry forms stood out above the sea, undwarfed by any neighbouring land and masterful over the billows below it. A true temple was it even in the presence of the universe of suns that stretched out into endless night. Within it surely might the spirit of man feel no unholy doubts of its immortal destiny or of its kinship with the divine. Pure and noble orison might here be raised to the Maker of the makers of this shrine; all trivial and mean thoughts would here be sacrilege. When night fell, the stars in the heavens held spirit communion with this their brother. This was Oomalefa, or the jewel of immortal longings. My first visit to Oomalefa is engraved upon the record of my past, for it was one of my first expeditions under the guidance of Thyriel. The beauty of her spirit dawned upon me as the day passed; afterwards I came to see that it was everything that my own needed, but at the time I could not reason out the nature of my feelings. She grew upon me as the day upon the night, and when we parted it was as if my sun had set; helpless and stumbling, my spirit groped for the guiding dawn again; I was forlorn, reaching out for my other half in a lonely universe.