But we have reached the Prince’s palace. It is a succession of wonderful terraces, beginning at the river front, and extending back to the hills behind it. Each terrace is supported by a row of slender columns, and on the outer edge of each a carved railing leads to a graceful outside stairway that ascends from one step of flowers to the next. At the summit, on a level with the hills, the last step forms a round colonnaded eyrie, on the top of which the sun still lingers. Along the terraces are groups of waiting people who, as we approach, wave tranquilly their white arms to the Prince. Their dress and attitudes suggest some dim, forgotten land of the East. Us they regard with placid curiosity, yet with a gentle friendliness evident in their faces. Now, from the wide portal of the lower story, come many down the broad, white steps to greet us. Young are they all, and beautiful—creatures of an unknown world, while from either side troop bare-armed boys and girls, chanting a low, rhythmic melody of welcome. So are we come at last to the land of my fancy. And a land of fancy indeed it seems to us. A harbor for vanished argosies and forgotten dreams. A port for lost rhymes and strayed melodies—for discarded magic and alchemies long dead. And it is in this enchanted vale that we find once more the shelter of human habitation. We shall rest to-night with the Prince of the Purple Fields. [Illustration: THE PALACE OF THE PRINCE. “A harbor for vanished argosies and forgotten dreams.”—Page 242. ] XXIX. A LAND OF THE HEART’S DESIRE. Oct. 12. This is the land of harmony. Here, shut in from the outer world by the crystal walls of the ages, rhythmic vibrations of the universe have blossomed in a fair, frail, almost supernatural life. Here the ideals of Ferratoni are the realities of the daily round, while the dreams of Edith Gale are but as the play language of little children. Here, shut away from the greed and struggle of the life we know—few in numbers and simple in their material needs, fragile and brief in their span of physical existence and plunged for half the year into a sunless period of contemplation—the lives of the people have linked themselves with the sun and stars, with the woods and fields, with the winds and waters, and with each other, in one rare, universal chord. It is the natural result of the long periods of sun and darkness. The polar night binds them in closer sympathy, even as it did those of the Billowcrest, while during the long sunny day they have only to bask in the sun and dream, and let the fecund soil provide amply for their wants. There is no need of struggle—no effort, save to retain life, if I may apply that term to this languorous melody of existence wherein greed, jealousy, vanity and the other elements of discord find no place.