[Illustration: 0243] CHAPTER XX. _Peter goes to his father's--Traverses the Black Mountain--Takes a flight to Mount Alkoe--Gains the miners--Overcomes the governor's troops--Proclaims Georigetti king--Seizes the governor--Returns him the government--Peter makes laws with the consent of the people, and returns to Brandleguarp with deputies._ NO further project being ripe for execution, I took a journey home with my father to Arndrumnstake, and he would take all the children with him. Youwarkee and I stayed about six weeks, leaving all the children with my father. Upon my return, I frequently talked with Maleck about his country; who they originally were, and how long it had been inhabited, and what other countries bordered thereon, and how they lay. He told me his countrymen looked upon themselves to be very ancient, but they were not very numerous; for the old stock was almost worn out by the hardships they had undergone; that about three hundred years before, he said, as he had it from good report, there were a people from beyond the sea, or, as they called themselves, from the Little Lands, had strangely overrun them; and he had heard say they would have overrun this country too, but they thought it would not answer. He said, "when those people first came, they began to turn up the earth to a prodigious depth; and now," says he, "bringing some nasty hard earth of several sorts, they put it into great fires till it runs about like water, and then beat it about with great heavy things into several shapes; and some of it, sir," says he, "looks just like that stuff that lay at the bottom of your ship, and some almost white, and some red; for when I was a boy I was to have been sent to work amongst them, as my father did; but it having killed him, I came hither, as many more have done, to avoid it."--"And what do they do with it," says I, "when they have beat it about as you say?"--"Then," says he, "they carry it a long way to the sea."--"What then?" says I.--"Why, then the Little-landers take it, and swim over the sea with it."--"And what do they do with it?" says I.--"Why," says he, "there are other people who take it from them, and go away with it."--"Why do they let them take it?" says I.--"Because," says he, "they give them clothes for it."--"Do they want clothes," says I, "more than you?" He told me they had no graundee.--"And what other countries have you hereabout?"-- "There is one country," says he, "north of Alkoe, where they say there is just such another people as the Little-landers, and they get some of the things from Mount Alkoe."--"What do they do with them?" says I.--"I don't know," says he; "they fetch a great deal; but they won't let anybody come into their country."--"Is there nobody inhabits between the Mountain Alkoe and the sea?" He told me no, the Little-landers would not let them.