I slept soundly, and was only awakened on hearing, as one does whilst wandering in the misty caverns of dreamland, a strange prolonged noise of peculiar timbre, the last reverberation of which had scarcely died away by the time I was fully conscious and had raised myself in bed. The room was filled with the early light of dawn, and from my pillow I could see beyond the open gallery the splendid disk of the sun's majesty emerge from the distant watery horizon. Hiridia was on his knees muttering prayers with arms extended and face turned towards the sunrise, whilst a servant of the palace, wearing the short blue tunic and blue trousers and blue scarf that constitute the royal livery, was also lying prone on the floor with his head towards the east. Their orisons, if praying they were, were extremely short, for in a trice both men were on their feet and all attention to my wants. I mean to speak later of the minutiæ of my daily life, but at this point I wish to hasten my reader and not to weary or detain him with petty diurnal details that I have settled to describe in another place. Let it suffice to say that I bathed, dressed and breakfasted to my complete satisfaction, and that having duly performed these matutinal duties I was glad to find myself at leisure to contemplate by the brilliant light of morning the veiled scene of the previous night. From the vantage ground of my exterior gallery I obtained a superb and intimate view of the great city of Tamarida and its surroundings. Imagine a compound of Naples, Algiers and Amalfi, each of these Mediterranean cities being built on steep slopes descending to the sea-shore, and yet such compound resulting in something totally dissimilar from any earthly town of my acquaintance. In size and arrangement Tamarida somewhat resembled the older portions of Naples that stretch from Sant' Elmo to the Monte di Dio; in setting I was reminded of Amalfi with its craggy headlands, though here on a grander scale; whilst in general character the cascade of dazzling white flat-roofed square houses of the Arab native town in Algiers suggested many points of comparison in this case. But though it was evident that my capital was very extensive, and that much of its area was thickly populated, nevertheless there seemed to be abundance of parks and gardens in all directions, forming oases of vivid greenery amongst the dense masses of small low squat dwellings. Roughly speaking, the city was divided into three portions, that were formed by two deep valleys, down each of which flowed a rapid clear torrent fed from the mountainous regions above. The two outer sections of this curving site were wholly occupied, as I have said, by houses and gardens of the citizens, apparently both rich and poor intermingled; whilst the central slope between the two streams was reserved for the palace and the main temple and other official buildings. Of these the palace took