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- 2026-01-30T20:48:09.927Z
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- 6054
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- CHAPTER XLIV.
Through Dominora, They Wander After Yillah
At last, withdrawing from the presence of King Bello, we went forth,
still intent on our search.
Many brave sights we saw. Fair fields; the whole island a garden; green
hedges all round; neat lodges, thick as white mice in the landscape;
old oak woods, hale and hearty as ever; old temples buried in ivy; old
shrines of old heroes, deep buried in broad groves of bay trees; old
rivers laden down with heavy-freighted canoes; humped hills, like
droves of camels, piled up with harvests; every sign and token of a
glorious abundance, every sign and token of generations of renown. Rare
sight! fine sight! none rarer, none finer in Mardi.
But roving on through this ravishing region, we passed through a corn-
field in full beard, where a haggard old reaper laid down his hook,
beseeching charity for the sake of the gods.—“Bread, bread! or I die
mid these sheaves!”
“Thrash out your grain, and want not.”
“Alas, masters, this grain is not mine; I plough, I sow, I reap, I
bind, I stack,—Lord Primo garners.”
Rambling on, we came to a hamlet, hidden in a hollow; and beneath
weeping willows saw many mournful maidens seated on a bank; beside
each, a wheel that was broken. “Lo, we starve,” they cried, “our
distaffs are snapped; no more may we weave and spin!”
Then forth issued from vaults clamorous crowds of men, hands tied to
their backs.—“Bread! Bread!” they cried. “The magician hath turned us
out from our glen, where we labored of yore in the days of the merry
Green Queen. He has pinioned us hip and arm that we starve. Like sheep
we die off with the rot.—Curse on the magician. A curse on his spell.”
Bending our steps toward the glen, roaring down the rocks we descried a
stream from the mountains. But ere those waters gained the sea, vassal
tribute they rendered. Conducted through culverts and moats, they
turned great wheels, giving life to ten thousand fangs and fingers,
whose gripe no power could withstand, yet whose touch was soft as the
velvet paw of a kitten. With brute force, they heaved down great
weights, then daintily wove and spun; like the trunk of the elephant,
which lays lifeless a river-horse, and counts the pulses of a moth. On
all sides, the place seemed alive with its spindles. Round and round,
round and round; throwing off wondrous births at every revolving;
ceaseless as the cycles that circle in heaven. Loud hummed the loom,
flew the shuttle like lightning, red roared the grim forge, rung anvil
and sledge; yet no mortal was seen.
“What ho, magician! Come forth from thy cave!”
But all deaf were the spindles, as the mutes, that mutely wait on the
Sultan.
“Since we are born, we will live!” so we read on a crimson banner,
flouting the crimson clouds, in the van of a riotous red-bonneted mob,
racing by us as we came from the glen. Many more followed: black, or
blood-stained:—.
“Mardi is man’s!”
“Down with landholders!”
“Our turn now!”
“Up rights! Down wrongs!”
“Bread! Bread!”
“Take the tide, ere it turns!”
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