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- 2026-01-30T20:48:18.535Z
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- 6774
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- CHAPTER LXIII.
Odo And Its Lord
Time now to enter upon some further description of the island and its
lord.
And first for Media: a gallant gentleman and king. From a goodly stock
he came. In his endless pedigree, reckoning deities by decimals,
innumerable kings, and scores of great heroes, chiefs, and priests. Nor
in person, did he belie his origin. No far-descended dwarf was he, the
least of a receding race. He stood like a palm tree; about whose
acanthus capital droops not more gracefully the silken fringes, than
Media’s locks upon his noble brow. Strong was his arm to wield the
club, or hurl the javelin; and potent, I ween, round a maiden’s waist.
Thus much here for Media. Now comes his isle.
Our pleasant ramble found it a little round world by itself; full of
beauties as a garden; chequered by charming groves; watered by roving
brooks; and fringed all round by a border of palm trees, whose roots
drew nourishment from the water. But though abounding in other quarters
of the Archipelago, not a solitary bread-fruit grew in Odo. A
noteworthy circumstance, observable in these regions, where islands
close adjoining, so differ in their soil, that certain fruits growing
genially in one, are foreign to another. But Odo was famed for its
guavas, whose flavor was likened to the flavor of new-blown lips; and
for its grapes, whose juices prompted many a laugh and many a groan.
Beside the city where Media dwelt, there were few other clusters of
habitations in Odo. The higher classes living, here and there, in
separate households; but not as eremites. Some buried themselves in the
cool, quivering bosoms of the groves. Others, fancying a marine
vicinity, dwelt hard by the beach in little cages of bamboo; whence of
mornings they sallied out with jocund cries, and went plunging into the
refreshing bath, whose frothy margin was the threshold of their
dwellings. Others still, like birds, built their nests among the sylvan
nooks of the elevated interior; whence all below, and hazy green, lay
steeped in languor the island’s throbbing heart.
Thus dwelt the chiefs and merry men of mark. The common sort, including
serfs, and Helots, war-captives held in bondage, lived in secret
places, hard to find. Whence it came, that, to a stranger, the whole
isle looked care-free and beautiful. Deep among the ravines and the
rocks, these beings lived in noisome caves, lairs for beasts, not human
homes; or built them coops of rotten boughs—living trees were banned
them—whose mouldy hearts hatched vermin. Fearing infection of some
plague, born of this filth, the chiefs of Odo seldom passed that way
and looking round within their green retreats, and pouring out their
wine, and plucking from orchards of the best, marveled how these swine
could grovel in the mire, and wear such sallow cheeks. But they offered
no sweet homes; from that mire they never sought to drag them out; they
open threw no orchard; and intermitted not the mandates that condemned
their drudges to a life of deaths. Sad sight! to see those
round-shouldered Helots, stooping in their trenches: artificial, three
in number, and concentric: the isle well nigh surrounding. And herein,
fed by oozy loam, and kindly dew from heaven, and bitter sweat from
men, grew as in hot-beds the nutritious Taro.
Toil is man’s allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands, or a grief
that’s more than either, the grief and sin of idleness. But when man
toils and slays himself for masters who withhold the life he gives to
them—then, then, the soul screams out, and every sinew cracks. So with
these poor serfs. And few of them could choose but be the brutes they
seemed.
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