by Edgar Allan Poe
(1850)
Truth is stranger than fiction.OLD SAYING.
HAVING had occasion, lately, in the course of
some Oriental investigations, to consult the Tellmenow
Isitsoornot, a work which (like the Zohar of Simeon Jochaides)
is scarcely known at all, even in Europe; and which has never
been quoted, to my knowledge, by any American- if we except,
perhaps, the author of the "Curiosities of American
Literature";- having had occasion, I say, to turn over some
pages of the first- mentioned very remarkable work, I was not a
little astonished to discover that the literary world has
hitherto been strangely in error respecting the fate of the
vizier's daughter, Scheherazade, as that fate is depicted in
the "Arabian Nights"; and that the denouement there given, if
not altogether inaccurate, as far as it goes, is at least to
blame in not having gone very much farther.
For full information on this interesting topic, I
must refer the inquisitive reader to the "Isitsoornot" itself,
but in the meantime, I shall be pardoned for giving a summary
of what I there discovered.
It will be remembered, that, in the usual version
of the tales, a certain monarch having good cause to be jealous
of his queen, not only puts her to death, but makes a vow, by
his beard and the prophet, to espouse each night the most
beautiful maiden in his dominions, and the next morning to
deliver her up to the executioner.
Having fulfilled this vow for many years to the
letter, and with a religious punctuality and method that
conferred great credit upon him as a man of devout feeling and
excellent sense, he was interrupted one afternoon (no doubt at
his prayers) by a visit from his grand vizier, to whose
daughter, it appears, there had occurred an idea.
Her name was Scheherazade, and her idea was, that
she would either redeem the land from the depopulating tax upon
its beauty, or perish, after the approved fashion of all
heroines, in the attempt.
Accordingly, and although we do not find it to be
leap-year (which makes the sacrifice more meritorious), she
deputes her father, the grand vizier, to make an offer to the
king of her hand. This hand the king eagerly accepts- (he had
intended to take it at all events, and had put off the matter
from day to day, only through fear of the vizier),- but, in
accepting it now, he gives all parties very distinctly to
understand, that, grand vizier or no grand vizier, he has not
the slightest design of giving up one iota of his vow or of his
privileges. When, therefore, the fair Scheherazade insisted
upon marrying the king, and did actually marry him despite her
father's excellent advice not to do any thing of the kind- when
she would and did marry him, I say, will I, nill I, it was with
her beautiful black eyes as thoroughly open as the nature of
the case would allow.
It seems, however, that this politic damsel (who
had been reading Machiavelli, beyond doubt), had a very
ingenious little plot in her mind. On the night of the wedding,
she contrived, upon I forget what specious pretence, to have
her sister occupy a couch sufficiently near that of the royal
pair to admit of easy conversation from bed to bed; and, a
little before cock-crowing, she took care to awaken the good
monarch, her husband (who bore her none the worse will because
he intended to wring her neck on the morrow),- she managed to
awaken him, I say, (although on account of a capital conscience
and an easy digestion, he slept well) by the profound interest
of a story (about a rat and a black cat, I think) which she was
narrating (all in an undertone, of course) to her sister. When
the day broke, it so happened that this history was not
altogether finished, and that Scheherazade, in the nature of
things could not finish it just then, since it was high time
for her to get up and be bowstrung- a thing very little more
pleasant than hanging, only a trifle more genteel.
The king's curiosity, however, prevailing, I am
sorry to say, even over his sound religious principles, induced
him for this once to postpone the fulfilment of his vow until
next morning, for the purpose and with the hope of hearing that
night how it fared in the end with the black cat (a black cat,
I think it was) and the rat.
The night having arrived, however, the lady
Scheherazade not only put the finishing stroke to the black cat
and the rat (the rat was blue) but before she well knew what
she was about, found herself deep in the intricacies of a
narration, having reference (if I am not altogether mistaken)
to a pink horse (with green wings) that went, in a violent
manner, by clockwork, and was wound up with an indigo key. With
this history the king was even more profoundly interested than
with the other- and, as the day broke before its conclusion
(notwithstanding all the queen's endeavors to get through with
it in time for the bowstringing), there was again no resource
but to postpone that ceremony as before, for twenty-four hours.
The next night there happened a similar accident with a similar
result; and then the next- and then again the next; so that, in
the end, the good monarch, having been unavoidably deprived of
all opportunity to keep his vow during a period of no less than
one thousand and one nights, either forgets it altogether by
the expiration of this time, or gets himself absolved of it in
the regular way, or (what is more probable) breaks it outright,
as well as the head of his father confessor. At all events,
Scheherazade, who, being lineally descended from Eve, fell
heir, perhaps, to the whole seven baskets of talk, which the
latter lady, we all know, picked up from under the trees in the
garden of Eden-Scheherazade, I say, finally triumphed, and the
tariff upon beauty was repealed.
Now, this conclusion (which is that of the story
as we have it upon record) is, no doubt, excessively proper and
pleasant- but alas! like a great many pleasant things, is more
pleasant than true, and I am indebted altogether to the
"Isitsoornot" for the means of correcting the error. "Le
mieux," says a French proverb, "est l'ennemi du bien," and, in
mentioning that Scheherazade had inherited the seven baskets of
talk, I should have added that she put them out at compound
interest until they amounted to seventy-seven.
"My dear sister," said she, on the
thousand-and-second night, (I quote the language of the
"Isitsoornot" at this point, verbatim) "my dear sister," said
she, "now that all this little difficulty about the bowstring
has blown over, and that this odious tax is so happily
repealed, I feel that I have been guilty of great indiscretion
in withholding from you and the king (who I am sorry to say,
snores- a thing no gentleman would do) the full conclusion of
Sinbad the sailor. This person went through numerous other and
more interesting adventures than those which I related; but the
truth is, I felt sleepy on the particular night of their
narration, and so was seduced into cutting them short- a
grievous piece of misconduct, for which I only trust that Allah
will forgive me. But even yet it is not too late to remedy my
great neglect- and as soon as I have given the king a pinch or
two in order to wake him up so far that he may stop making that
horrible noise, I will forthwith entertain you (and him if he
pleases) with the sequel of this very remarkable story.
Hereupon the sister of Scheherazade, as I have it
from the "Isitsoornot," expressed no very particular intensity
of gratification; but the king, having been sufficiently
pinched, at length ceased snoring, and finally said, "hum!" and
then "hoo!" when the queen, understanding these words (which
are no doubt Arabic) to signify that he was all attention, and
would do his best not to snore any more- the queen, I say,
having arranged these matters to her satisfaction, re-entered
thus, at once, into the history of Sinbad the sailor:
"'At length, in my old age, [these are the words
of Sinbad himself, as retailed by Scheherazade]- 'at length, in
my old age, and after enjoying many years of tranquillity at
home, I became once more possessed of a desire of visiting
foreign countries; and one day, without acquainting any of my
family with my design, I packed up some bundles of such
merchandise as was most precious and least bulky, and, engaged
a porter to carry them, went with him down to the sea-shore, to
await the arrival of any chance vessel that might convey me out
of the kingdom into some region which I had not as yet
explored.
"'Having deposited the packages upon the sands, we
sat down beneath some trees, and looked out into the ocean in
the hope of perceiving a ship, but during several hours we saw
none whatever. At length I fancied that I could hear a singular
buzzing or humming sound; and the porter, after listening
awhile, declared that he also could distinguish it. Presently
it grew louder, and then still louder, so that we could have no
doubt that the object which caused it was approaching us. At
length, on the edge of the horizon, we discovered a black
speck, which rapidly increased in size until we made it out to
be a vast monster, swimming with a great part of its body above
the surface of the sea. It came toward us with inconceivable
swiftness, throwing up huge waves of foam around its breast,
and illuminating all that part of the sea through which it
passed, with a long line of fire that extended far off into the
distance.
"'As the thing drew near we saw it very
distinctly. Its length was equal to that of three of the
loftiest trees that grow, and it was as wide as the great hall
of audience in your palace, O most sublime and munificent of
the Caliphs. Its body, which was unlike that of ordinary
fishes, was as solid as a rock, and of a jetty blackness
throughout all that portion of it which floated above the
water, with the exception of a narrow blood-red streak that
completely begirdled it. The belly, which floated beneath the
surface, and of which we could get only a glimpse now and then
as the monster rose and fell with the billows, was entirely
covered with metallic scales, of a color like that of the moon
in misty weather. The back was flat and nearly white, and from
it there extended upwards of six spines, about half the length
of the whole body.
"'The horrible creature had no mouth that we could
perceive, but, as if to make up for this deficiency, it was
provided with at least four score of eyes, that protruded from
their sockets like those of the green dragon-fly, and were
arranged all around the body in two rows, one above the other,
and parallel to the blood-red streak, which seemed to answer
the purpose of an eyebrow. Two or three of these dreadful eyes
were much larger than the others, and had the appearance of
solid gold.
"'Although this beast approached us, as I have
before said, with the greatest rapidity, it must have been
moved altogether by necromancy- for it had neither fins like a
fish nor web-feet like a duck, nor wings like the seashell
which is blown along in the manner of a vessel; nor yet did it
writhe itself forward as do the eels. Its head and its tail
were shaped precisely alike, only, not far from the latter,
were two small holes that served for nostrils, and through
which the monster puffed out its thick breath with prodigious
violence, and with a shrieking, disagreeable noise.
"'Our terror at beholding this hideous thing was
very great, but it was even surpassed by our astonishment, when
upon getting a nearer look, we perceived upon the creature's
back a vast number of animals about the size and shape of men,
and altogether much resembling them, except that they wore no
garments (as men do), being supplied (by nature, no doubt) with
an ugly uncomfortable covering, a good deal like cloth, but
fitting so tight to the skin, as to render the poor wretches
laughably awkward, and put them apparently to severe pain. On
the very tips of their heads were certain square-looking boxes,
which, at first sight, I thought might have been intended to
answer as turbans, but I soon discovered that they were
excessively heavy and solid, and I therefore concluded they
were contrivances designed, by their great weight, to keep the
heads of the animals steady and safe upon their shoulders.
Around the necks of the creatures were fastened black collars,
(badges of servitude, no doubt,) such as we keep on our dogs,
only much wider and infinitely stiffer, so that it was quite
impossible for these poor victims to move their heads in any
direction without moving the body at the same time; and thus
they were doomed to perpetual contemplation of their noses- a
view puggish and snubby in a wonderful, if not positively in an
awful degree.
"'When the monster had nearly reached the shore
where we stood, it suddenly pushed out one of its eyes to a
great extent, and emitted from it a terrible flash of fire,
accompanied by a dense cloud of smoke, and a noise that I can
compare to nothing but thunder. As the smoke cleared away, we
saw one of the odd man-animals standing near the head of the
large beast with a trumpet in his hand, through which (putting
it to his mouth) he presently addressed us in loud, harsh, and
disagreeable accents, that, perhaps, we should have mistaken
for language, had they not come altogether through the
nose.
"'Being thus evidently spoken to, I was at a loss
how to reply, as I could in no manner understand what was said;
and in this difficulty I turned to the porter, who was near
swooning through affright, and demanded of him his opinion as
to what species of monster it was, what it wanted, and what
kind of creatures those were that so swarmed upon its back. To
this the porter replied, as well as he could for trepidation,
that he had once before heard of this sea-beast; that it was a
cruel demon, with bowels of sulphur and blood of fire, created
by evil genii as the means of inflicting misery upon mankind;
that the things upon its back were vermin, such as sometimes
infest cats and dogs, only a little larger and more savage; and
that these vermin had their uses, however evil- for, through
the torture they caused the beast by their nibbling and
stingings, it was goaded into that degree of wrath which was
requisite to make it roar and commit ill, and so fulfil the
vengeful and malicious designs of the wicked genii.
"This account determined me to take to my heels,
and, without once even looking behind me, I ran at full speed
up into the hills, while the porter ran equally fast, although
nearly in an opposite direction, so that, by these means, he
finally made his escape with my bundles, of which I have no
doubt he took excellent care- although this is a point I cannot
determine, as I do not remember that I ever beheld him
again.
"'For myself, I was so hotly pursued by a swarm of
the men-vermin (who had come to the shore in boats) that I was
very soon overtaken, bound hand and foot, and conveyed to the
beast, which immediately swam out again into the middle of the
sea.
"'I now bitterly repented my folly in quitting a
comfortable home to peril my life in such adventures as this;
but regret being useless, I made the best of my condition, and
exerted myself to secure the goodwill of the man-animal that
owned the trumpet, and who appeared to exercise authority over
his fellows. I succeeded so well in this endeavor that, in a
few days, the creature bestowed upon me various tokens of his
favor, and in the end even went to the trouble of teaching me
the rudiments of what it was vain enough to denominate its
language; so that, at length, I was enabled to converse with it
readily, and came to make it comprehend the ardent desire I had
of seeing the world.
"'Washish squashish squeak, Sinbad, hey-diddle
diddle, grunt unt grumble, hiss, fiss, whiss,' said he to me,
one day after dinner- but I beg a thousand pardons, I had
forgotten that your majesty is not conversant with the dialect
of the Cock-neighs (so the man-animals were called; I presume
because their language formed the connecting link between that
of the horse and that of the rooster). With your permission, I
will translate. 'Washish squashish,' and so forth:- that is to
say, 'I am happy to find, my dear Sinbad, that you are really a
very excellent fellow; we are now about doing a thing which is
called circumnavigating the globe; and since you are so
desirous of seeing the world, I will strain a point and give
you a free passage upon back of the beast.'"
When the Lady Scheherazade had proceeded thus far,
relates the "Isitsoornot," the king turned over from his left
side to his right, and said:
"It is, in fact, very surprising, my dear queen,
that you omitted, hitherto, these latter adventures of Sinbad.
Do you know I think them exceedingly entertaining and
strange?"
The king having thus expressed himself, we are
told, the fair Scheherazade resumed her history in the
following words:
"Sinbad went on in this manner with his narrative
to the caliph- 'I thanked the man-animal for its kindness, and
soon found myself very much at home on the beast, which swam at
a prodigious rate through the ocean; although the surface of
the latter is, in that part of the world, by no means flat, but
round like a pomegranate, so that we went- so to say- either up
hill or down hill all the time.'
"That I think, was very singular," interrupted the
king.
"Nevertheless, it is quite true," replied
Scheherazade.
"I have my doubts," rejoined the king; "but, pray,
be so good as to go on with the story."
"I will," said the queen. "'The beast,' continued
Sinbad to the caliph, 'swam, as I have related, up hill and
down hill until, at length, we arrived at an island, many
hundreds of miles in circumference, but which, nevertheless,
had been built in the middle of the sea by a colony of little
things like caterpillars'"*
* The coralites.
"Hum!" said the king.
"'Leaving this island,' said Sinbad- (for
Scheherazade, it must be understood, took no notice of her
husband's ill-mannered ejaculation) 'leaving this island, we
came to another where the forests were of solid stone, and so
hard that they shivered to pieces the finest-tempered axes with
which we endeavoured to cut them down."'*
* "One of the most remarkable natural curiosities in Texas is a petrified forest, near the head of Pasigno river. It consists of several hundred trees, in an erect position, all turned to stone. Some trees, now growing, are partly petrified. This is a startling fact for natural philosophers, and must cause them to modify the existing theory of petrification.- Kennedy.
This account, at first discredited, has since been corroborated by the discovery of a completely petrified forest, near the head waters of the Cheyenne, or Chienne river, which has its source in the Black Hills of the rocky chain.
There is scarcely, perhaps, a spectacle on the surface of the globe more remarkable, either in a geological or picturesque point of view than that presented by the petrified forest, near Cairo. The traveller, having passed the tombs of the caliphs, just beyond the gates of the city, proceeds to the southward, nearly at right angles to the road across the desert to Suez, and after having travelled some ten miles up a low barren valley, covered with sand, gravel, and sea shells, fresh as if the tide had retired but yesterday, crosses a low range of sandhills, which has for some distance run parallel to his path. The scene now presented to him is beyond conception singular and desolate. A mass of fragments of trees, all converted into stone, and when struck by his horse's hoof ringing like cast iron, is seen to extend itself for miles and miles around him, in the form of a decayed and prostrate forest. The wood is of a dark brown hue, but retains its form in perfection, the pieces being from one to fifteen feet in length, and from half a foot to three feet in thickness, strewed so closely together, as far as the eye can reach, that an Egyptian donkey can scarcely thread its way through amongst them, and so natural that, were it in Scotland or Ireland, it might pass without remark for some enormous drained bog, on which the exhumed trees lay rotting in the sun. The roots and rudiments of the branches are, in many cases, nearly perfect, and in some the worm-holes eaten under the bark are readily recognizable. The most delicate of the sap vessels, and all the finer portions of the centre of the wood, are perfectly entire, and bear to be examined with the strongest magnifiers. The whole are so thoroughly silicified as to scratch glass and are capable of receiving the highest polish.- Asiatic Magazine.
"Hum!" said the king, again; but Scheherazade,
paying him no attention, continued in the language of
Sinbad.
"'Passing beyond this last island, we reached a
country where there was a cave that ran to the distance of
thirty or forty miles within the bowels of the earth, and that
contained a greater number of far more spacious and more
magnificent palaces than are to be found in all Damascus and
Bagdad. From the roofs of these palaces there hung myriads of
gems, liked diamonds, but larger than men; and in among the
streets of towers and pyramids and temples, there flowed
immense rivers as black as ebony, and swarming with fish that
had no eyes.'"*
* The Mammoth Cave of Kentucky.
"Hum!" said the king.
"'We then swam into a region of the sea where we
found a lofty mountain, down whose sides there streamed
torrents of melted metal, some of which were twelve miles wide
and sixty miles long*; while from an abyss on the summit,
issued so vast a quantity of ashes that the sun was entirely
blotted out from the heavens, and it became darker than the
darkest midnight; so that when we were even at the distance of
a hundred and fifty miles from the mountain, it was impossible
to see the whitest object, however close we held it to our
eyes.'"*(2)
* In Iceland, 1783.*(2) "During the eruption of Hecla, in 1766, clouds of this kind produced such a degree of darkness that, at Glaumba, which is more than fifty leagues from the mountain, people could only find their way by groping. During the eruption of Vesuvius, in 1794, at Caserta, four leagues distant, people could only walk by the light of torches. On the first of May, 1812, a cloud of volcanic ashes and sand, coming from a volcano in the island of St. Vincent, covered the whole of Barbadoes, spreading over it so intense a darkness that, at mid-day, in the open air, one could not perceive the trees or other objects near him, or even a white handkerchief placed at the distance of six inches from the eye."- Murray, p. 215, Phil. edit.
"Hum!" said the king.
"'After quitting this coast, the beast continued
his voyage until we met with a land in which the nature of
things seemed reversed- for we here saw a great lake, at the
bottom of which, more than a hundred feet beneath the surface
of the water, there flourished in full leaf a forest of tall
and luxuriant trees.'"*
* In the year 1790, in the Caraccas during an earthquake a portion of the granite soil sank and left a lake eight hundred yards in diameter, and from eighty to a hundred feet deep. It was a part of the forest of Aripao which sank, and the trees remained green for several months under the water."- Murray, p. 221
"Hoo!" said the king.
"Some hundred miles farther on brought us to a
climate where the atmosphere was so dense as to sustain iron or
steel, just as our own does feather.'"*
* The hardest steel ever manufactured may, under the action of a blowpipe, be reduced to an impalpable powder, which will float readily in the atmospheric air.
"Fiddle de dee," said the king.
"Proceeding still in the same direction, we
presently arrived at the most magnificent region in the whole
world. Through it there meandered a glorious river for several
thousands of miles. This river was of unspeakable depth, and of
a transparency richer than that of amber. It was from three to
six miles in width; and its banks which arose on either side to
twelve hundred feet in perpendicular height, were crowned with
ever-blossoming trees and perpetual sweet-scented flowers, that
made the whole territory one gorgeous garden; but the name of
this luxuriant land was the Kingdom of Horror, and to enter it
was inevitable death'"*
* The region of the Niger. See Simmona's "Colonial Magazine."
"Humph!" said the king.
"'We left this kingdom in great haste, and, after
some days, came to another, where we were astonished to
perceive myriads of monstrous animals with horns resembling
scythes upon their heads. These hideous beasts dig for
themselves vast caverns in the soil, of a funnel shape, and
line the sides of them with, rocks, so disposed one upon the
other that they fall instantly, when trodden upon by other
animals, thus precipitating them into the monster's dens, where
their blood is immediately sucked, and their carcasses
afterwards hurled contemptuously out to an immense distance
from "the caverns of death."'"*
* The Myrmeleon-lion-ant. The term "monster" is equally applicable to small abnormal things and to great, while such epithets as "vast" are merely comparative. The cavern of the myrmeleon is vast in comparison with the hole of the common red ant. A grain of silex is also a "rock."
"Pooh!" said the king.
"'Continuing our progress, we perceived a district
with vegetables that grew not upon any soil but in the air.*
There were others that sprang from the substance of other
vegetables;*(2) others that derived their substance from the
bodies of living animals;*(3) and then again, there were others
that glowed all over with intense fire;*(4) others that moved
from place to place at pleasure,*(5) and what was still more
wonderful, we discovered flowers that lived and breathed and
moved their limbs at will and had, moreover, the detestable
passion of mankind for enslaving other creatures, and confining
them in horrid and solitary prisons until the fulfillment of
appointed tasks.'"*(6)
* The Epidendron, Flos Aeris, of the family of the Orchideae, grows with merely the surface of its roots attached to a tree or other object, from which it derives no nutriment- subsisting altogether upon air.*(2) The Parasites, such as the wonderful Rafflesia Arnaldii.
*(3) Schouw advocates a class of plants that grow upon living animals- the Plantae Epizoae. Of this class are the Fuci and Algae.
Mr. J. B. Williams, of Salem, Mass., presented the "National Institute," with an insect from New Zealand, with the following description:- "'The Hotte,' a decided caterpillar, or worm, is found growing at the foot of the Rata tree, with a plant growing out of its head. This most peculiar and most extraordinary insect travels up both the Rata and Perriri trees, and entering into the top, eats its way, perforating the trunk of the tree until it reaches the root, it then comes out of the root, and dies, or remains dormant, and the plant propagates out of its head; the body remains perfect and entire, of a harder substance than when alive. From this insect the natives making a coloring for tattooing."*(4) In mines and natural caves we find a species of cryptogamous fungus that emits an intense phosphorescence.
*(5) The orchis, scabius and valisneria.
*(6) The corolla of this flower (Aristolochia Clematitis), which is tubular, but terminating upwards in a ligulate limb, is inflated into a globular figure at the base. The tubular part is internally beset with stiff hairs, pointing downwards. The globular part contains the pistil, which consists merely of a germen and stigma, together with the surrounding stamens. But the stamens, being shorter than the germen, cannot discharge the pollen so as to throw it upon the stigma, as the flower stands always upright till after impregnation. And hence, without some additional and peculiar aid, the pollen must necessarily fan down to the bottom of the flower. Now, the aid that nature has furnished in this case, is that of the Tiputa Pennicornis, a small insect, which entering the tube of the corrolla in quest of honey, descends to the bottom, and rummages about till it becomes quite covered with pollen; but not being able to force its way out again, owing to the downward position of the hairs, which converge to a point like the wires of a mouse-trap, and being somewhat impatient of its confinement it brushes backwards and forwards, trying every corner, till, after repeatedly traversing the stigma, it covers it with pollen sufficient for its impregnation, in consequence of which the flower soon begins to droop, and the hairs to shrink to the sides of the tube, effecting an easy passage for the escape of the insect." Rev. P. Keith-System of Physiological Botany.
"Pshaw!" said the king.
"'Quitting this land, we soon arrived at another
in which the bees and the birds are mathematicians of such
genius and erudition, that they give daily instructions in the
science of geometry to the wise men of the empire. The king of
the place having offered a reward for the solution of two very
difficult problems, they were solved upon the spot- the one by
the bees, and the other by the birds; but the king keeping
their solution a secret, it was only after the most profound
researches and labor, and the writing of an infinity of big
books, during a long series of years, that the
men-mathematicians at length arrived at the identical solutions
which had been given upon the spot by the bees and by the
birds.'"*
* The bees- ever since bees were- have been constructing their cells with just such sides, in just such number, and at just such inclinations, as it has been demonstrated (in a problem involving the profoundest mathematical principles) are the very sides, in the very number, and at the very angles, which will afford the creatures the most room that is compatible with the greatest stability of structure.
During the latter part of the last century, the question arose among mathematicians- "to determine the best form that can be given to the sails of a windmill, according to their varying distances from the revolving vanes, and likewise from the centres of the revolution." This is an excessively complex problem, for it is, in other words, to find the best possible position at an infinity of varied distances, and at an infinity of points on the arm. There were a thousand futile attempts to answer the query on the part of the most illustrious mathematicians; and when, at length, an undeniable solution was discovered, men found that the wing of a bird had given it with absolute precision ever since the first bird had traversed the air.
"Oh my!" said the king.
"'We had scarcely lost sight of this empire when
we found ourselves close upon another, from whose shores there
flew over our heads a flock of fowls a mile in breadth, and two
hundred and forty miles long; so that, although they flew a
mile during every minute, it required no less than four hours
for the whole flock to pass over us- in which there were
several millions of millions of fowl.'"*
* He observed a flock of pigeons passing betwixt Frankfort and the Indian territory, one mile at least in breadth; it took up four hours in passing, which, at the rate of one mile per minute, gives a length of 240 miles; and, supposing three pigeons to each square yard, gives 2,230,272,000 Pigeons.- "Travels in Canada and the United States," by Lieut. F. Hall.
"Oh fy!" said the king.
"'No sooner had we got rid of these birds, which
occasioned us great annoyance, than we were terrified by the
appearance of a fowl of another kind, and infinitely larger
than even the rocs which I met in my former voyages; for it was
bigger than the biggest of the domes on your seraglio, oh, most
Munificent of Caliphs. This terrible fowl had no head that we
could perceive, but was fashioned entirely of belly, which was
of a prodigious fatness and roundness, of a soft-looking
substance, smooth, shining and striped with various colors. In
its talons, the monster was bearing away to his eyrie in the
heavens, a house from which it had knocked off the roof, and in
the interior of which we distinctly saw human beings, who,
beyond doubt, were in a state of frightful despair at the
horrible fate which awaited them. We shouted with all our
might, in the hope of frightening the bird into letting go of
its prey, but it merely gave a snort or puff, as if of rage and
then let fall upon our heads a heavy sack which proved to be
filled with sand!'"
"Stuff!" said the king.
"'It was just after this adventure that we
encountered a continent of immense extent and prodigious
solidity, but which, nevertheless, was supported entirely upon
the back of a sky-blue cow that had no fewer than four hundred
horns.'"*
* The earth is upheld by a cow of a blue color, having horns four hundred in number."- Sale's Koran.
"That, now, I believe," said the king, "because
I have read something of the kind before, in a book."
"'We passed immediately beneath this continent,
(swimming in between the legs of the cow, and, after some
hours, found ourselves in a wonderful country indeed, which, I
was informed by the man-animal, was his own native land,
inhabited by things of his own species. This elevated the
man-animal very much in my esteem, and in fact, I now began to
feel ashamed of the contemptuous familiarity with which I had
treated him; for I found that the man-animals in general were a
nation of the most powerful magicians, who lived with worms in
their brain,* which, no doubt, served to stimulate them by
their painful writhings and wrigglings to the most miraculous
efforts of imagination!'"
* "The Entozoa, or intestinal worms, have repeatedly been observed in the muscles, and in the cerebral substance of men."- See Wyatt's Physiology, p. 143.
"Nonsense!" said the king.
"'Among the magicians, were domesticated several
animals of very singular kinds; for example, there was a huge
horse whose bones were iron and whose blood was boiling water.
In place of corn, he had black stones for his usual food; and
yet, in spite of so hard a diet, he was so strong and swift
that he would drag a load more weighty than the grandest temple
in this city, at a rate surpassing that of the flight of most
birds.'"*
* On the Great Western Railway, between London and Exeter, a speed of 71 miles per hour has been attained. A train weighing 90 tons was whirled from Paddington to Didcot (53 miles) in 51 minutes.
"Twattle!" said the king.
"'I saw, also, among these people a hen without
feathers, but bigger than a camel; instead of flesh and bone
she had iron and brick; her blood, like that of the horse, (to
whom, in fact, she was nearly related,) was boiling water; and
like him she ate nothing but wood or black stones. This hen
brought forth very frequently, a hundred chickens in the day;
and, after birth, they took up their residence for several
weeks within the stomach of their mother.'"*
* The Eccalobeion
"Fa! lal!" said the king.
"'One of this nation of mighty conjurors created a
man out of brass and wood, and leather, and endowed him with
such ingenuity that he would have beaten at chess, all the race
of mankind with the exception of the great Caliph, Haroun
Alraschid.* Another of these magi constructed (of like
material) a creature that put to shame even the genius of him
who made it; for so great were its reasoning powers that, in a
second, it performed calculations of so vast an extent that
they would have required the united labor of fifty thousand
fleshy men for a year.*(2) But a still more wonderful conjuror
fashioned for himself a mighty thing that was neither man nor
beast, but which had brains of lead, intermixed with a black
matter like pitch, and fingers that it employed with such
incredible speed and dexterity that it would have had no
trouble in writing out twenty thousand copies of the Koran in
an hour, and this with so exquisite a precision, that in all
the copies there should not be found one to vary from another
by the breadth of the finest hair. This thing was of prodigious
strength, so that it erected or overthrew the mightiest empires
at a breath; but its powers were exercised equally for evil and
for good.'"
* Maelzel's Automaton Chess-player.*(2) Babbage's Calculating Machine.
"Ridiculous!" said the king.
"'Among this nation of necromancers there was also
one who had in his veins the blood of the salamanders; for he
made no scruple of sitting down to smoke his chibouc in a
red-hot oven until his dinner was thoroughly roasted upon its
floor.* Another had the faculty of converting the common metals
into gold, without even looking at them during the process.*(2)
Another had such a delicacy of touch that he made a wire so
fine as to be invisible.*(3) Another had such quickness of
perception that he counted all the separate motions of an
elastic body, while it was springing backward and forward at
the rate of nine hundred millions of times in a
second.'"*(4)
* Chabert, and since him, a hundred others.*(2) The Electrotype.
*(3) Wollaston made of platinum for the field of views in a telescope a wire one eighteen-thousandth part of an inch in thickness. It could be seen only by means of the microscope.
*(4) Newton demonstrated that the retina beneath the influence of the violet ray of the spectrum, vibrated 900,000,000 of times in a second.
"Absurd!" said the king.
"'Another of these magicians, by means of a fluid
that nobody ever yet saw, could make the corpses of his friends
brandish their arms, kick out their legs, fight, or even get up
and dance at his will.* Another had cultivated his voice to so
great an extent that he could have made himself heard from one
end of the world to the other.*(2) Another had so long an arm
that he could sit down in Damascus and indite a letter at
Bagdad- or indeed at any distance whatsoever.*(3) Another
commanded the lightning to come down to him out of the heavens,
and it came at his call; and served him for a plaything when it
came. Another took two loud sounds and out of them made a
silence. Another constructed a deep darkness out of two
brilliant lights.*(4) Another made ice in a red-hot
furnace.*(5) Another directed the sun to paint his portrait,
and the sun did.*(6) Another took this luminary with the moon
and the planets, and having first weighed them with scrupulous
accuracy, probed into their depths and found out the solidity
of the substance of which they were made. But the whole nation
is, indeed, of so surprising a necromantic ability, that not
even their infants, nor their commonest cats and dogs have any
difficulty in seeing objects that do not exist at all, or that
for twenty millions of years before the birth of the nation
itself had been blotted out from the face of
creation."'*(7)
* Voltaic pile.*(2) The Electro Telegraph Printing Apparatus.
*(3) The Electro telegraph transmits intelligence instantaneously- at least at so far as regards any distance upon the earth.
*(4) Common experiments in Natural Philosophy. If two red rays from two luminous points be admitted into a dark chamber so as to fall on a white surface, and differ in their length by 0.0000258 of an inch, their intensity is doubled. So also if the difference in length be any whole-number multiple of that fraction. A multiple by 2 1/4, 3 1/4, &c., gives an intensity equal to one ray only; but a multiple by 2 1/2, 3 1/2, &c., gives the result of total darkness. In violet rays similar effects arise when the difference in length is 0.000157 of an inch; and with all other rays the results are the same- the difference varying with a uniform increase from the violet to the red.
Analogous experiments in respect to sound produce analogous results.*(5) Place a platina crucible over a spirit lamp, and keep it a red heat; pour in some sulphuric acid, which, though the most volatile of bodies at a common temperature, will be found to become completely fixed in a hot crucible, and not a drop evaporates- being surrounded by an atmosphere of its own, it does not, in fact, touch the sides. A few drops of water are now introduced, when the acid, immediately coming in contact with the heated sides of the crucible, flies off in sulphurous acid vapor, and so rapid is its progress, that the caloric of the water passes off with it, which falls a lump of ice to the bottom; by taking advantage of the moment before it is allowed to remelt, it may be turned out a lump of ice from a red-hot vessel.
*(6) The Daguerreotype.
*(7) Although light travels 167,000 miles in a second, the distance of 61 Cygni (the only star whose distance is ascertained) is so inconceivably great, that its rays would require more than ten years to reach the earth. For stars beyond this, 20- or even 1000 years- would be a moderate estimate. Thus, if they had been annihilated 20, or 1000 years ago, we might still see them to-day by the light which started from their surfaces 20 or 1000 years in the past time. That many which we see daily are really extinct, is not impossible- not even improbable.
"Preposterous!" said the king.
"'The wives and daughters of these incomparably
great and wise magi,'" continued Scheherazade, without being in
any manner disturbed by these frequent and most ungentlemanly
interruptions on the part of her husband- "'the wives and
daughters of these eminent conjurers are every thing that is
accomplished and refined; and would be every thing that is
interesting and beautiful, but for an unhappy fatality that
besets them, and from which not even the miraculous powers of
their husbands and fathers has, hitherto, been adequate to
save. Some fatalities come in certain shapes, and some in
others- but this of which I speak has come in the shape of a
crotchet.'"
"A what?" said the king.
"'A crotchet'" said Scheherazade. "'One of the
evil genii, who are perpetually upon the watch to inflict ill,
has put it into the heads of these accomplished ladies that the
thing which we describe as personal beauty consists altogether
in the protuberance of the region which lies not very far below
the small of the back. Perfection of loveliness, they say, is
in the direct ratio of the extent of this lump. Having been
long possessed of this idea, and bolsters being cheap in that
country, the days have long gone by since it was possible to
distinguish a woman from a dromedary-'"
"Stop!" said the king- "I can't stand that, and I
won't. You have already given me a dreadful headache with your
lies. The day, too, I perceive, is beginning to break. How long
have we been married?- my conscience is getting to be
troublesome again. And then that dromedary touch- do you take
me for a fool? Upon the whole, you might as well get up and be
throttled."
These words, as I learn from the "Isitsoornot,"
both grieved and astonished Scheherazade; but, as she knew the
king to be a man of scrupulous integrity, and quite unlikely to
forfeit his word, she submitted to her fate with a good grace.
She derived, however, great consolation, (during the tightening
of the bowstring,) from the reflection that much of the history
remained still untold, and that the petulance of her brute of a
husband had reaped for him a most righteous reward, in
depriving him of many inconceivable adventures.