the security of the various tribes in that country.

"But who put the balance into thy hands, King Bello?" cried the
indignant nations.

"Oro!" shouted the hump-backed king, shaking his javelin.

Superadded to the paternal interest which Bello betrayed in the
concerns of the kings of Porpheero, according to our chronicler, he
also manifested no less interest in those of the remotest islands.
Indeed, where he found a rich country, inhabited by a people, deemed
by him barbarous and incapable of wise legislation, he sometimes
relieved them from their political anxieties, by assuming the
dictatorship over them. And if incensed at his conduct, they flew to
their spears, they were accounted rebels, and treated accordingly. But
as old Mohi very truly observed,--herein, Bello was not alone; for
throughout Mardi, all strong nations, as well as all strong men, loved
to govern the weak. And those who most taunted King Bello for his
political rapacity, were open to the very same charge. So with
Vivenza, a distant island, at times very loud in denunciations of
Bello, as a great national brigand. Not yet wholly extinct in Vivenza,
were its aboriginal people, a race of wild Nimrods and hunters, who
year by year were driven further and further into remoteness, till as
one of their sad warriors said, after continual removes along the log,
his race was on the point of being remorselessly pushed off the end.

Now, Bello was a great geographer, and land surveyor, and gauger of
the seas. Terraqueous Mardi, he was continually exploring in quest of
strange empires. Much he loved to take the altitude of lofty
mountains, the depth of deep rivers, the breadth of broad isles. Upon