beavers in their dams, marveling at our incomprehensible ways. And
cunning though we be, some things, hidden from us, may not be
mysteries to them. Having five keys, hold we all that open to
knowledge? Deaf, blind, and deprived of the power of scent, the bat
will steer its way unerringly:--could we? Yet man is lord of the bat
and the brute; lord over the crows; with whom, he must needs share the
grain he garners. We sweat for the fowls, as well as ourselves. The
curse of labor rests only on us. Like slaves, we toil: at their good
leisure they glean.

"'Mardi is not wholly ours. We are the least populous part of
creation. To say nothing of other tribes, a census of the herring
would find us far in the minority. And what life is to us,--sour or
sweet,--so is it to them. Like us, they die, fighting death to the
last; like us, they spawn and depart. We inhabit but a crust, rough
surfaces, odds and ends of the isles; the abounding lagoon being its
two-thirds, its grand feature from afar; and forever unfathomable.

"'What shaft has yet been sunk to the antipodes? What underlieth the
gold mines?

"'But even here, above-ground, we grope with the sun at meridian.
Vainly, we seek our Northwest Passages,--old alleys, and thoroughfares
of the whales.

"'Oh men! fellow men! we are only what we are; not what we would be;
nor every thing we hope for. We are but a step in a scale, that
reaches further above us than below. We breathe but oxygen. Who in
Arcturus hath heard of us? They know us not in the Milky Way. We prate
of faculties divine: and know not how sprouteth a spear of grass; we