Isles, where there were men with elastic bones, bifurcated
tongues; men who never married, who worshipped the sun, whose life
was an uninterrupted delight, and who, when overtaken by age, lay
on a perfumed grass that produced a voluptuous death. Evhemerus, a
terrible atheist, whose Sacred History the early bishops wielded
against polytheism until they discovered it was double-edged, took
him to Panchaia, an island where incense grew; where property was
held in common; where there was but one law--Justice, yet a
justice different from our own, one which Hugo must have
intercepted when he made an entrancing yet enigmatical apparition
exclaim:

"Tu me crois la Justice, je suis la Pitie."

And in this paradise there was a temple, and before it a column,
about which, in Panchaian characters, ran a history of ancient
kings, who, to the astonishment of the tourist, were found to be
none other than the gods whom the universe worshipped, and who in
earlier days had announced themselves divinities, the better to
rule the hearts and minds of man.

With other guides Tiberius journeyed through lands where dreams
come true. Aristeas of Proconnesus led him among the Arimaspi, a
curious people who passed their lives fighting for gold with
griffons in the dark. With Isogonus he descended the valley of
Ismaus, where wild men were, whose feet turned inwards. In Albania
he found a race with pink eyes and white hair; in Sarmatia another
that ate only on alternate days. Agatharcides took him to Libya,
and there introduced him to the Psyllians, in whose bodies was a
poison deadly to serpents, and who, to test the fidelity of their