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
      “Isitsöornot,” 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—‘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.’” (*1)

      “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.’” (*2)

      “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, like 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.’” (*3)

      “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
      (*4); 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.’” (*5)

      “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.’”
      (*6)

      “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.’” (*7)

      “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.’” (*8)

      “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. "’” (*9)

      “Pooh!” said the king. “‘Continuing our progress, we perceived a district with
      vegetables that grew not upon any soil but in the air.