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58 attired, in many divers ways and in many colours. There was an air of peacefulness, of cheerfulness and happiness, all around me, which seemed most charming.

"But withal there was something intensely tropical in the scene. It looked as if it were a land where light and heat and moisture were combined to develope life; everything was of most brilliant colouring, as if it revelled in intense vitality—something beyond even the tropic luxuriance of the West Indies or Ceylon.

"I noted figures of sentient being moving about in all directions amid these tropic gardens, and seemingly conversing with one another, or else listening to soft and delicious music which was borne on the breeze.

"At length I came to a palace of enormous size and most quaint architecture (quite unlike any style I had ever seen, whether Greek, mediæval, or even Indian or Chinese), airy and fantastic to the last degree; brilliant with mosaics of every possible colour; lighted up with all sorts of coloured fires and electric lights. It was a perfect fairyland.

"I entered this palace, and saw in its corridors many strange sights, such as I should never have thought of in my wildest