About sunset we halted and tethered our horses, while the Arabs unloaded the provisions from the camels and prepared a fire out of the dry scrub, for at sunset the heat of the desert departs from it suddenly, like a bird.  Then we saw a traveller approaching us on a camel coming from the south.  When he was come near we said to him: 

’Come and encamp among us, for in the desert all men are brothers, and we will give thee meat to eat and wine, or, if thou art bound by thy faith, we will give thee some other drink that is not accursed by the prophet.’

The traveller seated himself beside us on the sand, and crossed his legs and answered: 

’Hearken, and I will tell you of Babbulkund, City of Marvel.  Babbulkund stands just below the meeting of the rivers, where Oonrana, River of Myth, flows into the Waters of Fable, even the old stream Plegathanees.  These, together, enter her northern gate rejoicing.  Of old they flowed in the dark through the Hill that Nehemoth, the first of Pharaohs, carved into the City of Marvel.  Sterile and desolate they float far through the desert, each in the appointed cleft, with life upon neither bank, but give birth in Babbulkund to the sacred purple garden whereof all nations sing.  Thither all the bees come on a pilgrimage at evening by a secret way of the air.  Once, from his twilit kingdom, which he rules equally with the sun, the moon saw and loved Babbulkund, clad with her purple garden; and the moon wooed Babbulkund, and she sent him weeping away, for she is more beautiful than all her sisters the stars.  Her sisters come to her at night into her maiden chamber.  Even the gods speak sometimes of Babbulkund, clad with her purple garden.  Listen, for I perceive by your eyes that ye have not seen Babbulkund; there is a restlessness in them and an unappeased wonder.  Listen.  In the garden whereof I spoke there is a lake that hath no twin or fellow in the world; there is no companion for it among all the lakes.  The shores of it are of glass, and the bottom of it.  In it are great fish having golden and scarlet scales, and they swim to and fro.  Here it is the wont of the eighty-second Nehemoth (who rules in the city today) to come, after the dusk has fallen, and sit by the lake alone, and at this hour eight hundred slaves go down by steps through caverns into vaults beneath the lake.  Four hundred of them carrying purple lights march one behind the other, from east to west, and four hundred carrying green lights march one behind the other, from west to east.  The two lines cross and re-cross each other in and out as the slaves go round and round, and the fearful fish flash up and down and to and fro.’