My curiosity was now in a way of being satisfied; the Spirit (demon, shall I not rather say?) of Hasheesh had entire possession of me.  I was cast upon the flood of his illusions, and drifted helplessly whithersoever they might choose to bear me.  The thrills which ran through my nervous system became more rapid and fierce, accompanied with sensations that steeped my whole being in unutterable rapture.  I was encompassed by a sea of light, through which played the pure, harmonious colors that are born of light.  While endeavoring, in broken expressions, to describe my feelings to my friends, who sat looking upon me incredulously—­not yet having been affected by the drug—­I suddenly found myself at the foot of the great Pyramid of Cheops.  The tapering courses of yellow limestone gleamed like gold in the sun, and the pile rose so high that it seemed to lean for support upon the blue arch of the sky.  I wished to ascend it, and the wish alone placed me immediately upon its apex, lifted thousands of feet above the wheat-fields and palm-groves of Egypt.  I cast my eyes downward, and, to my astonishment, saw that it was built, not of limestone, but of huge square plugs of Cavendish tobacco!  Words cannot paint the overwhelming sense of the ludicrous which I then experienced.  I writhed on my chair in an agony of laughter, which was only relieved by the vision melting away like a dissolving view; till, out of my confusion of indistinct images and fragments of images, another and more wonderful vision arose.

The more vividly I recall the scene which followed, the more carefully I restore its different features, and separate the many threads of sensation which it wove into one gorgeous web, the more I despair of representing its exceeding glory.  I was moving over the Desert, not upon the rocking dromedary, but seated in a barque made of mother-of-pearl, and studded with jewels of surpassing lustre.  The sand was of grains of gold, and my keel slid through them without jar or sound.  The air was radiant with excess of light, though no sun was to be seen.  I inhaled the most delicious perfumes; and harmonies, such as Beethoven may have heard in dreams, but never wrote, floated around me.  The atmosphere itself was light, odor, music; and each and all sublimated beyond anything the sober senses are capable of receiving.  Before me—­for a thousand leagues, as it seemed—­stretched a vista of rainbows, whose colors gleamed with the splendor of gems—­arches of living amethyst, sapphire, emerald, topaz, and ruby.  By thousands and tens of thousands, they flew past me, as my dazzling barge sped down the magnificent arcade; yet the vista still stretched as far as ever before me.  I revelled in a sensuous elysium, which was perfect, because no sense was left ungratified.  But beyond all, my mind was filled with a boundless feeling of triumph.  My journey was that of a conqueror—­not of a conqueror who subdues his race, either by Love or by Will, for I forgot that Man existed—­but one victorious over the grandest as well as the subtlest forces of Nature.  The spirits of Light, Color, Odor, Sound, and Motion were my slaves; and, having these, I was master of the universe.