“My skyship, which had been driven for six moons before an irresistible gale, passed over a great city just at daylight one morning, and rather than continue the voyage with a lost reckoning I demanded that I be permitted to disembark.  My wish was respected, and my companions soared away without me.  Before night I had escaped from the city, by what means you know, and with my remarkable experiences in returning to civilization all Batrugia is familiar.  The description of the strange city I have reserved for you, by whom only could I hope to be believed.  Nyork, as its inhabitants call it, is a city of inconceivable extent—­not less, I should judge, than seven square glepkeps!  Of the number of its inhabitants I can only say that they are as the sands of the desert.  They wear clothing—­of a hideous kind, ’tis true—­speak an apparently copious though harsh language, and seem to have a certain limited intelligence.  They are puny in stature, the tallest of them being hardly higher than my breast.

“Nevertheless, Nyork is a city of giants.  The magnitude of all things artificial there is astounding!  My dear Tgnagogu, words can give you no conception of it.  Many of the buildings, I assure you, are as many as fifty sprugas in height, and shelter five thousand persons each.  And these stupendous structures are so crowded together that to the spectator in the narrow streets below they seem utterly devoid of design and symmetry—­mere monstrous aggregations of brick, stone and metal—­mountains of masonry, cliffs and crags of architecture hanging in the sky!

“A city of giants inhabited by pigmies!  For you must know, oh friend of my liver, that the rearing of these mighty structures could not be the work of the puny folk that swarm in ceaseless activity about their bases.  These fierce little savages invaded the island in numbers so overwhelming that the giant builders had to flee before them.  Some escaped across great bridges which, with the help of their gods, they had suspended in the air from bank to bank of a wide river parting the island from the mainland, but many could do no better than mount some of the buildings that they had reared, and there, in these inaccessible altitudes, they dwell to-day, still piling stone upon stone.  Whether they do this in obedience to their instinct as builders, or in hope to escape by way of the heavens, I had not the means to learn, being ignorant of the pigmy tongue and in continual fear of the crowds that followed me.

“You can see the giants toiling away up there in the sky, laying in place the enormous beams and stones which none but they could handle.  They look no bigger than beetles, but you know that they are many sprugas in stature, and you shudder to think what would ensue if one should lose his footing.  Fancy that great bulk whirling down to earth from so dizzy an altitude!...

“May birds ever sing above your grave.

“JOQUOLK WAK MGAPY.”