and vegetation, have been lifted by terrific cyclones and scattered afar, falling in other lands and at sea in the form of what was called meteoric dust!  I find that these terrible phenomena began to occur about the year 1860, and lasted, with increasing frequency and power, through a century, culminating about the middle of that glacial period which saw the extinction of the Galoots and their neighboring tribes.  There was, of course, a close connection between the two malefic phenomena, both, doubtless, being due to the same cause, which I have been unable to trace.  A cyclone, I venture to remind your gracious Majesty, is a mighty whirlwind, accompanied by the most startling meteorological phenomena, such as electrical disturbances, floods of falling water, darkness and so forth.  It moves with great speed, sucking up everything and reducing it to powder.  In many days’ journey I have not found a square copret of the country that did not suffer a visitation.  If any human being escaped he must speedily have perished from starvation.  For some twenty centuries the Pukes have been an extinct race, and their country a desolation in which no living thing can dwell, unless, like me, it is supplied with Dr. Blobob’s Condensed Life-pills.”

The Ahkoond replied that he was pleased to feel the most poignant grief for the fate of the unfortunate Pukes, and if I should by chance find the ancient king of the country I was to do my best to revive him with the patent resuscitator and present him the assurances of his Majesty’s distinguished consideration; but as the politoscope showed that the nation had been a republic I gave myself no trouble in the matter.

My next report was made six months later and was in substance this: 

“Sire: I address your Majesty from a point 430 coprets vertically above the site of the famous ancient city of Buffalo, once the capital of a powerful nation called the Smugwumps.  I can approach no nearer because of the hardness of the snow, which is very firmly packed.  For hundreds of prastams in every direction, and for thousands to the north and west, the land is covered with this substance, which, as your Majesty is doubtless aware, is extremely cold to the touch, but by application of sufficient heat can be turned into water.  It falls from the heavens, and is believed by the learned among your Majesty’s subjects to have a sidereal origin.

“The Smugwumps were a hardy and intelligent race, but they entertained the vain delusion that they could subdue Nature.  Their year was divided into two seasons—­summer and winter, the former warm, the latter cold.  About the beginning of the nineteenth century according to my archaethermograph, the summers began to grow shorter and hotter, the winters longer and colder.  At every point in their country, and every day in the year, when they had not the hottest weather ever known in that place, they had the coldest.  When they were not dying by hundreds from sunstroke