Now, to all the above-mentioned monarchs, old Bello would frequently dispatch heralds; announcing, for example, his unalterable resolution, to espouse the cause of this king, against that; at the very time, perhaps, that their Serene Superfluities, instead of crossing spears, were touching flagons.  And upon these occasions, the kings would often send back word to old Bello, that instead of troubling himself with their concerns, he might far better attend to his own; which, they hinted, were in a sad way, and much needed reform.

The royal old warrior’s pretext for these and all similar proceedings, was the proper adjustment in Porpheero, of what he facetiously styled the “Equipoise of Calabashes;” which he stoutly swore was essential to the security of the various tribes in that country.

“But who put the balance into thy hands, King Bello?” cried the indignant nations.

“Oro!” shouted the hump-backed king, shaking his javelin.

Superadded to the paternal interest which Bello betrayed in the concerns of the kings of Porpheero, according to our chronicler, he also manifested no less interest in those of the remotest islands.  Indeed, where he found a rich country, inhabited by a people, deemed by him barbarous and incapable of wise legislation, he sometimes relieved them from their political anxieties, by assuming the dictatorship over them.  And if incensed at his conduct, they flew to their spears, they were accounted rebels, and treated accordingly.  But as old Mohi very truly observed,—­herein, Bello was not alone; for throughout Mardi, all strong nations, as well as all strong men, loved to govern the weak.  And those who most taunted King Bello for his political rapacity, were open to the very same charge.  So with Vivenza, a distant island, at times very loud in denunciations of Bello, as a great national brigand.  Not yet wholly extinct in Vivenza, were its aboriginal people, a race of wild Nimrods and hunters, who year by year were driven further and further into remoteness, till as one of their sad warriors said, after continual removes along the log, his race was on the point of being remorselessly pushed off the end.

Now, Bello was a great geographer, and land surveyor, and gauger of the seas.  Terraqueous Mardi, he was continually exploring in quest of strange empires.  Much he loved to take the altitude of lofty mountains, the depth of deep rivers, the breadth of broad isles.  Upon the highest pinnacles of commanding capes and promontories, he loved to hoist his flag.  He circled Mardi with his watch-towers:  and the distant voyager passing wild rocks in the remotest waters, was startled by hearing the tattoo, or the reveille, beating from hump-backed Bello’s omnipresent drum.  Among Antartic glaciers, his shrill bugle calls mingled with the scream of the gulls; and so impressed seemed universal nature with the sense of his dominion, that the very clouds in heaven never sailed over Dominora without rendering the tribute of a shower; whence the air of Dominora was more moist than that of any other clime.