In my anxiety to avoid sharing the fate of Peter at the hands of the Apaches, I had run out of sight and sound of the Ojibbeway village.  When I paused I found myself alone, on a wide sandy tract, at the extremity of which was an endless thicket of dark poplar-trees, a grove dear to Persephone.  Here and there in the dank sand, half buried by the fallen generations of yellow poplar-leaves, were pits dug, a cubit every way, and there were many ruinous altars of ancient stones.  On some were engraved figures of a divine pair, a king and queen seated on a throne, while men and women approached them with cakes in their hands or with the sacrifice of a cock.  While I was admiring these strange sights, I beheld as it were a moving light among the deeps of the poplar thicket, and presently saw coming towards me a young man clad in white raiment and of a radiant aspect.  In his hand he bore a golden wand whereon were wings of gold.  The first down of manhood was on his lip; he was in that season of life when youth is most gracious.  Then I knew him to be no other than Hermes of the golden rod, the guide of the souls of men outworn.  He took my hand with a word of welcome, and led me through the gloom of the poplar trees.

Like Thomas the Rhymer, on his way to Fairyland—­

   “We saw neither sun nor moon,
   But we heard the roaring of the sea.”

This eternal “swowing of a flode” was the sound made by the circling stream of Oceanus, as he turns on his bed, washing the base of the White Rock, and the sands of the region of dreams.  So we fleeted onwards till we came to marvellous lofty gates of black adamant, that rose before us like the steep side of a hill.  On the left side of the gates we beheld a fountain flowing from beneath the roots of a white cypress-tree, and to this fountain my guide forbade me to draw near.  “There is another yonder,” he said, pointing to the right hand, “a stream of still water that issues from the Lake of Memory, and there are guards who keep that stream from the lips of the profane.  Go to them and speak thus:  ’I am the child of earth and of the starry sky, yet heavenly is my lineage, and this yourselves know right well.  But I am perishing with thirst, so give me speedily of that still water which floweth forth of the mere of Memory.’  And they will give thee to drink of that spring divine, and then shalt thou dwell with the heroes and the blessed.”  So I did as he said, and went before the guardians of the water.  Now they were veiled, and their voices, when they answered me, seemed to come from far away.  “Thou comest to the pure, from the pure,” they said, “and thou art a suppliant of holy Persephone.  Happy and most blessed art thou, advance to the reward of the crown desirable, and be no longer mortal, but divine.”  Then a darkness fell upon me, and lifted again like mist on the hills, and we found ourselves in the most beautiful place that can be conceived, a meadow of that short