happy in his own way.  Owing to this absence of competition, and the limit placed on the population, it is difficult for a family to fall into distress; there are no hazardous speculations, no emulators striving for superior wealth and rank.  No doubt, in each settlement all originally had the same proportions of land dealt out to them; but some, more adventurous than others, had extended their possessions farther into the bordering wilds, or had improved into richer fertility the produce of their fields, or entered into commerce or trade.  Thus, necessarily, some had grown richer than others, but none had become absolutely poor, or wanting anything which their tastes desired.  If they did so, it was always in their power to migrate, or at the worst to apply, without shame and with certainty of aid, to the rich, for all the members of the community considered themselves as brothers of one affectionate and united family.  More upon this head will be treated of incidentally as my narrative proceeds.

The chief care of the supreme magistrate was to communicate with certain active departments charged with the administration of special details.  The most important and essential of such details was that connected with the due provision of light.  Of this department my host, Aph-Lin, was the chief.  Another department, which might be called the foreign, communicated with the neighbouring kindred states, principally for the purpose of ascertaining all new inventions; and to a third department all such inventions and improvements in machinery were committed for trial.  Connected with this department was the College of Sages—­a college especially favoured by such of the Ana as were widowed and childless, and by the young unmarried females, amongst whom Zee was the most active, and, if what we call renown or distinction was a thing acknowledged by this people (which I shall later show it is not), among the more renowned or distinguished.  It is by the female Professors of this College that those studies which are deemed of least use in practical life—­as purely speculative philosophy, the history of remote periods, and such sciences as entomology, conchology, &c.—­are the more diligently cultivated.  Zee, whose mind, active as Aristotle’s, equally embraced the largest domains and the minutest details of thought, had written two volumes on the parasite insect that dwells amid the hairs of a tiger’s* paw, which work was considered the best authority on that interesting subject.

* The animal here referred to has many points of difference from the tiger of the upper world.  It is larger, and with a broader paw, and still more receding frontal.  It haunts the side of lakes and pools, and feeds principally on fishes, though it does not object to any terrestrial animal of inferior strength that comes in its way.  It is becoming very scarce even in the wild districts, where it is devoured by gigantic reptiles.  I apprehended that it clearly belongs to the tiger species, since the parasite animalcule found in its paw, like that in the Asiatic tiger, is a miniature image of itself.