On my right hand there were lines of fishing-stakes resembling a
mysterious system of half-submerged bamboo fences, incomprehensible
in its division of the domain of tropical fishes, and crazy of
aspect as if abandoned forever by some nomad tribe of fishermen now
gone to the other end of the ocean; for there was no sign of human
habitation as far as the eye could reach. To the left a group of
barren islets, suggesting ruins of stone walls, towers, and
blockhouses, had its foundations set in a blue sea that itself
looked solid, so still and stable did it lie below my feet; even
the track of light from the westering sun shone smoothly, without
that animated glitter which tells of an imperceptible ripple. And
when I turned my head to take a parting glance at the tug which had
just left us anchored outside the bar, I saw the straight line of
the flat shore joined to the stable sea, edge to edge, with a
perfect and unmarked closeness, in one levelled floor half brown,
half blue under the enormous dome of the sky. Corresponding in
their insignificance to the islets of the sea, two small clumps of
trees, one on each side of the only fault in the impeccable joint,
marked the mouth of the river Meinam we had just left on the first
preparatory stage of our homeward journey; and, far back on the
inland level, a larger and loftier mass, the grove surrounding the
great Paknam pagoda, was the only thing on which the eye could rest
from the vain task of exploring the monotonous sweep of the
horizon. Here and there gleams as of a few scattered pieces of
silver marked the windings of the great river; and on the nearest
of them, just within the bar, the tug steaming right into the land
became lost to my sight, hull and funnel and masts, as though the