were sure to be illuminated with the Great Carbuncle. Several related
the circumstances that brought them thither. One had listened to a
traveller's tale of this marvellous stone in his own distant country,
and had immediately been seized with such a thirst for beholding it as
could only be quenched in its intensest lustre. Another, so long ago
as when the famous Captain Smith visited these coasts, had seen it
blazing far at sea, and had felt no rest in all the intervening years
till now that he took up the search. A third, being encamped on a
hunting-expedition full forty miles south of the White Mountains,
awoke at midnight and beheld the Great Carbuncle gleaming like a
meteor, so that the shadows of the trees fell backward from it. They
spoke of the innumerable attempts which had been made to reach the
spot, and of the singular fatality which had hitherto withheld success
from all adventurers, though it might seem so easy to follow to its
source a light that overpowered the moon and almost matched the sun.
It was observable that each smiled scornfully at the madness of every
other in anticipating better fortune than the past, yet nourished a
scarcely-hidden conviction that he would himself be the favored one.
As if to allay their too sanguine hopes, they recurred to the Indian
traditions that a spirit kept watch about the gem and bewildered those
who sought it either by removing it from peak to peak of the higher
hills or by calling up a mist from the enchanted lake over which it
hung. But these tales were deemed unworthy of credit, all professing
to believe that the search had been baffled by want of sagacity or
perseverance in the adventurers, or such other causes as might
naturally obstruct the passage to any given point among the
intricacies of forest, valley and mountain.

In a pause of the conversation the wearer of the prodigious spectacles
looked round upon the party, making each individual in turn the object