Although the natives had never seen before this any human beings
made as Button-Bright and Cap'n Bill were, they took a strong
dislike to the strangers and several times threatened to attack
them. Perhaps if Ghip-Ghisizzle, who was their favorite, had not
been present, they would have mobbed our friends with vicious
ill-will and might have seriously injured them. But Ghip-Ghisizzle's
friendly protection made them hold aloof.

By and by they passed through a City gate, and their guide showed
them the outer walls, which protected the City from the country
beyond. There were several of these gates, and from their recesses
stone steps led to the top of the wall. They mounted a flight of
these steps and from their elevation plainly saw the low mountain
where the Arch of Phinis was located, and beyond that the thick,
blue-gray Fog Bank, which constantly rolled like billows of the
ocean and really seemed, from a distance, quite forbidding.

"But it wouldn't take long to get there," decided Button-Bright,
"and if you were close up, it might not be worse than any other fog.
Is the Pink Country on the other side of it?"

"So we are told in the Book of Records," replied Ghip-Ghisizzle.
"None of us now living know anything about it, but the Book of
Records calls it the 'Sunset Country' and says that at evening the
pink shades are drowned by terrible colors of orange and crimson and
golden-yellow and red. Wouldn't it be horrible to be obliged to look
upon such a sight? It must give the poor people who live there
dreadful headaches."