Saccharissa from the great desert of brown sugar that lay beyond.

Lily marched bravely on for a long time, and saw at last a great smoke in
the sky, smelt a spicy smell, and felt a hot wind blowing toward her.

"I wonder if there are sugar savages here, roasting and eating some poor
traveller like me," she said, thinking of Robinson Crusoe and other
wanderers in strange lands.

She crept carefully along till she saw a settlement of little huts very
like mushrooms, for they were made of cookies set on lumps of the brown
sugar; and queer people, looking as if made of gingerbread, were working
very busily round several stoves which seemed to bake at a great rate.

"I'll creep nearer and see what sort of people they are before I show
myself," said Lily, going into a grove of spice-trees, and sitting down on
a stone which proved to be the plummy sort of cake we used to call
Brighton Rock.

Presently one of the tallest men came striding toward the trees with a
pan, evidently after spice; and before she could run, he saw Lily.

"Hollo, what do you want?" he asked, staring at her with his black currant
eyes, while he briskly picked the bark off a cinnamon-tree.

"I'm travelling, and would like to know what place this is, if you
please," answered Lily, very politely, being a little frightened.

"Cake-land. Where do you come from?" asked the gingerbread man, in a crisp
tone of voice.