THE VOYAGE OF CAPTAIN POPANILLA

by Benjamin Disraeli







This narrative of an imaginary voyage was first published in 1827.


CHAPTER 1


There is an island in the Indian Ocean, so unfortunate as not yet to
have been visited either by Discovery Ships or Missionary Societies. It
is a place where all those things are constantly found which men most
desire to see, and with the sight of which they are seldom favoured. It
abounds in flowers, and fruit, and sunshine. Lofty mountains, covered
with green and mighty forests, except where the red rocks catch the
fierce beams of the blazing sun, bowery valleys, broad lakes, gigantic
trees, and gushing rivers bursting from rocky gorges, are crowned with a
purple and ever cloudless sky. Summer, in its most unctuous state and
most mellow majesty, is here perpetual. So intense and overpowering, in
the daytime, is the rich union of heat and perfume, that living animal
or creature is never visible; and were you and I to pluck, before
sunset, the huge fruit from yonder teeming tree, we might fancy
ourselves for the moment the future sinners of another Eden. Yet a