CHAPTER IV.

The Second Province of Pamphagonia.

Next to this is the Golosinian district, the most pleasant part of Pamphagonia, covered with dates, almonds, figs, olives, pomegranates, oranges, citrons, and pistaches; through which run the smoothest of streams, called the Oglium. Here is the beautiful city of Marzapane, with noble turrets glittering with gold, but lying too open to the enemy. Over it hang the Zucker hills, out of whose bowels they draw something that is hard, white, and sparkling, but sweet as that moisture which the ancients gathered out of the reeds which grew in Arabia and the Indies. You shall find few people here, who are grown up, but what have lost their teeth, and have stinking breaths. Near to this is the little city Seplasium, which admits of no tradesmen but perfumers. It is a town of great commerce with the people of Viraginia, especially the Locanians, who use to change their looking-glass with them for oils and pastils. The agreeableness of the place, and the bounty of the heavens, is favourable to their art; for the whole track of land, at certain seasons, is covered with aromatic comfits, that fall like hail-stones: which Anathumiasis I take to be essentially the same as that aerial honey which we often find upon our oaks, especially in the spring, and that it differs only in thickness; for whereas that honey is sprinkled in drops, the little globules are hardened by the intense cold of the middle region, and rebound in falling.