'O Mahmoud resoul Allah! May the angels of victory sweep away the dust from beneath thy feet, and may their wings shield all who believe in thee! O strange it is that I should have seen these things, and yet live to speak of them on earth!
'I was in that wondrous Garden of Paradise from which our first parents were expelled, when Adam, was hurled downward on the Isle of Serendib,[*] where his footmark yet remains upon a mountain-top; and when Eve fell near Mecca, where the marks of her two knees, as she knelt, are yet to be seen, sixty musket-shot apart, for their stature was gigantic. After that prodigious fall, they were separated two hundred years, for the vast earth was all a silent desert then. But to resume:
[*] Ceylon.
'Had it not been promised that he who looks on Paradise becomes endued with the strength of a hundred of the strongest men, I must have sunk under the scenes of more than mortal splendour, pleasure, and delight that passed before my bewildered senses; for, as the Koran sayeth, they were such things as eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, nor the heart of man conceived.
'I was in an ecstasy! A blessed ardour—a glorious joy swelled all my heart with love, religion, and purity. A brilliant halo was around me—a light without cloud—as in Khorassan, the land of the Sun, and nothing that is there has a shadow, for light is everywhere.
'After passing a lake of brilliant water, that was whiter than milk, a month's journey in compass, and surrounded by as many goblets as there are stars in the firmament—each goblet formed of a single emerald, and containing a liquid so precious that he who drinks thereof shall never thirst more, I was ushered by two shining angels through seven lofty gates, in seven walls that were built of sparkling diamonds and gleaming rubies, into the Jannat al Ferdaws, or abode of the blessed. At the seventh I was clothed in the richest robes of silk and brocade, chiefly of a green colour; and these robes, like the bracelets of gold and silver, and the crown of mighty pearls with which they encompassed my brows, were taken from the full-bursting flowers of Paradise that grew on each side of the way by which we journeyed. Before me went a long train of shadowy slaves, bearing silken carpets, litters, soft couches, downy pillows, and other furniture—each article being embroidered with more precious stones than all Asia could furnish in a thousand years.
'After a feast such as Mohammed alone could conceive, for the lobe of a single fish on that wondrous table would dine seventy thousand hungry Ingleez, I was conducted along garden-walks of musk and amber; the earth of the parterre seemed like the finest wheaten flour, and therein grew all the flowers of Paradise—each parterre being lovelier than all Suristan, the Land of Roses; for the leaves were of emeralds, the buds and petals of rubies, the stalks of burnished gold, and the slender twigs of polished silver, all gleaming and glittering under a stupendous blaze of sunlight.
'Passing kiosks of golden wire entwined with roses, wherein were youths and damsels in amorous dalliance; passing the mighty Toaba—the tree of happiness, which bears all the fruits, and meats, and food the world ever knew, with a myriad others all of tastes unknown to mortals, and every leaf of which is a melodious tongue, and the stem of which would take the swiftest Barbary steed a thousand years to compass; passing fountains of water, milk, honey, and wine, all flowing on pebbles of ruby and pearl, through beds of camphire, saffron, and amber—-I was led on—on—through shrubberies of precious stones and golden-bodied trees, on every branch of which hung a thousand little bells, and there sat a thousand singing-birds, which united with the leaves of the Toaba in filling the air with divine praises and bewildering harmony—on—on—until we reached a pavilion hollowed and fashioned of a single pearl, no less than four parasangs broad, and nearly sixty Turkish miles in length—every part of it, without and within, gleaming with sentences from the Koran, written in rubies and jacinths.
'Here stood eighty thousand slaves, all clad in shining garments, and three hundred beautiful damsels, each bearing three hundred golden and porcelain dishes, each dish containing three hundred kinds of food, awaited me on bended knees, with their charming faces bowed to the silken carpets; three hundred others bore precious vessels filled with fragrant wine; and in what language, O Frank, shall I refer to the two-and-seventy wives, the Houris, who awaited me there, each reclining in her couch, hollowed of a single pearl—the Hûr al Oyn, the black-eyed, high-bosomed girls of Paradise, who are created not of clay, like mortal women, but of the purest musk, and are without blemish—maidens on whose faces of celestial beauty none may look and live without a miracle; for I seemed to see all at a glance, though the Prophet says, these things would take the most faithful of men a thousand years' journey to behold.[*]
[*] See Sale's 'Koran.'