there. My companion, Yak, was the patriarch over that city and nation.

"As I said, three nation cities were settled by the Idanneans. Then still another people came a few years later and settled the other three great nation-cities; over each of which were settled as patriarch one of my companions. The city over which I was patriarch was central in the group of nations, for mine was seventh in the series, and therefore pivotal in its function.

"My great city was where the big trees now grow on the uplands of the Sierras. I attained to three hundred and fifty years, and over the surface where my bones were deposited great convulsions have accumulated a thousand feet or more of rock material.

"The third time have the mound-building nations spread over the American continent, and the third time have they been destroyed; but the incipient nation which is now forming will build in permanence. The first destruction was by the great upheavals which changed the land surface, covered large areas with molten lava, and let the ocean in, covering much of the land. In the first settlement, the western border in some places extended several hundred miles west of its present limit. The second destruction was by another wide-spread convulsion, in which both fire and water were active agents. In the first settlement the climate and fruitfulness of the country were far superior to what they were in the two subsequent settlements. A long interval separated each settlement, and the continuity of their history became broken and destroyed."

Toward the end of August, Mr. Peebles set his foot down in San Francisco, where fifteen years before he had landed an invalid. Here he delivered a course of lectures to crowded houses on the Harmonial Philosophy and social life in Turkey. Writing hasty notes of San Franciscans, he says:

"Old heads guide the feet that tread this new city. Enterprise is the pass-word, victory the psalm. Enthusiasm anywhere is existence, and earnestness its own great reward.

Financially, Californian cups run over. This is the trouble,— the material over-riding the spiritual."

"Beneath the splendid chandeliers of sin

We keep gay time to music on the floors,
While trampled Virtue, like a specter thin,
Starves in her cot, or freezes at the doors."

XXXVI

VOYAGE ACROSS THE PACIFIC

"Have you a friend, a comrade dear,
An old and valued friend?

Be sure your term of sweet concourse
At length will have an end.

And when you part,— as part you will,—
Oh! take it not unkind

If he who goes is happier

Than you he leaves behind."

- Pollock.

On the afternoon of September 1, 1872, our traveler stood on the extreme western limit of the Occident, and gazed out over the calm Pacific waters toward the Orient. The massive engines of the "Idaho' were throbbing with potentialized power. The dream and prophecy of many years was now to be fulfilled. His own eyes were to behold the moving panorama on Oriental lands. At precisely four o'clock the gangplank was hauled in, and the huge vessel steamed out through the "Golden Gate" and headed towards the Sandwich Islands. Dr. E. C. Dunn was with Mr. Peebles as his traveling companion, and through his mediumistic gifts was brought into daily contact with many more invisible companions. The passage to Australia usually consumes from thirty-five to forty days.

As the steamer glided over the smooth waters from day to day our brother fell to philosophizing:

"How calm the sea! What a quiet life, reading by day, and gazing by night at the glittering stars,- those shining altar-lamps set in the heavens by the fingers of the Eternal! A change, rough and rolling, the ocean! Would you escape sea-sickness? Walk the deck in defiance of the dashing

waves. Exercise a plucky will power; no compromise. Grace aside, it is grit that leads to glory on the ocean.

"The genius of this intellectual age requires the abolition of war, of flag and cannon, of whip and personal devil, ay, more, the gradual, yet complete reconstruction of government, jurisprudence, theology. Oh, for the coming man, the constructor! Oh, for self-denial and more moral heroism! Why cringe and cower? Why lean like a half-dipped candle, and cautiously inquire for the winning way? Alone-alone with truth, is a majority!"

A brief halt was made at Honolulu about two days. Our brother was charmed with the climate and scenery, and collected many interesting facts relating to the natives who had become decimated to a population of sixty-five thousand. In Capt. Cook's time the population of these islands was estimated at four hundred thousand. Their contact with modern civilization was chiefly responsible for this rapid deterioration.

September 26th the voyage was resumed in the steamer "Nevada," bound for New Zealand. The Samoan Islands lay along the route, whose great beauty and soft climate Mr. Peebles particularly remarked. He describes the scenery as transcendently lovely. Of the natives he writes:

"The steam checked, and the vessel at rest the natives flocked to us like birds to a banquet. Physically they are a splendidly made race, with full, high foreheads, wavy beards, and white exquisitely set teeth. They are dark in color and quick in motion. They have very dark brown hair, eyes black and expressive. The occasional reddish hair seen had been lime-bleached. Honest and naturally trusting, they are evidently of the Indo-Malayan origin.

"The women are well-formed, healthy and handsome, and what is more, are famed for their chastity. Both men and women go as naked as newly born babes, except weirdlywoven leaves and sea-grass aprons around their loins. Our passengers bought of them war-clubs, fans, fruits, head-gearing, birds, baskets, spears, and shells. . . . I can but deplore that conceited ignorance which characterizes two classes of

Americans,

radical rationalists who crankily assert that there are 'islanders in the Pacific and ferocious tribes in Africa that have not the faintest idea of God or another state of existence;' and pompous clergymen, who everlastingly prate about the polluted and fiendish heathen' of Oceanica."

The Fiji Islands, likewise, came in for a brief inspection. In this archipelago there are one hundred and fifty-four islands, seventy of which are inhabited. The natives are darkhued, noble in mien, shrewd and enterprising. Missionaries have given them a hard name:

...

"Bear in mind the Fijian side of the story has neither been heard nor published. . . . When discovered by the navigator, Tasman, they knew nothing of syphilis or the various venereal diseases that accompany "Christian" civilization. The taint of syphilis is not yet very common among them. . . . They believe in transmigration and immortality. They worship in caves and groves. They also have their mediums, who, when in ecstatic states, foam at the mouth; but every utterance breathed in this weird trance condition is carefully noted as the voice of a god."

sleight

During this vayage, which to many passengers was tiresome and monotonous, Mr. Peebles found a way to employ all his waking hours, writing notes of travel, reading and holding séances with Dr. Dunn, filled up the hours pleasantly. But his fellow-passengers exhausted their wits for ways and modes in which to "kill time" and find amusement of-hand, trickery, story-telling, ventriloquizing, etc. "Blab and witty words are cheap. Books, all afire with the personalities of their authors, nourish the soul. Pythagoras enjoined not only purity and patience, but seven years' silence, upon certain of his students, as preparatory steps to wisdom. This way, this way, O Samian."

In one of those séances held while on ship-board, Aaron Nite, controlling, said:

"You and multitudes of others should never sit in spirit circles. Many of the best mediums on earth have never even attended a séance. . . . To see the impressional or truly in