True it was, they had begun late; their attention as a people having
been, for a considerable time, attracted to much more important affairs;
but they had compensated for their tardy attention by their speedy
excellence. *
* See a work which will be shortly published, entitled, 'The
difference detected between Architecture and Parchitecture,'
by Sansovino the Second.
Before they returned home Skindeep led Popanilla to the top of a tower,
from whence they had a complete view of the whole island. Skindeep
particularly directed the Captain's attention to one spot, where
flourished, as he said, the only corn-fields in the country, which
supplied the whole nation, and were the property of one individual. So
unrivalled was his agricultural science that the vulgar only accounted
for his admirable produce by a miraculous fecundity! The proprietor of
these hundred golden acres was a rather mysterious sort of personage.
He was an aboriginal inhabitant, and, though the only one of the
aborigines in existence, had lived many centuries, and, to the
consternation of some of the Vraibleusians and the exultation of others,
exhibited no signs of decay.
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