78 BY-WAYS AND BIRD-NOTES. — 
give to all those immortals the power of ren- | 
dering themselves visible, and when it was 
exhausted by man’s encroachments they fell - 
away into invisibility. And if some hidden 
cave in the world could now be found where 
nature has never been disturbed by even the 
simplest art, may be there might be discovered 
one or two happy deities revelling in the mer- 
est pool, so to speak, of what was once the 
great ocean of their “peculiar element.” If 
this theory is true the gods are invisible, not 
dead, and they are invisible not from their 
own choice, but because their “ peculiar ele- 
ment” is exhausted which, while it lasted, 
made visibility possible. 
I have no certain recollection of having 
been poring over this or any similar train of 
semi-reasoning, nor have I the faintest knowl- 
edge of what I was thinking of, when my 
guide, halting suddenly and knocking the 
ashes from his pipe into the hollow of his 
great brown hand, said, ‘‘ Well, here we are.” 
At the sound of his rather gentle though deep 
and sonorous voice, I looked around, feeling 
as if I had been aroused from a dreamful slum- 
ber, without power to recall any definite idea 
of my dreams, 
Every one has experienced this feeling when 
straying in an idle, musing way through some 
still grove or quiet meadow. Suddenly, as if 
by a spell of enchantment everything looks 
strange. Even the sunlight is unlike itself. 
The sough of the wind is peculiarly impressive. 
Even the color of the grass is changed. 
You rub your eyes; but it is some time before 
you see, hear and feel natural. 
So with me just then. I was well aware, to be 
