WHITE DUCK III 



in their wanderings to the end of the earth and the 

 stupendous walls and pillars of stone which hold up 

 the immense plain of the sky ; there they eventually 

 discover some way by which to ascend and reach that 

 happy country which is their home. 



It was not always so ; once the passage from earth 

 to heaven was comparatively an easy one ; there was 

 a way then known to every one, dead or living, in the 

 world. It was a tree growing on the river-bank, so 

 high that its topmost branches reached up to heaven. 

 Imagine what a tree that was, its buttressed trunk so 

 big round that a hundred men with arms outspread 

 and hands touching could not have spanned it ! There 

 was ample room under the shade of its lower branches 

 for the entire nation to gather and sit at meat, every 

 one in his place. On higher branches great birds had 

 their nesting-places, and higher still other great birds, 

 eagles and vultures and storks, might be seen soaring 

 skywards, circling upwards until they appeared like 

 black specks in the blue, but beyond these specks the 

 tree rose still until it faded from sight and mixed itself 

 with the universal blue of heaven. By this tree the 

 dead ascended to their future home, climbing like 

 monkeys, and flitting and flying like birds from branch 

 to branch, until they came to the topmost branches 

 and to an opening in the great plain, through which 

 they passed into that bright and beautiful place. 



Unhappily this tree fell a long time ago — oh, a very 

 long time ago ! If you were to range the whole earth 

 in search of the oldest man in it, and at last discovered 



