FALL OF APIA. 249 



a numerous progeny, no royal heirs. The queen-making 

 elixir had been, every drop, secretly thrown away by the old 

 mesmeric superintendent of the royal nurseries, and the season 

 was past for collecting those rare vegetable essences of which 

 it was wont to be composed. Had it, indeed, been otherwise, 

 there were none able to travel in search of them. The 

 wretched remnant of the people, whose very life lay centered in 

 their sovereign, now cared not to survive. Their spring of 

 action and of industry was gone, and surrounding the corpse 

 of their late mistress, they raised her monumental mound with 

 their own wasted bodies. 



Thus came to destruction the ancient Amazonian monarchy 

 of Apia ; but before her ruin was complete, the worker of the 

 mighty mischief, the aged sybil who had dared to filch wisdom 

 (or folly) from a higher race, who had meddled in matters too 

 lofty for her handling, had met with her reward. On the 

 arrival of famine, she and her infirm companions were its 

 earliest victims ; thus falling by a fate more frightful, because 

 more lingering, than that which awaited them under the 

 ancient order of things. 



