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CHAPTER XVIII

EARLY HISTORY OF THE SOODOPSIES AS RELATED BY BARREL BROW.—HOW THEY WERE DRIVEN TO TAKE REFUGE IN THE UNDER WORLD, AND HOW THEY CAME UPON THE MARBLE HIGHWAY.—THEIR DISCOVERY OF NATURAL GAS WHICH YIELDS THEM LIGHT AND WARMTH, AND OF NATURE'S MAGNIFICENT TREASURE HOUSE.—HOW THEY REPLACED THEIR TATTERED GARMENTS AND BEGAN TO BUILD THE CITY OF SILVER.—THE STRANGE MISFORTUNES THAT CAME UPON THEM, AND HOW THEY ROSE SUPERIOR TO THEM, TERRIBLE AS THEY WERE.

And, no doubt, dear friends, you would be glad to hear something about the early history of the Soodopsies: who they were, where they came from, and how they happened to find their way down into the World within a World.

At least, this was the way I felt after I had been presented to the learned Barrel Brow, and so the next time I called upon him I waited patiently for him to finish reading the four books in front of him, and then I said,—

"Be pleased, dear Master, to tell me something concerning the early history of thy people, and to explain to me how they came to make their way down into this underground world."

"Ages and ages ago," wrote the learned Barrel Brow, "my people lived upon the shores of a beautiful land with a vast ocean to the north of it, and in those days they had the same senses as the other people of the upper world. It was a very fair land, indeed, so fair that, in the words of the ancient chronicles, the sun looked in vain for a fairer. Its rivers were deep and broad, its plains were rich and fertile, and its mountains stored full of silver and gold and copper and tin, and so