THE GAME OF THE WONDERFUL ISLANDS

Category: The Game Of The Wonderful Islands

In this game the floor is the sea. Half--rather the larger half because
of some instinctive right of primogeniture--is assigned to the elder of
my two sons (he is, as it were, its Olympian), and the other half goes
to his brother. We distribute our boards about the sea in an
archipelagic manner. We then dress our islands, objecting strongly to
too close a scrutiny of our proceedings until we have done. Here, in the
illustration, is such an archipelago ready for its explorers, or rather
on the verge of exploration. There are altogether four islands, two to
the reader's right and two to the left, and the nearer ones are the more
northerly; it is as many as we could get into the camera. The northern
island to the right is most advanced in civilization, and is chiefly
temple. That temple has a flat roof, diversified by domes made of half
Easter eggs and cardboard cones. These are surmounted by decorative work
of a flamboyant character in plasticine, designed by G. P. W. An
oriental population crowds the courtyard and pours out upon the roadway.
Note the grotesque plasticine monsters who guard the portals, also by G.
P. W., who had a free hand with the architecture of this remarkable
specimen of eastern religiosity. They are nothing, you may be sure, to
the gigantic idols inside, out of the reach of the sacrilegious camera.
To the right is a tropical thatched hut. The thatched roof is really
that nice ribbed paper that comes round bottles--a priceless boon to
these games. All that comes into the house is saved for us. The owner of
the hut lounges outside the door. He is a dismounted cavalry-corps man,
and he owns one cow. His fence, I may note, belonged to a little wooden
farm we bought in Switzerland. Its human inhabitants are scattered; its
beasts follow a precarious living as wild guinea-pigs on the islands to
the south.

Your attention is particularly directed to the trees about and behind
the temple, which thicken to a forest on the further island to the
right. These trees we make of twigs taken from trees and bushes in the
garden, and stuck into holes in our boards. Formerly we lived in a house
with a little wood close by, and our forests were wonderful. Now we are
restricted to our garden, and we could get nothing for this set out but
jasmine and pear. Both have wilted a little, and are not nearly such
spirited trees as you can make out of fir trees, for instance. It is for
these woods chiefly that we have our planks perforated with little
holes. No tin trees can ever be so plausible and various and jolly as
these. With a good garden to draw upon one can make terrific sombre
woods, and then lie down and look through them at lonely horsemen or
wandering beasts.

That further island on the right is a less settled country than the
island of the temple. Camels, you note, run wild there; there is a sort
of dwarf elephant, similar to the now extinct kind of which one finds
skeletons in Malta, pigs, a red parrot, and other such creatures, of
lead and wood. The pear-trees are fine. It is those which have attracted
white settlers (I suppose they are), whose thatched huts are to be seen
both upon the beach and in-land. By the huts on the beach lie a number
of pear-tree logs; but a raid of negroid savages from the to the left is
in the only settler is the man in a adjacent island progress, and
clearly visible rifleman's uniform running inland for help. Beyond,
peeping out among the trees, are the supports he seeks.


Next: THE GAME OF THE WONDERFUL ISLANDS 2

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