My brother's letters, written close on very fine paper, continued to reach us from time to time; he could only send them to us by sailing vessels¹ bound in our direction which lay-to in that part of the world where he was stationed. Some of them were written particularly for me, and these were long, and filled with never-to-be-forgotten descriptions. I already knew several words of the sweet and liquid language of Oceanica, and often in my dreams I saw the exquisite² island he described and roamed over it; it haunted my imagination as does a chimerical³ realm, ardently⁴ desired, but as inaccessible⁵ as if situated⁶ upon another planet.  
During my visit to my cousins my father forwarded me a letter from my brother addressed to me. I went up to the garret roof, on the side where the plums were drying, to read it. He wrote of a place called Fataua which was situated in a deep valley and surrounded by steep mountains. “A perpetual twilight⁷,” he wrote, “reigns here under the great exotic trees, and the spray of the cascade⁸ keeps the carpet of rare ferns fresh.” Yes; I could picture that scene to myself very well, now that I had about me mountains and moist glens luxuriant with ferns. . . . He described everything fully⁹ and vividly¹⁰: my brother could not know that his letters exercised a dangerous spell over the child who, at his departure, appeared to be so tranquil¹¹ and so attached to the home fireside.
 
“The only pity,” he wrote at the end, “is that this delightful¹² island has not a door opening into the home-yard, into the beautiful arbor¹³ overgrown with honeysuckle, for instance, that lies behind the grottoes and the little pond.”
 
This idea of a door in the wall at the foot of our garden, and especially the association between the little lake constructed by my brother and distant Oceanica, struck me as very singular, and the following night I had this ............