No place in the whole world is more beautiful than the King’s gardens in Babylon (Bird-of-Gold said). My white ducks, when they swam upon the lake, went amongst water lilies that were silver-white or all golden. Beside the lake the irises grew, depths and depths of blue and gold and cloud-colored irises. I should never have left the side of that lake if I had not wanted to be amongst the trees that grew in the gardens above—palm trees of many kinds, and great cedar trees in the dark branches of which the doves built their nests. Greatly did I admire the trees in the King’s gardens, for I had come from a country where there were no trees. All the palms were there—the date palm, and the royal palm, and the palm of the desert. They stood nobly by themselves or they made solemn avenues that led to monuments of the Kings of Babylon. In the grass there were golden poppies and little roses that just lifted themselves above the ground. There were great monuments, too—statues of[Pg 94] Kings and lions and chariots, and these reminded people of terrors and magnificences, and they were as a great wind that blew through the gardens.

And there were tulips on the ground, and there were golden fruits amongst gleaming leaves, and red pomegranates on the high trees, and there were spice trees that filled the garments of those who passed with fragrance. And all in a garden to themselves were the roses—a thousand rose trees, each tree with a thousand opened flowers. I wept when I saw that garden of roses, and I do not know why I wept.

All the birds that were lovely to look at or charming to hear singing were in that garden. The black birds with golden wings from my own country were there, and the birds of paradise from the Land of the Burning Mountain. And it was told that the nightingales of Persia and Babylon and Arabia brought their young here that they might learn to sing the more perfectly. Also there were mocking birds that mocked every bird’s song but the song of the nightingale.

As for the beasts in the King’s gardens, the first[Pg 95] one I made friends with was a lynx. He was not in a cage, but went roaming about, watching everything with eyes that never winked. And after I had come to know him and had made friends with him, the lynx brought me to the cages and the pits of the other beasts and with them I made friends.

Of all the creatures that were there the one I was most fearful of was the queen serpent that was in the Pit of the Serpent. But the serpent allured me, and I used to sit above the pit, the lynx beside me, and watch her as she uncoiled herself and swayed her head about. And as I watched her I would beat on a little drum that I carried with me. I began to see that as I beat the drum and made music for her the serpent’s head would cease to sway and she would lower it, and then she would rest upon her coils as if she were sleeping. So I grew to have power over the serpent, and many times when I saw her try to draw down a bird that had come to the edge of the pit, I would beat upon the drum until her head sank down, when the bird would rouse itself out of the spell that the serpent’s eyes had for it, and fly away.

[Pg 96]

So I stayed in the King’s gardens, part of the day with the thousand ducks that were about the lake, and part of the day with the ever-wat............