The Upsidedownians. 155

they came to, had people on it, all doing just as
in the land which they had left. At last, one day
our island was reached, and sailing around and
around it, they could see.no house, no man, wo-
man, nor child, and they said : ‘Here we will land,
here we will live, where we can have everything
our own way. But when they tried to land, the
rocks seized their boats and turned them upside-
down, spilling them all out into the water! For-
tunately, it happened to be a calm day, when the
water was like glass, and, though with much diffi-
culty, they all managed to get safely to land.
Here they lived, and here their children, and
great-great-great grandchildren have lived ever
since. We try hard to do everything quite dif-
ferently from the way they do in the land our
grandparents came from.”

“T think you have succeeded admirably,” said
Uncle Jack, heartily.

“Vou do? Ah, well we do our best, we do
our best,” and the old man rubbed his hands to-
gether, delightedly.

“Of course, it was hard for us to learn to walk