The flower gardens, vegetable gardens, and orchards could hold their own with the best in Virginia or Louisiana. In this there was nothing astonishing; expense was no object in this island so justly called the” Pearl of the Pacific.”

Its capital, Milliard City, occupied about a fifth of the seventeen square miles reserved for it, and was about six miles in circumference. Our readers who are willing to accompany Sebastien Zorn and his comrades on their excursion will soon know it well enough in every part. They will find it unlike the American towns which have the happiness and misfortune to be modern—happiness on account of the facilities for communication, misfortune on account of the artistic side, which is absolutely wanting. Milliard City, as we know, is oval in form, and divided into two sections divided by a central artery, First Avenue, which is about two miles long. The observatory is at one end, and the town hall at the other. Here are centralized all the public departments, the water supply and highways, the plantations and pleasure grounds, the municipal police, custom-house, markets, cemeteries, hospitals, schools, and science and art.

And now what was the population contained within this circuit of eleven miles?

The earth, it appears, has only twelve towns—of which four are in China—which have more than a million inhabitants. Well, Floating Island had but ten thousand, all of them natives of the United States. It was never intended that international discussions should arise among the citizens, who might repose in tranquility on this most modern of constructions.

It was enough, or rather more than enough, that they could not be mustered under the same banner with regard to religion. But it would have been difficult to reserve the exclusive right of residence on the island to the Yankees of the North, who were the port watch of Floating Island, or the Americans of the South, who formed its starboard watch. The interests of the Floating Island Company would not have admitted of this. When the frame of the hull was finished, when the part reserved for the town was ready for building on, when the plan of the streets and avenues had been adopted, the buildings began. to rise—superb hotels, less ornate mansions, houses destined for shops, public edifices, churches and temples, but none of those monstrosities of twenty-seven floors, those “sky-scrapers” one sees at Chicago. The materials used were light and strong. The inoxydisable metal that prevailed was aluminium, seven times as light as iron, the metal of the future, as it was called by Sainte-Claire-Deville, and which is suitable for all the requirements of solid construction. This was used in conjunction with artificial stones, cubes of cement which can be worked with so much ease. Use was also made of glass bricks—hollow, blown, and moulded like bottles—set with mortar, transparent bricks with which if desired the ideal glass house could be realized. But it was really metal framework which was most employed, as in the different kinds of naval architecture. And what was Floating Island but an immense ship?

These various properties all belonged to the Floating Island Company. Those who lived in them were only tenants whatever the amount of their fortune might be. Care had been taken to provide for all the requirements of comfort demanded by these extraordinarily rich Americans, by the side of whom the sovereigns of Europe and the nabobs of India cut but a sorry figure.

If the statistics are correct which give the stock of gold accumulated in the world at eighteen millions and that of silver at twenty millions, it must be admitted that the inhabitants of the Pearl of the Pacific had their fair share.

From the outset the financial side of the enterprise had been kept well in view. The hotels and houses had been let at fabulous prices. The rents amounted to millions, and many of the families could without inconvenience afford this payment for annual lodging. Hence, under this head alone the Company secured a good revenue. Evidently the capital of Floating Island justified the name it bore in geographical nomenclature.

Setting aside these opulent families, there were several hundreds paying a rental of from four to eight thousand a year. The surplus of the population comprised the professors, tradesmen, shopmen, and servants, and the foreigners, who were not very numerous, and were not allowed to settle in Milliard City or in the island. Lawyers were very few, and lawsuits consequently rare; doctors were fewer, and the death rate was consequently absurdly low. Every inhabitant knew his constitution exactly, his muscular force measured by the dynamometer, his pulmonary capacity measured by the spirometer, his power of cardial contraction measured by the sphygmometer, his degree of vital force measured by the magnetometer. In the town there were neither bars nor cafés, nor drinking saloons, nothing to encourage alcoholism. Never was there a case of dipsomania—let us say drunkenness, to be understood by those who do not know Greek. The municipal departments distributed electric energy, light, power, warmth, compressed air, rarefied air, cold air, water under pressure, as well as pneumatic telegrams and telephonic messages. If you died on this Floating Island, regularly withdrawn from intemperate climates and sheltered from every microbic influence, it was because you had to die after the springs of life had been worked to a centenarian old age.

Were there any soldiers in Floating Island? Yes, a body of five hundred men under the orders of Colonel Stewart, for it had to be remembered that some parts of the Pacific are not always safe. In approaching certain groups of islands it is prudent to be prepared against any attack by pirates.