Nor must it here be omitted, that in this part of Mardi culinary artists are accounted worthy of high consideration.

For among these people of Odo, the matter of eating and drinking is held a matter of life and of death.

"Drag away my queen from my arms," said old Tyty when overcome of Adommo, "but leave me my cook." Now, among the Mardians there were plenty of incarnated deities to keep me in countenance.

Most of the kings of the Archipelago, besides Media, claiming homage as demi-gods; and that, too, by virtue of hereditary descent, the divine spark being transmissable from father to son.

In illustration of this, was the fact, that in several instances the people of the land addressed the supreme god Oro, in the very same terms employed in the political adoration of their sublunary rulers.
Ay: there were deities in Mardi far greater and taller than I: right royal monarchs to boot, living in jolly round tabernacles of jolly brown clay; and feasting, and roystering, and lording it in yellow tabernacles of bamboo.