Setting Sail for the New World
Tuscan wine, lay the Tyrrhenian, inmost sea of the Middle Kingdom. Upon its sleeping surface bobbed a motley flotilla of Folletti; aboard were the Mona- ciello, those rotund and randy Monks of Naples; the Linchetti, horse-teasing sprites from Lucca; snicker- ing Baraboas, the peeping toms of Venice; the gay Farfarelli (so dear to Dante) of Florence; Parma- dina, the fat gangsters from Genoa (stowed away in the hold); even hardy Salvani and Aguane, cliff- dwellers from the wintry Piedmont. All the airless night they drifted, until dawn showed over the Apennine hills. Suddenly, the im- petuous Samascazzo, Wind-Folletti of Sardinia, filled their sails, and away they sped toward the Pillars of Hercules. Now, in the eternal whirlwinds above Persia’s Mountains of Kaf, appeared a caravan of magic- wrought carpets, and upon them rode the banished elder spirits of Araby: monstrous Deevs, desert-born giants; the Peri, bright and beautiful as starlight; and the wish-granting Djinn, formed of smokeless fire, at last free from Man’s lamps and bottles. Exiled by the Law of the Prophet, all these, too, sought and found the sunset land-crimson flowers, crystal fountains, sweet-scented winds-an Earthly Paradise. Then, in their airy wake, out of Nubia and Ethiopia and the jungles beyond the Mountains of
