This is the very desire of the child; nor did dream-islands ever yield romance in greater profusion. One, indeed, is no island, but a great fish, on whose back the sand has been heaped up till trees have grown upon it; no sooner is the sailors’ fire alight than the solid ground sinks under their feet. In another, Sinbad descries from the top of a tree a “white object of enormous size”, the egg of a Roc, that gigantic bird whose wings obscure the sun.