THE DESCENT OF JASON AND MEDEA. (Italics denote females; single lines, parentage; double, marriage.) JASON'S QUEST. far as CHAPTER I. THE QUEEN'S VICTIMS. If God will be avenged for the deed, SHAKESPEARE. - King Richard III. a PROPOSE to tell you curious story of the first ship that ever crossed the seas. No, it was not Noah's Ark, as perhaps you may imagine, for that was not really a ship at all, but only a kind of monster raft, without keel or rudder, sails or oars. Noah didn't wish to go anywhere, so This may have been we can learn. for the sufficient reason that there was no where to go. So long as he could float he was satisfied. But the ship of which I am to speak was made (or we will think of it as made) about half as far back as the Flood, and was called the Ar'go.1 Some writers will have it that, previous to this, Dan'aus, a prince of Lib'ya, built a fifty-oared ship and carried his fine family of fifty daughters over to the island of Rhodes. But that is not quite certain, for the dates of prehistoric times are confused at best; and at any rate we may say that the Ar'go was the first ship with a name and a history. The story that I am going to tell is just as true as as Santa Claus. I don't know but I might call it truer, in those old days of which I write. For while some of my readers may not have faith enough in Santa Claus to hang up their stockings on Christmas eve, not only all the little Greek boys and girls used to believe the wonderful tale of the Ar'go, a ship that could 1 Jacob Bryant, however, seems to think the story of the Argo was a tradition of the Ark. talk; and of Chrysomal'lus, a sheep that could both talk and fly; and of Ja'son, whom at one time fire could not burn, and on whose flesh the sharpest sword would turn its edge; but all their biggest brothers and sisters, their fathers and mothers, and their greatest grandparents, believed these stories also. Now, while I will not ask you to suppose that everything took place exactly as will be stated, I will ask you to think that if you had lived in Greece two thousand years ago you would have had no doubt of it whatever. It is very important that you should know some of these tales as the Greeks used to tell them, for you will rarely read a long poem or a great romance, or even listen to an eloquent speech, that does not refer somehow to the old Grecian gods and heroes; and if you know nothing of the myths or fables concerning them, you cannot fully understand the author's meaning. Sometimes, however, writers and speakers make mistakes in their allusions, all because they have not learned the stories as carefully as |