The Water Festival! As our barge rounded a bend in the canal, under the archways of dangling colored lights, the festival spread before us. Involuntarily I stood up to gaze. The canal opened into an artificial lake--a broad circular sheet of water some 800 _helans_[17] in diameter. Sloping hillsides enclosed the lake--hillsides which I saw were terraced with huge banks of seats in tiers one above the other.
The seats were crowded with people. White ribbons of roads gave access from the neighboring countryside for land-surface vehicles, and there were stages for the accommodation of air-craft. The rural populace, and people from the nearby smaller cities, had gathered to view this national spectacle--a million or more of them probably, with their individual electrical telescopes for direct distant vision, and small pocket mirrors for that which otherwise would be hidden. A million people at least, seated here on these gigantic spreading tiers.
The lake itself was thus the stage as it were, of a tremendous arena. Tiny artificial islands dotted the lake--a hundred of them. Islands, some no more than a few feet broad; some larger, and in the center of the lake, one quite large. All the islands were covered with luxuriant vegetation. The tiny ones were no more than shadowed nooks of leaves and flowers.
Between the islands, crooked lanes of the placid water wended their way in and out, broadening into occasional lagoons. Bridges crossed the lanes; archways of lights spanned them at intervals.
From this distance the whole scene was a riot of color and great red and purple auroral lights of Venus, which at this midnight hour rode the upper sky, tinged everything vividly. The archway lights were soft rose, silver and gold. Some of the tiny islands, from sources hidden were bathed in bright silver. Others darker, in deep purple and red; still others, quite unlighted, dim and shadowed, touched only by the reflected glow from those near them.
From the main island lights were flashing into the sky; occasional color bombs mounted and burst, painting the heavens.
A riot of color. And then as we approached, I became aware of sound and movement as well. Music from scores of unseen sources. Music from single isolated instruments floating softly over the water--lovers playing accompaniment to their pleading voices; or again, groups of voices--the curiously mellow voices of young girls--and, on an island apart, music from an aerial carrying strains from the public _concelan_.[18]