Not only did they bring water up from the sea, but they turned the course of a clear mountain stream so that it virtually ran through the pipes and faucets of the vast establishment.

The fountains rivalled in beauty those at Versailles, though not so extensive; the artificial lake, while not built in a night, as one other that history mentions, was quite as attractive.
Water mains ran through miles of the tropical forest and, no matter how great the drouth, the natives kept the verdure green and fresh with a constancy that no real wage-earner could have exercised.

As to the stables, they might have aroused envy in the soul of any sporting monarch.
It was a palace, but they had called it a chateau, because Skaggs stubbornly professed to be democratic.

The word palace meant more to him than chateau, although opinions could not have mattered much on the island of Japat.

Inasmuch as he had not, to his dying day, solved the manifold mysteries of the structure, it is not surprising that he never developed sufficient confidence to call it other than "the place." Now and then, officers from some British man-of-war stopped off for entertainment in the chateau, and it was only on such occasions that Skaggs realised what a gorgeously beautiful home it was that he lived in.