A traveler crosses a mountain range and finds a country where illness is a crime, machines have been banned in case they evolve, and the banks that matter deal in a currency nobody spends. Butler published it anonymously and let readers think it was Bulwer-Lytton's; the chapters on machines were being quoted a century later by people who had not read the joke. Fifty-nine plates from 1770 to 1894, including Corot and Ommeganck, picture the valleys, flocks and pastures of the country the traveler crosses.