The animals of the bush meet, and agree to build one big town and live together. A man with one eye, one ear, one arm, and one leg, comes out of a river, and gets them to make him their king. As king, to get complete power, he decrees that every one kill his parents. Nymo hides his parents in the bush. Next the king decrees that the people weave a mat of rice-grains for him to sleep on, and bring him his farm from a distance and set it down near the town. Nymo consults his parents. They advise him to tell the animals to spread the rice over the ground, and to station twenty of the strongest men around the king’s farm. Then Nymo is to go to the king and tell him that they are ready to make him a sleeping-mat of rice-grains, but they must first have an old rice-mat for a pattern; and that the men have gone for his farm, but that, as a son of the Water people, he must first dry up the river they have to cross to reach the new site. Since the king can neither supply the mat nor dry up the river, he has to release the people from their tasks. "No town can prosper without the counsel and experience of the elders.”