all this sentaro soon found out by talking to the islanders . he found himself , according to his ideas , in the land of topsyturvydom . everything was upside down . he had wished to escape from dying . he had come to the land of perpetual life with great relief and joy , only to find that the inhabitants themselves , doomed never to die , would consider it bliss to find death . what he had hitherto considered poison these people ate as good food . all the things to which he had been accustomed as food they rejected . whenever any merchants from other countries arrived , the rich people rushed to them eager to buy poisons . these they swallowed eagerly , hoping for death to come so that they might go to paradise . but what were deadly poisons in other lands were without effect in this strange place . people who swallowed them with the hope of dying only found that in a short time they felt better in health instead of worse . vainly they tried to imagine what death could be like . the wealthy would have given all their money and all their goods if they could but shorten their lives to two or three hundred years even . without any change to live on forever seemed to this people wearisome and sad . in the chemist shops there was a drug which was in constant demand . this was because after using it for a hundred years , it was supposed to turn the hair slightly gray and to bring about disorders of the stomach . 
they could not die there .
why did the poisons not work at the land of perpetual life ?
why did the poisons not work at the land of perpetual life ?