CHAPTER IIILANDING
AT last, I was sure, we were about to know a people that had not blurred the features of primeval virtue. And yet I laughed at the thought. What was there in human nature to insure material advance without contamination of the spirit? How were the ages to whip the old Adam out of us but by new vices? Never had the world known exception. But here were lands fenced off from contagion for uncounted ages. Perchance the strange conditions had evolved a simpler civilisation; perchance the strange quarantine in human history had checked the influx of all common spiritual disease.
And there was a strange ethereal beauty misted over the parts that we could see. A thin veil, as of gossamer, withdrew and yet revealed the features of the scenery; and our imaginations were stirred to know the reality we could but dimly see. It excited us like a dream but half-remembered. Our natures tingled with curiosity and eagerness; and every nerve was braced to find our way beneath the veil.
We made for a beautiful landlocked harbour that seemed to promise shelter of the fairest; but it was only a mirage and faded into a long shelving beach of sand. We tried to anchor, but we could find no bottom. And as there was perfect calm we rowed towards the shore with a hawser, hoping to find some rock or tree on which to tie it. The sandy slope was but an illusion, too, and when we came to solid features we found there was nothing but a sheer wall of rock, rising to hundreds of feet above us, that laughed at our toil. Chance after chance, point of vantage after point of vantage led us on, eager, expectant, only to sicken us with illusion. It seemed to be the land of phantasms.
At length, weary with chilled eagerness, we saw the coast slope downwards to the mouth of a river. Our labours were about to be crowned with success. We found an anchorage and rowed towards the shore. But no landing-place offered; every piece of seeming solid shore turned out a quicksand when we touched it with our feet; only the watchful care of our comrades in the boat saved us from disaster. And the breakers on the bar of the river churned to white warned us off. We risked the entrance at last, and were capsized. I swam for a jutting rock that near the bank stemmed the outrunning current. Exhausted with the long effort I reached out and caught the weedy tangle that clung to its sides; I dragged myself up its jagged, wounding slope, and fell into a hollow that held me as I lay in swoon.
Annihilation thawed into consciousness of the blue sky in my eyes and of the flinty rock on which I was stretched. I rose, torn and bleeding, and looked out for my comrades. I could see only the keel of the boat floating out to sea; no yacht, no sign of life. In my hunger, exhaustion, and abandonment I could think of nothing but to make for land and the nearest habitations. I ate some of the shell-fish on the rock, stanched my wounds, and then threw myself into the inflowing tide. I easily breasted the current that divided my solitary crag from the bank, yet it bore me in its swiftness many miles inland before I could reach a landing-point; for broad spaces of glistening mud, in which I sank and floundered, divided me from the green fields beyond. The tide swept me towards a grassy point; I seized an overhanging branch of a tree and sprang upon the firm ground.
A sight of marvellous beauty held me rigid for a moment. Marble palaces, margined with gleaming gardens, flecked the length of the river as far as my eye could reach, and rose, nested in trees, terrace above terrace, up the slopes on either side. Boats with brilliant coloured awnings plied from bank to bank, like swarms of tropical butterflies, or lay moored to flights of snow-pure steps that flanked the water at intervals. Great temples and public buildings broke the outline with their sky-pricking spires. For an instant I doubted my eyes and thought illusion was playing them false, such a dream of beauty lay before them.
I dared not approach such noble purity so begrimed as I then was. I sought the outskirts of the city, for I knew that every town, however beautiful and rich, draggles off in some direction into meanness and filth and penury. I marvelled at the extent of the squalor here. When I reached the highest point of view I saw every gully and level teeming with the evidence of indigent myriads. A reeking human quagmire stretched for miles over the flood-soaked borders of this noble city, like a rich robe of lace that has dragged its train through liquid filth. Groves of trees failed to conceal the squalor and destitution of these low-lying suburbs.
Yet there I felt must be my resting-place till I had found a footing in the land. I had enough precious stones in my possession to serve me as money for months, if not for years. Most of them I buried in a secret place, which I marked well; and I traced a map of its position from the chief features of the city, and from north and west by aid of a small compass I had. With two or three rubies I made for the centre of the city’s pauperism, and by means of gestures managed to change them in a mean pawnshop for the coin of the country.