CHAPTER XRadiumopolis
There had been noticeable for some time a change in temperature. It grew colder and the recurrent periods of darkness were more frequent. It almost seemed as if the stationary sun responded to the secular changes produced by the apparent motion of the firmamental sun, and that, while light remained, a reduced form of winter might still be expected in this oddly conditioned corner of the earth.
Already in some way the rumor of our approach had spread far and wide. The fields were at first crossed by solitary figures trooping to the roadside to see the strangers. These were shepherds of the great flocks of goats and sheep, whose slowly shifting masses drifted over the meadow in irregular blotches of white and brown and black. At times, where we crossed marshy exposures on either side of us, the gurgle of chattering water fowl reached us, and then when we attained a higher ground hosts of red and blue iris-like plants clothed the edges of the fields, from whose corollas rose, like a visible incense, innumerable white and yellow moths or butterflies. It all was transcendently novel and interesting, and though occasionally we shivered when some chilliness entered the air, from passing breezes flung into the valley from the vast cold outside, we almost forgot our discomfort in our excitement and enthrallment.
The spectators along the route became more numerous, a wide-eyed, open mouthed throng, at first scarcely vocal, just an amused, staring audience. They were made up of the larger serving, working class—those I have designated as Eskimos—and they hung over each other’s shoulders in mute astonishment, their black eyes sharply scrutinizing us, and very often their fingers pushed out in expressive glee at the Professor, whose superb shabbiness and challenging splendor of hair always evoked the liveliest pleasure.
But as we advanced, mile upon mile, over a road of perfect construction—evenly arched and well ditched on both sides—we observed a changing character in our audience. The little people were thronging in. They came from distant low villages and they imparted a contrasted demeanor to the wayside. They were mildly clamorous and critical. They broke into ejaculations, hallooed salutations, and extended comments which kept them amused and vibrating with curiosity. A few sombre older people remained silent or grunted a few monosyllables to each other, but the younger element was quite irrepressible. At one place where the road crossed a village community, the guards had to become rigorous in maintaining an open path for us, and into large trees—a tree that here resembled the top-heavy Pawlonia of Asia—urchins nimble as monkeys had climbed in clusters, and dropped on us nuts and grain and leaves.
“Well the kids have the right spirit. I feel more at home now when theenfant terribleshows up. Where the youngsters have a sense of fun it seems to me the fathers won’t have gotten so far beyond it, as to serve us up in an imperial banquet, cut off our heads as intruders, or feed us to the Crocodilo-Python,” said Hopkins to me who was just alongside of him. “I’m half afraid they’ve taken ashine to us, and will have us up in some municipal museum for the education of the public. I feel anxious about the Professor. They surely think he’s a most attractive wild beast.”
And now we were trudging through a farm land; agricultural acres expanded before and around us; the bean, wheat, rye; the grape, apple, cherry; clover fields and honey hives were in evidence, though the harvesting—far later than in the south, a singular inversion again proceeding from the influence of the stationary sun—had been completed. The red and yellow houses of adobe tile or brick were gathered in small clusters and when, over long distances they sprinkled the tawny or sear landscape with patches of bright color, like bits of new cloth on a worn gown, the effect was delightful.
Our spirits rose; although prisoners over whom no doubt some national parley or pow-wow would be seriously held, and although distrustful of the obsequious gestures (most decidedly so in my case) with which the “little doctors” had invited us to return with the guard to thesomewherewe must be now approaching, still the winning charm of the land, the agreeable manners of the little people, and the stolid unconcern of the larger race half convinced me that our fate wouldn’t be a tragic one. Our most ominous thoughts were connected with those dreadful metal tubes!
I took occasion to study the people. The larger serving or inferior class were Mongolian in type; they resembled a taller, more slender and less intelligent Eskimo norm, but the little people presented a surprising range of individual variation. The tallest of these latter were almost four feet in height, the smallest scarcely exceeded three. Literally they were a boreal pygmy race. The dominating peculiarity among them was a tendencyto macrocephalism which in the “little doctors” became exaggerated, and made them overbalanced and grotesque. In many the heads did not too obviously exceed a normal size, and the lower limbs were almost normally developed, giving them shapeliness. The women were very strikingly less afflicted with “big-headedness,” and in them too the nose, attaining among the men a preponderant magnitude was much more moderate in size. Many of the young women were very pretty, a few almost beautiful, and the becoming attire of the tunic, the loose trousers bound, in many instances, with gold anklets, the abundant black hair coiled up in coronal chignons, and sinuously decorated with the gold serpent-shaped pins, administered a piquant loveliness. Generally the men were not so attractive; an unpleasant lankiness of limb, and (because of a deficient dental development) sunken cheeks, with narrow chests, and their unusual heads, on which too in a great number of cases an extreme scantiness of hair was observable, robbed them of physical rhythm and proportion. But again among them were also striking exceptions, and these gained immensely in comeliness from the average homeliness of their associates. The older men universally affected beards, which some compensatory whim in nature made abundant. All were dark.
My greatest achievement in observation on this long march was the certain identification of the language with a Semitic tongue, and the detection among the taller people of an Eskimo dialect. This last discovery was made by the help of Goritz, whose knowledge of the eastern Eskimo dialects was extensive, although he at first questioned my conclusions. The reasons are philological and I pass over them. I hope to discuss the matter before the congress of Americanists, to be held inPhiladelphia next year. It is enough for the following chapters of my narrative to say that I became proficient (reasonably so) through my intimate acquaintance with Hebrew, with the speech of the “little doctors,” and Goritz acquired a less facile mastery of the Eskimo tongue. The recognition of corruption in sound of a few consonants and a peculiar ellipsis of some vowels, in the first case, accomplished the feat for myself. When I told Hopkins of my success he was overjoyed.
“Alfred, that is dandy. If we can tell what they’re talking about, and get a line on their plans we’ll skin through all right. When the proper moment comes let ’em know you’re wise to their gibberish, and they’ll take water quick enough. Why, we might start a revolution, if they try to put it over us. The big fellows could sweep them like chaff—and then our GUNS.”
“Yes,” I curtly interjected. “And their tubes?” Spruce was silent.
We had now been five days on our march and our progress had been alternately hastened and retarded by the curiosity of the people. Hastened when messages from nearby villages along the road came to our captain urging speed, that the citizens of these country communities might inspect us a little longer; retarded by reason of this same importunity to allow the gathering countryside the gratification of the show. For literally we had become that, and had there been an enterprising manager to exploit our novelty his receipts would have been enviable. The crowds increased, the rumor of our approach spread on every side, and to meet their unappeasable wonder over our appearance we were stuck up on platforms in the squares or open places in the villages and watched, studied and applauded by the insatiable throngs. It was indeed a stupefying experience. Certainly it wasabundantly ludicrous and amusing as well. Hopkins of course enjoyed it. Goritz was patient and obscurely piqued by it, the Professor regarded it as ethnologically delightful, and I took advantage of the display to note the people and their speech.
“I have served a good many purposes in my life,” said Hopkins, “but I never supposed I’d make a drawing card in a traveling circus. Our united effect is really gorgeous. I should think they might improve the show by some fresh clothes. But say—the Professor is immense. And he TAKES. The way they shout and rubberneck to get nearer to him will start something doing. If the Professor only had a little political ambition and an ounce of sense he’d organize a campaign that would land him in the presidential chair. And then! Well then we’d all be prime ministers, and hand out the dope to these babies in a manner so impressive that we’d hold the job down tight, until we could get away with the loot. We’d make Goritz treasurer and he’d come the Tammany act on ’em so strong that maybe we could leave with all the goods worth having in the country, in our jeans. Eh?
“Look at ’em, now, surveying the Professor. I feel an artistic jealousy of that red hair of his. It certainly has ’em guessing. Perhaps they think it’s a kind of halo, always on fire. He certainly must keep it on his head. It’s our salvation. Let the local barbers touch that, and find out it’s just plain scissorable wool, and we’re in the soup—and the Professor? Well, they won’t do a thing to him.”
This fifth day turned out to be the last one of our march. A memorable day it was. Larger and larger grew the crowds; they met us, streaming along evidently from some near point of population, and, as now the captain of our guard would allowno delay or halt, we assumed that our destination was almost at hand. Attaining it formed a new thrill.
We had come to a marked irregularity in the topographic monotony of the valley, a high, evenly sloped ridge curving away on either side, which might be the arc of a continuous or completed circle, or just a natural accident. The broad road ascended this hill. We had just stepped out on the summit, when one of the intermittent light flashes or sunbursts blazed on the strange scene before our eyes. We were looking into a dish-like area, for such it seemed, as we could trace north and south the circumvallation of the ridge, and it was filled with settlements which became denser in the distance, and in that distance (later we discovered it was about the center of the circular enclosure) rose the dazzling pediments, stories and wings, of a GOLD HOUSE.
Nothing could be more astonishing. Instinctively we came to a full stop and gazed. And our companions, familiar with the spectacle, were arrested by the sudden apocalyptic flashing of light from the burnished building, as “of summer lightning on a dark night suddenly exposing unsuspected realms of fantastic and poetical suggestion.” (A line, Mr. Link, I found last night in a book by George Saintsbury.) But the suggestions here were overwhelmingly fantastic.
Imagine a swelling mound tapering to a narrow platform, itself created by the leveling art of the engineers, surmounted by a curiously heaped up succession of stories, which were buttressed below by extensions and porticoes, and frescoed or incrusted throughout by rude and hieratic ornamentation—an ornamentation that certainly had more lucidity than the confused medley of symbol and ideograph at Copán, but which had not yetfreed itself from a mixture of extravagance and realism. Then finally imagine this executed in what seemed to be pure gold, and all glittering in a quick concentration of light. It was refulgent and it was unearthly. Below it spread the dull tawniness of an outreaching terracotta city.
“What have we come to?” faltered Goritz, who was transfixed by this new wonder.
“It might be called,” said Hopkins, “the Desire of All Nations; at least it would look that way to a thoroughbred anywhere inside of Christendom. I wonder how long that pile would stand on the principal street of the capitals of the world! The army, with fixed bayonets, shot guns, and dynamite bombs, couldn’t keep the gentlemen of America or the spend-thrifts of Europe from getting their hooks in somewhere. I think it must be the Casino; nothing short of Policy or Poker could keep up an establishment like that. Gold must be very cheap hereabouts, or else the people need a little free schooling as to the particular and pleasant uses it can be put to. Looks that way.”
“Ah,” spoke up the Professor. “Barter, primal conditions, prevail here, where a medium of exchange is hardly needed. Gold to these people is a color, an ornament. With it they have no more than without it, for every desire is satisfied, and the pride of possession or the sentiment of avarice is unknown. All are equally happy, and all are equally rich or poor. Gold has an interest to them because it pleases the eye, and it is here dedicated to personal or religious distinctions, but aswealth, in our sense, it has no value. These flocks, these acres of grain and fruits, mean subsistence, but GOLD is something to look at—simply. Its name here has probably no meaning of commercial utility.”
“Pretty good for the eyes though, Professor,”was Hopkins’ rejoinder, “and as for the name I don’t recall anything
Which acts so direct, and with so much effectOn the human sensorium, or makes one erectOne’s ears so, as soon as the sound we detect,
Which acts so direct, and with so much effectOn the human sensorium, or makes one erectOne’s ears so, as soon as the sound we detect,
Which acts so direct, and with so much effectOn the human sensorium, or makes one erectOne’s ears so, as soon as the sound we detect,
Which acts so direct, and with so much effect
On the human sensorium, or makes one erect
One’s ears so, as soon as the sound we detect,
unless perhaps—it might be—BEER—in a drought.”
“Well,” in an undertone from Goritz, “if Gold has no practical uses in this outlandish nook of the world, we can take enough of it away with us to a place where it’s more useful than ornamental.”
“Have a care,” warned Hopkins. “Our heads had better be kept on our shoulders, too. Remember, Goritz, you’ve considerable loot in your pack now. If they give us the third degree, and start in on a customs house search, we may get to another place where—where Gold wouldn’t be worth the handling, because of the heat, or otherwise, or because our immediate necessities were otherwise provided for.”
All this while we were again rapidly moving on, and with each step, while the marvel before us grew larger, plainer, some of its first surprising effectiveness changed. It began to be seen that it was little more than a piled up structure of the communal dwellings which dotted the plain beneath it, but on it a queer aboriginal fancy had stuck plates of gold,—or what seemed to be gold—and that its corners were decorated with upraised standards of gold delineating the patron god, or demon, of the establishment, the Crocodilo-Python. Over it too in whirls and corkscrew spirals spread innumerable folded scrolls and winding figures whose lumpy extremities betokened the heads of snakes. It was not long before we had gained the heart of the city. Everywhere it had been a monotonous series of the tile huts, stuck intiers, one series over another, such as description and photographs have made so familiar from the Arizona and New Mexico region. There was now a much smaller admixture of the taller people, and the little men and women appeared to be almost the only occupants of the city.
We had come almost underneath the pimple-like excrescence on which the golden habitation sat, like a yellow corolla on the green bulb of a thistle, and we found a space surrounding it of about a thousand feet in width, filled with enclosures holding, to our amazement, large black snakes, the congeners exactly of those held aloft, in the procession we had met, on golden rods. The walls of these enclosures were of tile or rudely baked bricks; some were screened with an open wicker work, which in many instances had become dilapidated or were quite worthless as fences to prevent the egress of the snakes. In the enclosure bushes and weedy herbs flourished, and their occupants hung from the branches of these or torpidly lay in the grass beneath, in repulsive bunches. I admit my unreasonable aversion to snakes, and these extraordinary protected nurseries overcame me with disgust. Hopkins was hardly less disturbed. To the Professor and to Goritz they were manifestly attractive.
“St. Patrick can’t be the patron saint here,” said Hopkins, “and whatever language they speak it pretty certainly is not Irish. I think no one could mistake their brogue for anything heard in Cork or Dublin. As for the snakes, I guess what Bobbie Burns said to the louse will fit them,
‘Ye ugly creepin, blastit wonners,Detested, shunn’d by saunt and sinners.’”
‘Ye ugly creepin, blastit wonners,Detested, shunn’d by saunt and sinners.’”
‘Ye ugly creepin, blastit wonners,
Detested, shunn’d by saunt and sinners.’”
“Every step we take,” solemnly rejoined the Professor, “discloses new wonders. To me it is quiteevident that the trail of the ethnic origins of Tree and Serpent worship crosses the pole!”
“Yes,” shouted Hopkins, “and to me, it’s quite evident that the trail of these reptiles crosses ours. Look out there!”
He pointed ahead and over the road stretched the wriggling bodies of twenty or thirty faintly spotted black snakes, sleek and graceful, their heads raised indifferently in a cool inspection of our approach, and their tongues quivering in defiance.
As soon as they were perceived by our guard, the leader raised his hand, and we waited for their ophidian majesties to satisfy their curiosity, and pass on, which they did, swaying the cropped grass on the wayside and vanishing into one of the neighboring pounds over its loosened dejected blocks. It was quite clear that the city of Radiumopolis—so we came to distinguish it later—might prove unpleasantly full of these creatures, for whom the citizens maintained a most disagreeably pious regard. It reminded the Professor of the great center of Serpent Worship at Epidaurus, where stood the famous temple to Aesculapius and the grove attached to it in which serpents were kept and fed, down to the time of Pausanius.
Once over the peripheral plain we began the ascent of the mound at its center. There was a simple stateliness about this terraced rise of steps, formed of a red tile or brick, from its very gradual recession and its extreme width. Here our eyes measured and studied the astonishing house, or temple, or Capitol, which was to be for us doubtless a “house of detention” also.
It was a square composite, with openings on three sides—those we could see—and pierced by window embrasures, sensibly regular in their spacing. Porches extended outward from the openings and on these a little rather unsuccessful decorative constructionhad been expended. Over each porch entrance was the literal reproduction in gold and in stucco of the local deity, in addition to the upraised images—careening and expanded like hippogriffs—at the four corners of the building. These latter were made entirely of gold, and represented thousands and thousands of dollars. It was indeed stupifying to estimate their probable value.
The gold surface of the Capitol proved to be a plastering of gold plates, not so well or so carefully executed as to preclude the constant exposure of the underlying adobe. But this prodigious prodigality of gold was again most incredible.
We were conducted at once into theAcropolisso the Professor styled it—noting before we entered a serviceable courtyard around it, which secured a little dignity from a wall of bricks interrupted by higher pillars, and also rimmed with gold. Entering a broad hallway we were overcome by the pervasive softly emitted radiance from lamps of mineral on clumsy stands, and held on round gold saucers or servers.
“Radium,” said the Professor. “It is exactly as I have been suspecting. These people have gained access to some vast deposit of this miracle-working element. It not unreasonably may be supposed that it is exposed in some chasm in the crust of the earth, entering to great depths, and perhaps impinging on such central masses as have been interpolated in some recent physical speculations, as giving rise to thestaticheat of the earth. Here we probably have an explanation of the abundance of gold—transmutation! And here too some adequate explanation of the stationary sun rays converted by reflection into light and heat—Astounding! Astounding!! Astounding!!!”
To me the fascination, in a way, of all this mixture of wonders and horrors (the snake and laterdiscoveries and episodes) and primal simplicity, was just that incalculable oddness or mystery of the conjunction of some almost superhuman power with the weird religion and the archaic habits. I cannot describe how perversely it affected me, sometimes raising my interest to a fever heat, and again filling me with a tormenting fury of desire to make my escape.
We passed through the hall, our guard, at some gesture from the captain, closing around, and as we emerged at its further end, again upon the outside court, I, looking back, saw attendants cover the radium masses with opaque caps. We were now in a somewhat contrasted entourage. On this side of the Capitol the city seemed excluded, and a rather thick wood and an untamed undergrowth, through which however stretched a broad highway, monopolized the ground westward. We had entered both the city and the Capitol from the east. In an adjoining yard at the foot of another symmetrically disposed terrace of steps was a closed tenement, and into this we were led.
Imagine our delight to find it occupied by an immense basin or pool, into which two conduits poured hot and cold water. The immense bath was even then gently steaming; the outer air had grown increasingly colder. Rough masonry couches, covered with rugs, had been built against the walls, and on the edge of the huge tank were scattered white chunks which, at first conceived to be soap, turned out to be an indifferent substitute, in the shape of an unctuous and gritty clay.
This delightful prospect almost brought shouts to our lips, and Hopkins raising his hands in mock homage and gratitude, exclaimed:
“But this day of water, cleanliness, and soap,I shall carry to the Catacombs of Hope,Photographically linedOn the tablets of my mind,When a yesterday seems to me remote.”
“But this day of water, cleanliness, and soap,I shall carry to the Catacombs of Hope,Photographically linedOn the tablets of my mind,When a yesterday seems to me remote.”
“But this day of water, cleanliness, and soap,I shall carry to the Catacombs of Hope,Photographically linedOn the tablets of my mind,When a yesterday seems to me remote.”
“But this day of water, cleanliness, and soap,
I shall carry to the Catacombs of Hope,
Photographically lined
On the tablets of my mind,
When a yesterday seems to me remote.”
And to crown all we were given the tunic and trousers of Radiumopolis with the belt and enigmatically engraved buckle—of lead, to Goritz’s ill-suppressed mortification. And then we were taken back into the Capitol, and alloted four rooms facing the east, each provided with a window, from which we would now surely be able to watch the pageant of the returning worshippers, priests or celebrants. These rooms deserve a passing consideration. They were low ceilinged, moderate spaced, their floors carpeted with a rude figured matting (again the conventional Crocodilo-Python) their walls hung with rugs far less artistic than the Navajo blanket, low couches upholstered with matting and rugs or carpets, and across the doorway a surprisingly artistic tapestry of gold threads, figuring the Crocodilo-Python in a maze of interlacing and sinuous outlines, something like the convoluted sea dragon on the jade screens of China. One of these curtains hung at the entrance of almost every room in the Capitol, and they were very numerous and capable of accommodating a remarkable number of people.
There were on the ground floor—where our own rooms had auspiciously been reserved—large assembly rooms, or audience and council chambers, and, as the sequel shows, one of these was the Throne Room. There was no glass covering to the windows; perhaps in a few instance screens of leather, which were inserted in the openings of the rooms, helped to exclude the cold, such as it was. Rain was kept out by board frames. We found out that there was seldom a cold exceeding 0° Centigrade, and that radium stoves or our clothing itself, mitigated any severity of weather the denizens ofthese houses experienced. Everything reinforced our first impressions, that the culture of the Radiumopolites was simple, unostentatious, a little grotesque and savage, but that their proximity to some source of radium had evolved a mysterious power among their wise men, which had overlaid thesupellexof their culture with this resplendent glory of GOLD. Was it, as the Professor more and more confidently believed—was ittransmutation?
In our rooms we were supplied with the radium lamps and were made to understand that too long exposure to their influence was dangerous. Once in possession of this marvel we surrendered almost all curiosity to the inspection of the transcendent material. Facts connected with its properties and its power are considered in another place; our immediate history in our new surroundings claims precedence now. We were permitted the liberty of the courtyard around the Capitol, but were not allowed to descend the hill, nor to investigate the surrounding city. Of course we saw the occupants of the Capitol, who evidently formed a restricted and semi-imperial class, and the many messengers, tradespeople or supplicants who every day came out of the city.
The small people were immensely the more interesting of the two types. They varied much among themselves, and exhibited individualities of temperament, behavior and feature, that were most absorbing. One defect amongst them was the imperfect and incomplete teeth, especially in the men, the apparently thin-shanked (platynemic) legs, and the somewhat constricted chests, indications, taken in connection with their large heads, that the Professor interpreted as evidence of great racial age. The women were often sharply contrasted with the men, being larger,more shapely, and often boasting really extraordinary beauty. This was most marked in the residents in the Capitol, and one of these ladies of the Capitol whom we later encountered promenading the courtyard quite enthralled us. Her own appreciation of the Yankee was on her side equally enthusiastic.
We had our meals served to us in a separate room, attended by servants of the larger race. We sat at a table covered with a yellow cloth, with designs woven upon it of the ubiquitous Crocodilo-Python, and we ate from square dishes of pottery, also yellow and bordered by blue traceries of interwoven serpents, which revolted both Hopkins and myself. Our cuisine was not much varied, and the most pleasing element was the delicious wine. The flat meal cakes, nuts, fruit and dishes of goat and sheep meat, with some vegetables, were offered relentlessly day after day, and it occurred to Hopkins that if he could have had an assorted shipment from Park and Tilford’s, and been allowed to make a few simple experiments in the kitchen he could easily have raised the standard of living immensely.
But I was making remarkable progress in acquiring the tongue of the upper classes. My excellent knowledge of Hebrew made this practicable, and in a short time, before the return of the Councilors, Priests or Governors from their peripatetic religious pilgrimage made it supremely helpful, I could actually converse intelligibly, and from carefully enunciated addresses understand my interlocutor. I was most lucky in hitting on a very sympathetic teacher. It was no less a one than Ziliah, the daughter of Javan, the president of the Council and Ruler of the Capitol. He was the benignant and expostulating little gentleman we had encountered when our mishap precipitated us from the pine tree top. She, his daughter, was certainly the fairest of the children of Radiumopolis,and her wandering and liquid eyes had never been more satisfied than they were now with the sweet boyish beauty of Spruce Hopkins, the Yankee.
Ziliah Lamech—if I may adopt the Gentile practices of nomenclature—was one of the larger women, and exhibited a different and piquant skill in dress. Her trousers were rather baggy, her skirts looped on the sides, so that her pretty feet in embroidered goatskin sandals were delightfully visible. The belt of gold plates and the wonderful buckle of gold clasped her waist, constricting the blowsy upper tunic, which was a delicate blue, and enriched by interwoven threads of gold. It was loosened at her neck and the dark, smooth skin bared at her finely shaped neck, was decorated by a series of delicate gold chains in a composite flat necklace. Her abundant hair, as with the women we had met in the pine forest, was made up in compact rolls, that were held in place by the gold serpent pins, and from her small ears hung tiny bells of gold.
Her face, as I carefully studied it, was distinctly Jewish. The features were really perfect, and the mingled softness and intelligence of her expression, the half denoted charm of extreme sensibility in her eyes, the mobility and loveliness of her mouth, a swaying grace in her motions, an indefinable distinction too in the carriage of her head, and the enticing fullness of her bared arms—the sleeves of her upper garment were caught up to her shoulders by broad loops of ornamented gold—combined to make of her a captivating and most novel picture. She it was, whose heart the errant little god Cupid had now sadly transfixed with his stinging arrows, and her heart was beating wildly under the loosened folds of her jacket with love for the blond American.
It was my opportunity. Love is a quick teacher, and makes quick confidences, especially with naiveand unsophisticated natures, as now, in this little princess of the north. She met us frequently in the courtyard surrounding the huge glittering Capitol where we were constantly strolling, and I recall the extraordinary picture she made, when one of the black lustrous snakes rose from the parapet on the edge of the hill as she was passing. She bowed to us, seized the reptile, wound it around her body, and lifted, above her own, its big wedge-shaped head, with one hand, holding with the other its scaly loops at her waist. The effort brought color to her cheeks, excitement to her eyes, and though neither Hopkins nor myself admired the combination, her beauty won from the fantastic, or repellent, contrast a most singular thrall.
There was a maidenly coquetry with her, as became her degree, for she retired after disengaging the creature, throwing it back down the hillside, whence it sped to the immense preserve below reserved for these unpleasing guests. The ophidian impress everywhere was to me almost unbearable. These snakes traveled from their enclosures, more or less frequently, in all directions; they were numerous in the city, though, and, after their secretive habits, were discovered most unalluringly in corners, eaves, holes, roofs, hanging from trees, or nestled on clothes. In the Capitol or Palace they were not so common, and probably were never found above the first floor.
Hopkins of course realized his conquest, but Hopkins decidedly abhorred snakes. When the beautiful Ziliah vanished, he said with a most comical grimace:
“A married life with a snake lady wouldn’t be much better than a lifelong companionship with a gin mill,” an ungallant commentary which I denounced.
Ziliah and I loitered long together until under heradroit tutelage I became almost proficient in this unquestionably deteriorated Hebrew tongue. And then, when we fairly understood each other—how the questions flew! She exulted in telling me all she knew about her people, and the exchange on my part, in telling her of our origin and home, with welcome dilations on the talent and prowess of the adorable Spruce, only too well repaid her efforts. I told all these things to my friends, and for long hours we would discuss and rehearse them with increasing amazement. In conjunction with all that I learned later, the picture to be presented of Radiumopolis, the Radiumopolites, and their country—KROCKER LAND—is mainly as follows:
The Valley of Rasselas lies to the southwest of the Krocker Land terrain, and the city of Radiumopolis to the southwestern corner of the valley itself. They are eccentrically related to the vast domain of encircling mountains, and to the stupendous gorge of the Perpetual Nimbus, which seems throughout its extent to penetrate to uncooled or igneous wombs of the earth. But at one point westward there is a superimposed gorge that actually cuts the first encircling monstrous crack, and through this secondary gorge, cutting the first to immense depths, pours the deluge of the waters of the river that empties the Saurian Sea into the Canon of Promise. (See Chapter VI.) This great river enters the Valley of Rasselas towards the northwest, and after a short, peaceful transit, as a brimming flood through wide savannahs, it turns abruptly westward in an entrenched conduit and resumes its terrible course through the canon I named the Canon of Escape. Through this awful defile and on the surging flood of that river I made my own exit from Krocker Land, reached Beaufort Sea, Behring Straits, and finally San Francisco. Goritz’s appellation for the gorge beyond the SaurianSea is, however, justified because of the river’s final, though brief, passage across one extremity of the blissful Valley of Rasselas.
Immediately southward, west of Radiumopolis, are hot springs, a sort of geyser basin, whence hot waters are constantly derived for the baths of the city—and we found the latter to be numerous. Beyond these again, in the same direction, the continental rift of the Perpetual Nimbus almost closes, and the horrible crack becomes a crevice easily crossed. But beyond it again, in a crustal split that defies computation to measure, or science to explain, or experience to equal, lies, probably a radium (?) mass fifty or more miles in linear extent, with a width of three or four miles, and from which constantly pours an almost cosmic immensity of heat and light—emanation-niton. Its environs are withered, blasted deserts of rock. No one has ever approached it. Its emanation strikes a bare mountain face beyond it—a part of the Krocker Land Rim—and the incalculable volume of rays (Cathode Rays) reflected into the upper atmosphere over Krocker Land and immediately superior to the Valley of Rasselas, are somehow arrested in a nebulous ganglion which forms the Stationary Sun of this utterly fabulous region. This sun is really not stationary, nor is it in any sense equable, as hints in my narrative have already indicated. It moves, drifts north and south, east and west, undergoes perturbations, dies out, flares up, and would, to a properly equipped meteorological corps, stationed at Radiumopolis, furnish, I believe, an object of study absolutely unrivaled in terrestrial science.
But from time immemorial in the radium land fragments, nodules of a grayish or brownish mineral, were picked up and theirnucleiwere later revealed to be pure radium (they called itLuxto),and from these by an accident—still retained in the tradition of the people as a heavenly bestowed revelation or miracle—the power of transmutation was learned.
Mr. Link, we had already suspected this, as you know, but when I actually learned it from the lips of Ziliah—the love-dazed Ziliah—I verily doubted my existence for a moment. In connection with the whole complex, so to speak, of wonders, it produced a half vertiginous feeling hard to describe. Ziliah’s story was in this wise:
“A long, long, long, time ago, after a long darkness in the Stationary Sun, a terrible storm broke over Radiumopolis. The thunder, the lightning flashes, had never before been heard or seen, and there roared through the air an awful, destructive wind. It upset houses, blew over part of the Capitol, razed the trees; and then amid the thunder and the lightning, in a downrush of air, came a stranger, a little man strangely dressed in white with a black cap, and he had a dark face. He stayed with the people and taught them many things, but only to therulers, the older men, the men of the council, would he teach the secret of making gold. He took them away with him on a journey westward to the radium country. They were absent many days and when they returned they were in rags, and their faces were pale, and haggard, but their hands and their pockets were filled with lumps of gold. The little stranger left as he had come in another awful storm. He went upward in a whirlwind and rode like a ghost through fearful gusts and disappeared in a roar of thunder and blaze of light, and a circle of flame descended from his feet and burnt a deep hole in the ground, as anyone can see to this day, below the hill in the snake pasture. But that wasn’t all. He carried away with him thebeautiful daughter of the Head Man and she never was seen again.”
“Why,” exclaimed Hopkins, when I repeated the legend, “it’s a clear case again of Alice Hatton and the Devil, though in that case Old Nick left nothing behind him but a bad smell:
“Now high, now low, now fast and now slow,In terrible circumgyration they go—The flame colored belle and her coffee faced beau!Up they go once and up they go twice!Round the hall! Round the hall! And now up they go thrice.Now one grand pirouette the performance to crown,Now again they go up, and they NEVER COME DOWN!”
“Now high, now low, now fast and now slow,In terrible circumgyration they go—The flame colored belle and her coffee faced beau!Up they go once and up they go twice!Round the hall! Round the hall! And now up they go thrice.Now one grand pirouette the performance to crown,Now again they go up, and they NEVER COME DOWN!”
“Now high, now low, now fast and now slow,In terrible circumgyration they go—The flame colored belle and her coffee faced beau!Up they go once and up they go twice!Round the hall! Round the hall! And now up they go thrice.Now one grand pirouette the performance to crown,Now again they go up, and they NEVER COME DOWN!”
“Now high, now low, now fast and now slow,
In terrible circumgyration they go—
The flame colored belle and her coffee faced beau!
Up they go once and up they go twice!
Round the hall! Round the hall! And now up they go thrice.
Now one grand pirouette the performance to crown,
Now again they go up, and they NEVER COME DOWN!”
Whatever the legend meant it intimated that someone had discovered this peculiar power in the radium mineral, and the knowledge had been carefully guarded, though, as Goritz said, “Of what use was the knowledge when gold was needed by no one?”
But the power itself, its physical or chemical postulates, the method, the material! Later we learned something, but not much, and I trust it may be reserved for Science,with the material at my command(which exerts this miraculous power) to solve the problem of the ages.
Ziliah told me something of the origins of her people and this curious civilization of theirs, but it was vague and inconclusive. The small people were an intensive people, whose unresisted control of a physically stronger and bolder race resembles some of the ethnic phenomena of Asia and Africa. Their literature was practically little else than long genealogies, the traditions transmitted by word of mouth of former rulers, councils, the doings of afew notables, and a cosmology which very singularly resembled the story recently deciphered on a Sumerian relic by Professor Arno Poebel of the University of Pennsylvania.
In fact these Radiumopolites had lived uneventful lives and the incidents of history were controlled exclusively by the incidents of weather, the atmospheric and terrestrial perturbations involved in their unique environment. When had they reached this extraordinary polar depression? Were they autochthonous? Was it not more likely that the Eskimo people had assimilated with them, and had been absorbed rather than, as in Ziliah’s account, the reverse? These were unanswered questions. To propose them only covered Ziliah’s face with the shroud of an unhappy perplexity.
Their social economic life was very simple. As far as Ziliah could tell me they had always been governed by a patrician class, constituted of two orders, one the Eminences of the Capitol, to which Javan, Ziliah’s father, belonged, and who numbered some twenty-four, presided over by a President, and all of whose families, retainers, etc., were for the most part domiciled in the great Capitol building; and the Magistrates of the city, who ruled over wards or bailiwicks, living in superior structures, whose roofs were also distinguished by gold plates, and which throughout the city blazed picturesquely among the lowlier red buildings.
The religion in primitive communities, always a controlling and oftentimes the most distinctive feature of their culture, was in the Krocker Land people a monotheistic faith which, however, secured the satisfaction of visualization in a deeply rooted and superstitious Tree and Serpent worship. Yet THERE WERE NO PRIESTS. And this anomalous condition was explained partially by Ziliah, who told me that it had years before beeninstituted as a Law of the People that only a King could be their Priest. Whether they had ever had Kings she did not know but there was some prophecy made by one of the wise old men of the Council, a hundred or more years ago that a King would fall out of the clouds to them, that he would look like a poor man, that he would not know their language, that he would bring them a new wisdom. It was some time before I could make out the meaning of this. It dawned on me at last. Its full meaning received a startling explanation later. The services of the religion were controlled by the Council (the Areopagus, as the Professor styled it) of little Wise Men, and one prominent feature was this periodic peregrination through the great Pine Forest when the selected shrines were visited, the votive tablets nailed to the sacred trees, and the black snakes left to protect them. When I told Hopkins about all this he shook his head gloomily;
“Yes, and how about Goritz’s loot? I guess the God of Krocker Land won’t stand for that. Erickson we’ll get it in the neck yet. The Professor is our trump card.”
“Oh, yes,” I replied. “How about yourself? The fair Ziliah pulls well with her father, I guess, and youpullwell with her!”
Hopkins gave me a derisive glance. “Oh of course. We’ll do the Captain Reece stunt—you remember?
“The captain saw the dame that dayAddressed her in his playful way—‘And did it want a wedding ring?It was a tempting ickle sing!“‘Well, well the chaplain I will seek,We’ll all be married this day week,At yonder church upon the hill;It is my duty, and I will!’“The sisters, cousins, aunts and shapeOf every black enlivening snakeAttended there as they were bid;It was their duty and they did.”
“The captain saw the dame that dayAddressed her in his playful way—‘And did it want a wedding ring?It was a tempting ickle sing!“‘Well, well the chaplain I will seek,We’ll all be married this day week,At yonder church upon the hill;It is my duty, and I will!’“The sisters, cousins, aunts and shapeOf every black enlivening snakeAttended there as they were bid;It was their duty and they did.”
“The captain saw the dame that dayAddressed her in his playful way—‘And did it want a wedding ring?It was a tempting ickle sing!
“The captain saw the dame that day
Addressed her in his playful way—
‘And did it want a wedding ring?
It was a tempting ickle sing!
“‘Well, well the chaplain I will seek,We’ll all be married this day week,At yonder church upon the hill;It is my duty, and I will!’
“‘Well, well the chaplain I will seek,
We’ll all be married this day week,
At yonder church upon the hill;
It is my duty, and I will!’
“The sisters, cousins, aunts and shapeOf every black enlivening snakeAttended there as they were bid;It was their duty and they did.”
“The sisters, cousins, aunts and shape
Of every black enlivening snake
Attended there as they were bid;
It was their duty and they did.”
Of course in exchange for all these confidences, if they could be called that, Ziliah exacted some confidences in return, and I confess I had to resort somewhat to invention, where I did not have Hopkins’ precise directions in the matter, in meeting her exorbitant curiosity over everything concerning America. This disquisitional curiosity was singular in an unsophisticated maiden of a semi-civilized people who, it might have been supposed, would have contented herself with the indulgence of her affections and felt no interest in her hero’s history.
But so it was. Spruce Hopkins understood her admiration, but was extremely puzzled, certainly at first, as to his own legitimate behavior in the affair.