THE GARDEN OF TANJE.
A series of banquets and other entertainments followed each other
during our stay at the palace of Tanje. The goddess had held frequent
interviews with the professors and myself regarding the external
sphere, and had examined our maps and charts with the greatest
curiosity.
His majesty did not take nearly so much interest in our revelations as
the goddess, being inert and prosaic in character.
[Illustration: The Lilasure.]
On the morning of the fourth day of our stay at the palace of Tanje I
received a visit from the grand chamberlain Cleperelyum, with a
command from the goddess to meet her in her boudoir. Cleperelyum led
me to the sacred apartment, which, when I entered, was vacant. The
walls were models of decorative architecture, the panels being filled
with silk tapestry of a pale yellow-green hue, the mouldings being
ivory-white. The panelled frieze was filled with figures in violet and
gold, and sea-green upholstery covered couch and divan, while the
draperies were silks of cream and blue. It was a luxurious retreat.
The carpet was a silk rug, soft as a bed of rose leaves, with a broad
border in tones of green, violet and white.
Presently the goddess entered with a winning smile on her features.
She was arrayed in a dress of soft violet silk, that, apparently, had
no other garment beneath, so perfect was the revelation of her figure.
Beneath the figure it fell to the ground in a thousand folds, like a
wave of smooth water bursting into foaming rapids. Round her neck was
a garland of lustrous yellow pearls. On her head she wore a tiara of
much smaller dimensions than that worn on public occasions. Her pose
was upright as an arrow.
[Illustration: The Laburnul.]
I rose and bowed profoundly, and the goddess also bowing, requested me
to be seated.
"I have sent for you," said she, "to learn more about your country and
to talk with you about ours. I am consumed with curiosity regarding
the external world." "Your holiness," I replied, "permit me to say
that your graceful condescension exceeds, if possible, your splendor.
I am truly bewildered at the vastness of my good fortune in
discovering a country ruled by so glorious a goddess."
"And I also," said the goddess, "have learned that Bilbimtesirol is
not the universe, but a very small portion thereof indeed. I am
intensely interested in your accounts of the outer world. I am
overpowered with the thought that the exterior surface of the planet
is peopled with beings like ourselves, and that civilization,
government, religion, art, manufacture, and social life are so greatly
developed beneath a still more glorious sun than ours."
"Did it never occur to your astronomers," I inquired, "that human
activity might also pervade the outer sphere?"
[Illustration: The Green Gazzle of Glockett Gozzle.]
"Our astronomers," said the goddess, "have long since decided that the
conditions of climate on the exterior planet were too severe to allow
human life to exist. They are aware that a great luminary gave the
outer earth light by day, for our most daring aerial voyagers have
frequently caught a glimpse of its light seen through the polar gulf.
They argued that the equatorial regions were too hot, and the polar
regions too cold, to support life, consequently the outer earth was a
barren waste as desolate and uninhabited as your own satellite."
"Would your holiness like to visit the exterior earth?" I boldly
inquired.
"If duty did not prevent me," she replied, "I would love to visit
those far-off strange lands and peoples and see your sun and moon and
all the stars!"
From the goddess I first learned the precise location of Atvatabar.
Lying exactly underneath the Atlantic Ocean it stretched east and west
some two thousand miles, surrounded by the interior sea. There were
other continents in Bilbimtesirol which we had already dimly seen
spread upon the concave walls of the world around us.
"You must come to see both Egyplosis and Arjeels," said her holiness,
"but before you leave Tanje you must see my garden."
"It must be a little paradise!" I exclaimed.
"Let us go and see it now," she said, and, so saying, arose with a
gracious gesture and led me out of the apartment.
I accompanied her holiness down the terrace leading to the lovely
retreat. Curving walks led between banks of flowers of all hues.
There were avenues of tall shrubs not unlike rhododendrons, with the
same magnificent bloom. Other plants, such as the firesweet, displayed
a blinding wealth of yellow flowers.
[Illustration: Jeerloons.]
The goddess led the way to the conservatory in the garden wherein were
treasured strange and beautiful flowers and zoophytes illustrative of
the gradual evolution of animals from plants, a scientific faith that
held sway in Atvatabar. The goddess showed me a beautiful plant with
large fan-shaped leaves from whose edges hung a fringe of heavy roses;
long trailing garlands of clustering star-shaped flowers sprang from
the same roots. The plant was a perfect bower of bliss, and while
called the laburnul, might with greater propriety be styled the rose
of paradise.
[Illustration: A Jeerloon.]
Another fern-like plant was in reality a bird flower, called the
lilasure. It had the head and breast of a bird, from whose back grew
roots and four small feathers resembling those of the peacock. Its
tail resembled two large fronds of a fern, which served the animal for
wings, for by their aid it flew through the air.
There was also a flock of strange green-feathered creatures,
resembling buzzards, called green gazzles, on whose heads grew
sun-flowers. On either side, beneath their wings, were the plant roots
by means of which they still sucked nourishment from the soil, as
their bills were not yet perfectly developed. They belonged to a
locality on the south coast of Atvatabar known as Glockett Gozzle.
The lillipoutum was another wonderful creature, half-plant half-bird.
It represented the animal almost entirely evolved from the plant
stage. A wreath of rootlets adorned the neck, but the most conspicuous
features were the stork-like legs that terminated in roots with
radiations like encrinital stems. The bird fed itself like a plant by
simply thrusting its root-legs into the soft ooze of lake bottoms and
slimy banks of rivers. Its tail was also a root possessing great
absorptive powers. In shape the bird resembled a flamingo, and its
feathers were of an old-rose color, mottled with lichen-green. A
beard-like radiation of roots decorated its head, and its bill was
extremely delicate.
[Illustration: The Lillipoutum.]
Such wonders as these intensified the glamor of the interior world. I
was fast becoming bewildered with the intoxication of an environment
of strange, abnormal creatures--unlike anything I had ever seen
before.
The goddess regarded her pets with the greatest interest, and was
pleased at being the first to acquaint me with such living wonders of
Atvatabar.
"Your holiness," I said, "these creatures are so wonderful that unless
I had actually seen them it would be impossible for me to believe in
their existence." As I spoke, two strange bat-like forms flew toward
us; they were flying orchids, known as jeerloons, with heart-shaped
faces and arms terminating in wire-like claws. Their wing projections
were bristling with suckers like the rays of a starfish. Altogether
they were weird, uncanny creatures. The goddess caught one of them in
her hands, and laughed at my excitement. "They will haunt you in your
dreams," she exclaimed, "poor, pretty things!"
"But now," she added, "let me show you a plant that is fast becoming
a brood of animals, both root and flower. It is the jugdul. Still
rooted in the soil, strange faces are swelling in the mould, while the
flower is a leaf surmounted by a weird, small head, the nasal organ of
which is a ponderous proboscis. We do not know as yet what kind of
animal life will evolve from the plant, but the botanists and
physiologists of Atvatabar are agreed that at least two new species of
animals will be developed when the evolution of the zoophyte is
complete."
[Illustration: The Jugdul.]
I assured her holiness that I considered myself the most favored of
men to be permitted to visit the sanctuary wherein the occult
transmigration of life was being manifested. It was a rare experience!
Just then the goddess directed my attention to a flying root
resembling a humming-bird. It was the far-famed jalloast, the
semi-evolved humming-bird of Atvatabar. Other similar beings,
half-root, half-bird, were seen perched in a bower of tree-ferns,
whose waxy green fronds fell like an emerald cascade about the
jalloasts.
From porcelain boxes suspended along the roof of the conservatory a
perfect forest of strange plants depended, a species of zoophyte known
as the yarp-happy, which seemed to be a combination of ape and
flower. Its peculiarly weird, ape-like face was covered with a hood,
and from the open mouth of each animal the tongue protruded. From the
neck of the animal three long leaves radiated, the two lower leaves in
each case terminating in claw-like extremities, which gave a weird
expression to the zoophyte.
[Illustration: The Yarphappy.]
Right underneath these strange beings, there grew an immense quantity
of spotted pouch-shaped plants, each having the head of a cat growing
above the pouch. This peculiar zoophyte was known as the gasternowl.
From either side of the junction of the cat-like head with the pouch
radiated two speckled leaves. The tips of the ears terminated in
frond-like plumes, and a peculiar plume like a crest surmounted the
head.
A strange root known as the crocosus was developed into a perfect
animal that crawled with four legs upon the floor. The animal was not
unlike the lizard, or a diminutive crocodile, with an immensely long
neck, which it held erect. The neck terminated in a bulbous head, with
an open, bill-shaped mouth, not unlike the mouth of a pelican, while
right below the jaws there grew a root-like appendage, that coiled
around the neck. The animal possessed a root-like tail, and was a most
interesting creature.
[Illustration: The Jalloast.]
To enumerate all the wonders of the conservatory of plant
transmigration at Tanje would be impossible. I saw the jardil (or
love-pouch), an orchid resembling a pouch, with the face of a child
growing therein, from which radiated rootlets and jabots of spiral
fronds. I also saw the redoubtable blocus, an animal resembling a
jerboa, or kangaroo, whose only trace of plant existence was a few
rootlets growing out of its back. The funny-fenny, or clowngrass, was
a weed with veritable goblins growing on the stems. The goblins had
long noses and wore high hats and lace collars, but were otherwise but
plants with absorbent roots. They were so grotesque that I began to
think that nature was laughing at me quite as much as I laughed at
nature.
When leaving the conservatory I heard a chorus of tender voices like a
band of spirits singing, whereupon the goddess directed my attention
to a cluster of fairy girls that, like flowers, were growing upon the
stem of a plant. It was a peculiarity of these fairy creatures to
sing every time their goddess passed by, her spiritual atmosphere
quickening them into conscious life and song. I was fairly dazzled
with such a tribute of love to my gracious companion, and were the
fairy flowers not sacred things I would have borne them away to
exhibit such a trophy to the outer world.
[Illustration: The Gasternowl.]
This wonderful plant seemed more like the production of spirit power
indulging in a weird fantasy of imagination, rather than an evolution
of nature. It was a new experience to me to hear the little creatures
sing in a tender chorus of adoration to the goddess and dance
gleefully upon their stems. My guide fondled the strange creatures
with her own fair fingers, and they seemed to me the greatest wonder I
had yet beheld in Atvatabar.
"These," said the goddess, "are gleroserals, and I would gladly give
you a spray were it not that removal from their tender habitat would
kill them. But here is a flower, half-bird, half-plant, that I will
send you in a proper cage if you care for it." The zoophyte referred
to was another bird plant that flew around the conservatory possessing
the head and body of an eagle, the wings of a butterfly and the tail
of a plant. The plant-like appendage was composed of long beautiful
sprays of graceful foliage, not unlike pine branches, that were curved
into sinuous forms as the animal flew. It was known as the eaglon, and
was without legs. I thanked the goddess for her precious gift,
whereupon we left the conservatory.
[Illustration: The Crocosus.]
Wandering through thickets of roses whose burning blossoms swooned
upon their stems, we came upon a thick carpet of verdure that
surrounded a hidden lake of clear, cool water. The rocky basin of the
lake had been sculptured by human hands. Its margin was in outline a
bold pear-shaped curve, that also curved upon itself, formed by an
immense chiselling of the fundamental rock. In a little harbor of cut
rock lay a pleasure boat, a curiously-wrought shell of silver that was
propelled by magnicity. The goddess entered the boat, bidding me
follow her. We sat together on an ample couch in the stern of the boat
underneath a silver canopy. Touching a button, the boat moved swiftly
over the water. It was a scene of rapture! Gazing into the depths of
the water I saw the bottom of the lake sculptured in immense masses of
flowers of stone, like the roof of a Gothic cathedral, but a hundred
times more luxuriant. Around and above us rose heights of blessedness
filled with all the thousand ecstasies of leaf and flower. An islet
bore a little pagoda that stood in the eternal noon a pillared jewel
of stone, silent and beautiful. It was half concealed with festoons of
creeping plants whose flowers were great globes of crimson, yellow and
blue.
There was around me--paradise, and beside me--ecstasy!
"You are pleased with my garden?" said the goddess.
"This must be the garden of Hesperides that our poets write of," I
replied. "Here at last I have found the ideal life."
The goddess reclined on the couch in an attitude of luxurious grace.
Her every gesture was at once heroic and beautiful.
[Illustration: The Jardil, or Love-Pouch.]
"Tell me what your poets say of nature, life and love," said she; "do
they ever sing the delights of hopeless love?"
As the goddess uttered this last question I felt within me a strange
delight. There sat beside me, floating on that mysterious wave, the
idol of a great nation, the deity of its universal faith, a divinity
of power, glory and beauty, laying aside spiritual empire to become
the companion of a simple explorer of the internal world, her
discoverer and her friend, by a most happy chance of fortune.
As these thoughts swiftly ran through my brain, and before I had time
to reply, music, soft, weird, intensely intoxicating, was blown from
among the tempestuous bloom of the paradises. The melody seemed the
holiest thrill of hearts communing in the rapture of love! To explain
the sweetness of the moment is impossible--the goddess was so alluring
and serene. She kept her own emotions in the background as the result
of a proud devotion to duty, and yet I felt swathed with a soul that
seemed to have found an opportunity worthy the expression of its life.
A situation so daring, yet so tender, required an equally daring and
reverent soul to meet it. I felt all its surpassing loveliness.
"Our poets," I replied, "have written of love in all its phases,
describing the most spiritual passions as well as the most lustful. In
poetry love may be any phase of love, but the reality is a compound of
lust and spirituality, being rooted both in body and soul."
"Do your people," said the goddess, "never differentiate lust and love
and obtain in real life only a spiritual romantic love such as we do
in Atvatabar?"
"We believe, your holiness," I replied, "that such a love as you refer
to is only to be found in a spiritual state and is the secret of
disembodied blessedness."
"You must see Egyplosis," said she, "ere you depart from us, and there
learn the possibility of ideal love in actual life."
"To discover such a joy," I replied, "will repay my journey to
Atvatabar a thousandfold."
We alighted from the boat on a rocky margin of the lake that led into
a labyrinth of flowers. Here we wandered at will, discovering at every
step new delights. Lyone was not only a goddess, but also the fond
incarnation of a comrade soul.