"Thou art in it now!" he said. "We are standing on the Western
Continent. Little wonder we thought our voyage long!"
"And what was Nhū-Yok?" I asked. "I read of it at college, but
remember little. Was it not the capital of the ancient Mehrikans?"
"Not the capital," he answered, "but their largest city. Its
population was four millions."
"Four millions!" I exclaimed. "Verily, O Fountain of Wisdom, that is
many for one city!"
"Such is history, my Prince! Moreover, as thou knowest, it would take
us many days to walk this town."
"True, it is endless."
He continued thus:
"Strange that a single word can tell so much! Those iron structures,
the huge statue in the harbor, the temples with pointed towers, all
are as writ in history."
Whereupon I repeated that I knew little of the Mehrikans save what I
had learned at college, a perfunctory and fleeting knowledge, as they
were a people who interested me but little.
"Let us seat ourselves in the shade," said Nōfūhl, "and I will tell
thee of them."
[Illustration: In a Street of the Forgotten City]
We sat.
"For eleven centuries the cities of this sleeping hemisphere have
decayed in solitude. Their very existence has been forgotten. The
people who built them have long since passed away, and their
civilization is but a shadowy tradition. Historians are astounded that
a nation of an hundred million beings should vanish from the earth
like a mist, and leave so little behind. But to those familiar with
their lives and character surprise is impossible. There was nothing to
leave. The Mehrikans possessed neither literature, art, nor music of
their own. Everything was borrowed. The very clothes they wore were
copied with ludicrous precision from the models of other nations. They
were a sharp, restless, quick-witted, greedy race, given body and soul
to the gathering of riches. Their chiefest passion was to buy and
sell. Even women, both of high and low degree, spent much of their
time at bargains, crowding and jostling each other in vast marts of
trade, for their attire was complicated, and demanded most of their
time."
"How degrading!" I exclaimed.
"So it must have been," said Nōfūhl; "but they were not without
virtues. Their domestic life was happy. A man had but one wife, and
treated her as his equal."
"That is curious! But as I remember, they were a people of elastic
honor."
"They were so considered," said Nōfūhl; "their commercial honor was a
jest. They were sharper than the Turks. Prosperity was their god, with
cunning and invention for his prophets. Their restless activity no
Persian can comprehend. This vast country was alive with noisy
industries, the nervous Mehrikans darting with inconceivable rapidity
from one city to another by a system of locomotion we can only guess
at. There existed roads with iron rods upon them, over which small
houses on wheels were drawn with such velocity that a long day's
journey was accomplished in an hour. Enormous ships without sails,
driven by a mysterious force, bore hundreds of people at a time to the
furthermost points of the earth."
"And are these things lost?" I asked.
"We know many of the forces," said Nōfūhl, "but the knowledge of
applying them is gone. The very elements seem to have been their
slaves. Cities were illuminated at night by artificial moons, whose
radiance eclipsed the moon above. Strange devices were in use by which
they conversed together when separated by a journey of many days. Some
of these appliances exist to-day in Persian museums. The superstitions
of our ancestors allowed their secrets to be lost during those dark
centuries from which at last we are waking."
At this point we heard the voice of Bhoz-jā-khāz in the distance; they
had found a spring and he was calling to us.
Such heat we had never felt, and it grew hotter each hour. Near the
river where we ate it was more comfortable, but even there the
perspiration stood upon us in great drops. Our faces shone like
fishes. It was our wish to explore further, but the streets were like
ovens, and we returned to the _Zlōtuhb_.
As I sat upon the deck this afternoon recording the events of the
morning in this journal Bhoz-jā-khāz and Ad-el-pate approached, asking
permission to take the small boat and visit the great statue.
Thereupon Nōfūhl informed us that this statue in ancient times held
aloft a torch illuminating the whole harbor, and he requested
Ad-el-pate to try and discover how the light was accomplished.
They returned toward evening with this information: that the statue is
not of solid bronze, but hollow; that they ascended by means of an
iron stairway into the head of the image, and from the top looked down
upon us; that Ad-el-pate, in the dark, sat to rest himself upon a nest
of yellow flies with black stripes; that these flies inserted stings
into Ad-el-pate's person, causing him to exclaim loudly and descend
the stairs with unexpected agility; that Bhoz-jā-khāz and the others
pushed on through the upraised arm, and stood at last upon the bronze
torch itself; that the city lay beneath them like a map, covering the
country for miles away on both sides of the river. As for illuminating
the harbor, Bhoz-jā-khāz says Nōfūhl is mistaken; there are no
vestiges of anything that could give a light--no vessel for oil or
traces of fire.
Nōfūhl says Jā-khāz is an idiot; that he shall go himself.
[Illustration: "The great statue in the harbor."]
_13th May_
A startling discovery this morning.
By landing higher up the river we explored a part of the city where
the buildings are of a different character from those we saw
yesterday. Nōfūhl considers them the dwellings of the rich. In shape
they are like bricks set on end, all very similar, uninteresting, and
monotonous.
We noticed one where the doors and shutters were still in place, but
rotting from the fantastic hinges that supported them. A few hard
blows brought down the outer doors in a dusty heap, and as we stepped
upon the marble floor within our eyes met an unexpected sight.
Furniture, statues, dingy pictures in crumbling frames, images in
bronze and silver, mirrors, curtains, all were there, but in every
condition of decay. We knocked open the iron shutters and let the
light into the rooms sealed up for centuries. In the first one lay a
rug from Persia! Faded, moth-eaten, gone in places, it seemed to ask
us with dying eyes to be taken hence. My heart grew soft over the
ancient rug, and I caught a foolish look in Lev-el-Hedyd's eye.
As we climbed the mouldering stair to the floor above I expressed
surprise that cloth and woodwork should hold together for so many
centuries, also saying:
"These Mehrikans were not so unworthy as we think them."
"That may be," said Lev-el-Hedyd, "but the Persian rug is far the
freshest object we have seen, and that perchance was ancient when they
bought it."
On this floor we entered a dim chamber, spacious and once richly
furnished. When Lev-el-Hedyd pushed open the shutters and drew aside
the ragged curtains we started at the sight before us. Upon a wide bed
in the centre of the room lay a human form, the long, yellow hair still
clinging to the head. It was more a mummy than a skeleton. Around, upon
the bed, lay mouldering fragments of the once white sheets that covered
it. On the fingers of the left hand glistened two rings which drew our
attention. One held a diamond of great price, the other was composed of
sapphires and diamonds most curiously arranged. We stood a moment in
silence, gazing sadly upon the figure.
"Poor woman," I said, "left thus to die alone."
"It is more probable," said Nōfūhl, "she was already dead, and her
friends, departing perhaps in haste, were unable to burn the body."
"Did they burn their dead?" I asked. "In my history 't was writ they
buried them in the earth like potatoes, and left them to rot."
And Nōfūhl answered: "At one time it was so, but later on, as they
became more civilized, the custom was abandoned."
"Is it possible?" I asked, "that this woman has been lying here almost
a thousand years and yet so well preserved?"
"I, also, am surprised," said Nōfūhl. "I can only account for it by
the extreme dryness of the air in absorbing the juices of the body and
retarding decay."
[Illustration: In the Mouldering Chamber]
Then lifting tenderly in his hand some of the yellow hair, he said:
"She was probably very young, scarce twenty."
"Were their women fair?" I asked.
"They were beautiful," he answered; "with graceful forms and lovely
faces; a pleasure to the eye; also were they gay and sprightly with
much animation."
Thereupon cried Lev-el-Hedyd:
"Here are the first words thou hast uttered, O Nōfūhl, that cause me
to regret the extinction of this people! There is ever a place in my
heart for a blushing maiden!"
"Then let thy grief be of short life," responded Nōfūhl, "for
Mehrikan damsels were not of that description. Blushing was an art
they practised little. The shyness thou so lovest in a Persian maiden
was to them an unknown thing. Our shrinking daughters bear no
resemblance to these Western products. They strode the public streets
with roving eyes and unblushing faces, holding free converse with men
as with women, bold of speech and free of manner, going and coming as
it pleased them best. They knew much of the world, managed their own
affairs, and devised their own marriages, often changing their minds
and marrying another than the betrothed."
"Bismillah! And men could love these things?" exclaimed Lev-el-Hedyd
with much feeling.
"So it appears."
"But I should say the Mehrikan bride had much the freshness of a dried
fig."
"So she had," said Nōfūhl; "but those who know only the dried fig have
no regret for the fresh fruit. But the fault was not with the maidens.
Brought up like boys, with the same studies and mental development,
the womanly part of their nature gradually vanished as their minds
expanded. Vigor of intellect was the object of a woman's education."
Then Lev-el-Hedyd exclaimed with great disgust:
"Praises be to Allah for his aid in exterminating such a people!" and
he walked away from the bed, and began looking about the chamber. In a
moment he hastened back to us, saying:
"Here are more jewels! also money!"
Nōfūhl eagerly took the pieces.
"Money!" he cried. "Money will tell us more than pages of history!"
There were silver coins of different sizes and two small pieces of
copper. Nōfūhl studied them closely.
"The latest date is 1957," he said; "a little less than a thousand
years ago; but the piece may have been in circulation some years
before this woman died; also it may have been coined the very year of
her death. It bears the head of Dennis, the last of the Hy-Burnyan
dictators. The race is supposed to have become extinct before 1990 of
their era."
[Illustration: The Face and Back of One of the Silver Coins.]