THE COASTS OF ILLUSION
[Illustration]
[Illustration: THE BOYHOOD OF RALEIGH
_By_ Sir John Millais]
THE
COASTS OF ILLUSION
A Study of Travel Tales
BY
CLARK B. FIRESTONE
_With Drawings by_
RUTH HAMBIDGE
[Illustration]
“_Westward of Valhalla grows a plant called
The mistletoe; it seemed too young to swear._”
--FRIGG
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
MCMXXIV
THE COASTS OF ILLUSION
Copyright, 1924, by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America
_First Edition_
CONTENTS
PAGE
MARCO TALKS WITH HIS NEIGHBORS ix
PREFACE xi
CHAPTER
I THE WORLD THAT WAS 1
II THE EARTH ITSELF 5
III INANIMATE NATURE 14
IV THE ANIMAL KINGDOM 27
V THE FABULOUS BEASTS 49
VI FABLE UPON WINGS 68
VII THE DRAGON 79
VIII DENIZENS OF THE DEEP 89
IX THE PEOPLES OF PRODIGY 103
X THE SATYRS 121
XI THE PYGMIES 132
XII THE AMAZONS OF LEGEND 151
XIII THE AMAZONS OF HISTORY 169
XIV THE FOLK OF TRADITION 190
XV THE HORIZON LANDS 201
XVI LANDS OF LEGEND 223
XVII ISLANDS OF ENCHANTMENT 251
XVIII THE TERRIBLE OCEAN 262
XIX THE SARGASSO SEA 274
XX ATLANTIS 281
XXI THE GILDED MAN 298
XXII THE DREAM QUESTS OF SPAIN 312
XXIII THE FABRIC OF ILLUSION 334
XXIV THE TRAVEL TALES OF MANKIND 348
XXV THE GAINS OF FABLE 371
BIBLIOGRAPHY 379
ILLUSTRATIONS
THE BOYHOOD OF RALEIGH. _By Sir John Millais_ _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
A VOYAGE TO THESE STRANGELY PEOPLED COUNTRIES OF
THE WORLD’S YESTERDAYS WOULD BE A VOYAGE
ALONG THE BAYS, GULFS, AND PROMONTORIES OF THE
HUMAN MIND IN ITS STATES OF DREAM 2
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS AT THE COURT OF FERDINAND
THE CATHOLIC AND ISABELLA OF CASTILE. _By V. von
Brozik_ 10
ACCORDING TO TRADITION, A PUTRID STREAM FLOWS
FROM THE ROOTS OF THE TREE AND THE VAPORS
THEREOF KILL 24
IN CALDILHE THERE GROWETH A MANNER OF FRUIT, AND
MEN FIND WITHIN A LITTLE BEAST AS THOUGH IT
WERE A LAMB WITHOUT WOOL 58
THE FIRST PEOPLE ENGAGED IN SUCH COSMIC ADVENTURES
AS WARFARE AGAINST STONE GIANTS 116
A SATYR. _By Jacob Jordaens_ 122
MEN FEARED THEM, AS EMBODYING THE LONELINESS OF
WASTE PLACES 128
THE SWARTHY MEN CALLED PYGMIES 142
THUSNELDA AT THE TRIUMPHAL ENTRY OF GERMANICUS
INTO ROME. _By C. T. von Piloty_ 172
THE STEEPS OVERHEAD SEEMED FIT ABODE FOR GIANTS
AND DWARFS AND GRIFFINS--FOR CITIES OF ENCHANTMENT 206
THE ENCHANTED WOODS OF ROMANCE WITH THEIR
GOBLIN GLOOMS AND TALKING TREES FADED FROM THE
MINDS OF MEN 216
“BUILD US, O DOUL-KARNAIN,” THEY BEGGED, “A RAMPART
BETWEEN US AND THEM” 236
IN ISLANDS MEN PLACED THEIR IDEAL STATES.... TO
REACH FELICITY ONE MUST CROSS WATER 254
ROARING FORTIES. _By F. J. Waugh_ 268
THE THINGS OF THE SPIRIT ANIMATED SPAIN IN SOME OF
THE QUESTS IT FOLLOWED BESIDE THE STILL WATERS
OF THE LAKES OF DREAM 314
THE GARGOYLES OF STONE WHICH KEPT WATCH DAY
AND NIGHT 338
MARCO TALKS WITH HIS NEIGHBORS
THE TIME: 1295 A.D.
THE PLACE: Venice, the Rialto.
THE SPEAKER: Marco Polo.
THE CHORUS: Citizens of Venice.
_“I fared,” said Marco, “as far as one may----
From Astrakhan to the ports of Cathay,
And sailed two years on the Pitch Dark Sea;
And something I learned of the ways of man.
There is a place that they call Japan,
And Russia lies where the north winds be;
The plain of Lop is haunted by dragons;
Dark are the damsels and fierce the flagons
In the Thousand Islands of Spicery.”_
“_Far are these lands and fair is their sheen,
But tell us, Polo, what have you seen?”_
_“I saw,” said Marco, “the pagans at masses
And Tibetan dogs the size of asses,
And oil from the ground, and black stones, blazing.
I saw pink pearls from an unknown strand,
And ten-pound peaches of China-land,
And bales of silk that were past appraising.
I saw the Malabar pepper farmers
And cannibal sharks subdued by charmers,
But the grunting ox was most amazing.”_
“_Much have you seen where the wild capes curve,
But tell us, Polo, whom did you serve?”_
_“I served,” said Marco, “the Khan of Khans.
His edict runs with the caravans
As far as the east is from the west.
The Turk and the Hindu hold his charters,
He sways Cathaians, Persians, and Tartars,
Yet Kublai welcomes the stranger guest.
His deeds are writ upon purple pages,
A shepherd king but a sage of sages,
And his thousand damsels are Asia’s best.”_
“_Him must a thousand matters perplex,
But, Polo, speak yet more of the sex.”_
_“The men of Gobi,” said Marco, “require
Their dames to sit by the stranger’s fire,
And make his favor the tribal boast.
Frail are the women in Pin-yang-fu,
And delicate quin-sai wenches woo
Ambassadors from the Pepper Coast.
Though maids with feet as swift as the wind
May dance, all bare, for the gods of Ind,
The women of Persia please the most.”_
“_Whimsical, Marco, your travel word.
Is there aught else that you saw or heard?”_
_“I heard,” said Marco, “but do not know,
That Tartar shamans summon the snow,
And suns shine not for the Samoyed.
In southern countries its fabled horn
Means less than its tongue to the unicorn,
Which licks its victims until they are dead.
Here is a text for songs or sermons:
When babes are born to the female Burmans,
Their foolish husbands hie them to bed.”_
_Rose, then, a shout from a hundred lips:
“Marco, the tar of a thousand trips,
Marco the man of a million quips,
Marco, Marco, Milioni!”
And they who would hold the East in fee,
Men of the pitiful midland sea,
Nobles and commons, laughed shamelessly.
“Which the catcher, and who the coney?
What I have seen is truly averred,
But what I have heard is--what I have heard!”
Thus to himself, with a secret mirth,
The only man who had seen the earth._
PREFACE
The book gives a view of the earth and its inhabitants as seen through
the haze of distance, whether of space or of time. Its purpose is to
present those myths and half-myths of geography which are loosely and
yet significantly called travel tales. It treats of various countries
and races and animals which are, or were, or might have been. Although
their true domain is the imagination, their supposed domain is, or was,
somewhere on the earth. The Coasts of Illusion, as glimpsed here, are
nowhere the shores of the supernatural.
Always the two tend to merge and the problem has been to keep them
apart. The travel tales of the race have grown out of, or become
entangled with, myths in which men sought to figure the creation of the
world, the journeys of the sun from dawn to darkness, the conflicts of
light with storm and night and winter, the high places of the gods and
their incarnations and agents. Yet the tales are touched with reality,
while the myths are unearthly.
Ulysses tarried among the Phacakians, and these were a cloud people;
but he skirted the land of the lotus-eaters, and these were a mundane
folk. Who were the lotus-eaters? Achilles fought with Memnon, son of
the Dawn, but also with Penthesilea, the Amazon queen. Who were the
Amazons? Hercules was of the progeny of Olympian Zeus, but wandering on
earth he passed through the land of the pygmies. Who were the pygmies?
What reality lies back of the fabulous animals and Deformed Folk that
peopled the mountains and deserts?
For thousands of years men accepted the realms and races of prodigy. It
was only about a century ago that these disappeared from the maps and
natural histories. The frontiers of ignorance had been pushed back so
far that the never-never countries dropped off into the sea. There was
no longer room for the phœnix to flap its wings, the dragon to hiss and
roar, the giants to stalk, the kangaroo-men to hop.
The countries and creatures of legend passed from the scene without
the parting word that every passing merits, without even a gesture of
farewell. Is it more than a tardy courtesy to summon them back for a
word that shall be both appraisal and remembrance?
These are the stories wanderers told in hall when the world was young;
and in out-of-the-way places still they tell them, and men believe.
These are stories the lad Raleigh heard along wharves where sailors
in outlandish garb recited the wonders of countries below the rim of
the sea. If one could recapture Raleigh’s boyish faith, and the faith
of ages of listeners before him, it might still be possible to behold
the King of Is in state beside the menacing ocean, to traverse the
streets of the lost Atlantis, to win to the cities of gold which Spain
could not find, and to repeople the waste places with their strange
inhabitants. So might one achieve the purpose of these pages and regain
a picture of things as they were supposed to be.
This is a survey of the world through the stained glass of men’s
imaginings.
C. B. F.
[Illustration]
THE COASTS OF ILLUSION
[Illustration]
Chapter I. The World That Was
The geography, anthropology, and natural history of this volume present
a world a little different from that which is outlined in modern
text-books and yet one that is familiar. It is the traditional world
of wonder, which until yesterday was believed to be the real world. A
map of it would show the same continents, and some of the same races of
men and species of animals that are delineated in any atlas of to-day;
but there would be changes. Asia would bear far away into the unknown
spaces of the East. A shadowy continent would stretch across the open
waters of the Indian Ocean. The clouds and darkness of supernatural
terrors, or dimly remembered fates, would shroud the Atlantic, the
Green Sea of Gloom of the Arab geographers. Looming vaguely in the
mists southwest of Gibraltar one would discern a lost continent. One
would see there, also, smaller bodies of land which on a second glance
are seen no more.
Within the contours of continents and islands there would be countries
which seem to belong both to fable and to fact. The Incense Kingdom
would be there on both sides of the Red Sea, but its sumptuous ritual
and swooning odors would suggest little now to be found in southern
Arabia and Somaliland. The Spice Islands would be there, but wearing
the splendor of a world-desire of which no trace is left to the
Moluccas. There would be seen the haughty realm of Prester John and the
vast pastures of Gog and Magog; but on a modern map of Asia one does
not find the country of the priest king and must look under other names
for the terrifying races of Hebrew and Moslem legend.
On the map would appear the gold port of Ophir and the golden land of
Havilah, but the Arab haven was silted up ages ago, and the abandoned
mine-workings of Rhodesia minister no more to the pride of kings.
The Arcadia that it would picture, of pastoral innocence and bucolic
song, has faded from the central uplands of the Morea, and the rugged
mountain land hears no longer the pipes of Pan. There are other regions
of enchantment--deserts where demon-voices tempted the traveler from
his track, mountains where cymbals clashed and lights gleamed at night,
countries of serene charm which were placed so far away that few people
ever reached them. Of these regions the modern maps know nothing.
If the map of the traditional world were pictorial, as such maps ought
to be, it would show strange races of men in Asia, in Africa, in South
America, in the sea-washed islands, and in the seas themselves. There
would be Amazons sweeping down upon the Mediterranean settlements,
pygmies battling with cranes in Upper Egypt, satyrs pursuing women in
African woodlots, troglodytes of Arabia looking on with indifference
while strangers maltreated their offspring. The vistas of Asia and
Africa would disclose men taking their siestas beneath the shade of
their own gigantic feet, sleeping at night under the cover of their
elephant-like ears, supporting life by smelling flowers rather than
eating food. Sixteenth-century charts of the Spanish Americas would
reveal the unsuspected fact that these creatures dwelt also in the new
world, and that mermaids sang upon its coasts, as upon those of the old.
A pictorial map of the traditional world would show that it was a
menagerie of strange animals as well as a museum of prodigious peoples.
The lairs and roosts of heraldry would return their tenants to its
blank spaces. The phœnix would be seen winging its way from Araby the
Blest, or mounting its own funeral pyre in the City of the Sun in Lower
Egypt. The Desert of Gobi would show the griffin, a formidable guard
for its stores of fabled gold. The unicorn would be sketched doing the
elephant to death in the jungles of Asia and Africa. The baleful glare
of the basilisk would be staged in the recesses of Libya. The dragon’s
breath would poison earth and air and water alike. The harpies and the
Stymphalian birds would raise their shrill clamor beside the brink of
sea or marsh. Among other creatures in the ocean would be depicted the
monstrous orc, the kraken of the northern deeps, and the ubiquitous,
immemorial, and enigmatic sea serpent. The familiar animals of natural
history would share with the fabled creatures the forests, pastures,
and waters of the mimic world of the map, but the text would point out
novel things about them.
[Illustration: _A Voyage to These Strangely Peopled Countries of
the World’s Yesterdays Would Be a Voyage Along the Bays, Gulfs, and
Promontories of the Human Mind in Its States of Dream_]
A voyage to these strangely peopled countries of the world’s yesterdays
would be a voyage along the bays, gulfs, and promontories of the human
mind in its states of dream.
There are three chambers in the house of the mind. One of them is a
place where pleasant bedtime stories are told. Another is the art
gallery of hope and memory. The third is a museum where runs the law of
topsy-turvy. The name of the house is Illusion.
A glance through a few of the older books of travel will show illusion
weaving its careless spells over plain records of wandering. “We fared
on,” says Sindbad, “from sea to sea and from island to island and city
to city in all delight and contentment, buying and selling wherever we
touched, and taking our solace and our pleasure.” The words prepare
the reader for enchantments. One of the Hakluyt narratives speaks of
“Zanzibar, on the backeside of Africa.” This is geography somehow
touched with magic. When Drake was cruising around South America,
his chronicler recites that on a certain day “wee had a very sweet
smell from off the land.” Simple as are the words, their quality is
dreamlike. The account of Raleigh’s third voyage to Guiana has this
passage: “There being divers whales playing about our pinnesse, one of
them crossed our stemme and going under, rubbed her backe against our
keele.” The lines unlock the frolic wonder of the sea.
The same quality illuminates reports of other lands and peoples taken
almost at random. The ancient Cimbri, says Strabo, explained their
wandering life and piracy by the fact that once they had dwelt on a
peninsula and had been driven out by a very high tide. The ancient
Getae wept at births and laughed at funerals; and in the _Arabian
Nights_ Abdallah of the Sea broke off his friendship with Abdallah of
the Land, when he learned that his people mourned rather than rejoiced
over their dead. Purchas tells of a Livonian people, ignorant but
unashamed, that “aske who learne the Hares in the woods their prayers.”
The same writer declares that Ethiopians hold their color in such
estimation that they paint the saints and angels black, but “the Divell
and wicked persons they paint white.” Pinkerton describes a tribe of
white Indians east of the Andes, whose naked and beautiful women use
a guttural speech and emphasize every remark by striking their thighs
with great force. The Eskimos attributed the Northern Lights to the
merriment of the ghosts. A Florida tribe made a cult of the devil
because the Spaniards feared him.
The thing these statements have in common is that perhaps none of them
is quite true, and yet one wishes to believe all of them.
The shaping influence in the traditional world is the power of wish.
The poets may seem to use it more than other men, and children more
than grown-ups, but it is the province of mankind.