them, and all proceed up the river together.”
Around a little bend we found them waiting for us. They had two barges,
long, graceful and beautiful, similar to the canoe of the American
Indian in shape, but propelled by slender oars in the hands of tall,
youthful oarsmen of bare arms and heads, and fair, smooth faces. Near
the center of each craft there was a sail of the simplest banner form,
white but embroidered with the blue flower of the Prince’s domain. Truly
they seemed to us as an integral part of the world about them.
Mr. Sturritt, who had hitherto remained silent, leaned over to me and
murmured:
“Look—er—at them, and—and then at us. We’re not very—that is—attractive,
while they—why it’s just as if they were condensed—I should
say—er—materialized, as it were, from the elements.”
And Chauncey Gale:
“Better food than tablets, just to look at them, eh, Bill?”
“Sustenance for the soul,” said Ferratoni.
XXVIII.
A HARBOR OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS.
Oct. 5. For seven days we have ascended this silent, flowing river, and
to-night we rest in the palace of the Prince. At least we call him the
Prince, though Ferratoni has explained to us that the word hardly
carries the thought as conveyed to him. One whom the others follow and
emulate, he thinks would be more exact, but this would mean prince, too,
in our acceptation of the word, and so “Prince” he has become to us, and
we would not wish for a better title for this fair serene youth, whose
unvexed spirit and gentle sway of those about him have wrought a spell
upon us all.
We have enjoyed his bounteous hospitality, and often he has traveled in
our boat, conversing with Ferratoni, who has translated to us. I have
made no previous record, as I desired first to get some definite
impression of this new-found country and its people. What their
impression of us has been it would not be easy to say.
I am not surprised that we have awakened in them a vague wonder and
uneasiness rather than admiration. At least Ferratoni says that this is
the case. Our boat with its propeller has been examined with what seemed
to me a mingling of mild curiosity and respect, and I think with very
little idea of adopting its plans or processes. Its unbeautiful lines
and the jar of its propeller would not accord with their placid and
graceful lives. Our various instruments and our watches they regard with
something akin to fear. Perhaps like our ancestors they consider them
the result of witchery. When our balloon bag which preceded us was
explained to them, as well as our adventures since leaving the
Billowcrest, they showed little interest, and certainly found no
pleasure in any episode of this somewhat turbulent period. The picture
of Chauncey Gale being jerked and battered through a snowdrift did not,
as to us, give joy, now that it was all over, and Gale’s neck and limbs
still properly adjusted. To them it was a distressing, because
unbeautiful, incident. Something to be deplored quietly and forgotten
quickly.
For the people of this secluded land, if we may judge by those we have
seen, are all grace, all repose, all serenity of demeanor. Ambition and
achievement—of such kind at least as we know and prize—seem foreign to
their lives. They do not venture—or very rarely—beyond the violet
boundaries, even during the long summer day. The region without—the Land
of the Silent Cold—is to them the country of the dead.
Any lingering doubt I may have cherished that my lost uncle had found
harbor here has been destroyed by the fact that they have no knowledge
of the world without. Something of its existence seems to have been
dimly known to them by tradition, and perhaps through vague mental
impressions, but heretofore no word from those beyond the great outer
barrier has ever come to them. They have speculated very dreamily upon
the matter—even more so than we have upon the inhabitants of other
planets—and have made as little attempt to reach them. When we came
nearer to their zone of vibration the Prince and his sister, who it
seems are the high priests of this peculiar development, were able to
establish some sort of communication with Ferratoni, whose mental
adjustment is less foreign to them than ours. But it was an imperfect
chord—a poor connection as we would say—and not until the Prince and
Ferratoni were face to face and palm to palm was the result definite and
tangible.
Their progress, such as it is, has been along lines totally different
from those of our people. They resemble the Orientals in some
respects—or at least the idea we have of the Orientals of a long ago
time. From what I have seen I judge that their mechanical appliances are
as those of a far antiquity. Beautiful, indeed, but to a people like us
valuable only as curios. To this, however, there appears to be one
exception. The Prince has to-day explained to Ferratoni a new process,
invented by himself and his serene sister, the Princess of the Lilied
Hills, for dispelling darkness. It seems to be a large plate of metal
(probably a sort of yellow aluminum, which we at first took for gold and
is the only metal we have seen thus far), and this is arranged to
receive, by induction, electric waves from the Aurora Australis,
radiating them again in the form of a continuous glow. At least, it is
expected to do so—we do not understand that it has been perfected as
yet, and as we are to see it later it is more than likely that Ferratoni
and Gale will be able to improve it greatly. It appears to be the one
real mechanical attempt of this languid race—the child of their one
great necessity—and the Prince believes that when perfected it will
strengthen their people and give them longer life.
As it is, they are enervated by the long summer day, and depleted still
further by the long night that follows. When the first vigor of youth
wanes, and often before, they pass quickly out of life, and usually, the
Prince tells us, without pain. They regard Gale as old—and Mr. Sturritt
as a veritable patriarch.
The contrast between them and us is very great. Between Chauncey Gale
and the Prince it is worth going far to see. The one, all languorous
grace and spiritual repose; the other, all nerve force and vigor, all
action and muscle and overflowing energy.
At least, the latter applied to Gale a few days ago. The spell of quiet
content that lies upon this land has possessed him now, somewhat, as it
has the others. Like us, he is willing to rest after our hard battle
with the snowdrifts—to sail without question, almost without comment
along these peaceful shores.
“They don’t seem to need homes and firesides, nor Johnnie’s missionary
work in this country,” he remarked to-day, after a long silence. Then we
both grew sad, remembering that we had received no word from the vessel
for so long. The bell of the telephone rang a little yesterday, and we
thought there was a sound of mingled words in the receiver, but nothing
intelligible. The Prince, when the nature and use of the invention was
explained to him, regarded us with what seemed a mild added wonder, as
well as pity, that we should need such an affair when we already have,
each within his head, a far better means of communication if we would
but develop it.
There are trees along the banks now—curious semi-tropical trees, most of
them—and the violets have been replaced here by a multitude of more
gorgeous blossoms. Dwellings and people we saw to-day for the first
time. The people congregate it would seem—the result of the long
night—and there are no dwellers of the fields, save in midsummer. Then
they inhabit tents until the harvests, which the warm, untilled earth
bountifully provides for them, are gathered. Such as we have seen were
collected along the shore to see us pass. There was no eager curiosity
or excitement. Some, indeed, slowly waved their arms or banners as we
approached, but this I take it was more as a tribute to the Prince than
a greeting to the strangers.
Their houses, like everything else of this unvexed land, appear to have
grown, rather than to have been built, and are essentially a part of the
landscape. Whatever the contour of the location the house conforms to
it. Many are against hillsides, and are built in terrace form, with
flowers at the top of each story, forming, as it were, a garden for the
next. They are for the most part laid up of unhewn stone, logs, limbs,
and even interwoven brush. Frequently some surface of the living rock,
or a huge bowlder, or a growing tree may become a part of, and blend
into, the habitation. It is not always easy to tell where nature ends
and artifice begins, or even to distinguish some of the humbler
dwellings at first glance.
The terrace form prevails more than any other it seems; so much so that
Gale has conferred on this race the name of “Terrace Dwellers,” which
effort we regard as more of a success than some of his former attempts
at nomenclature. Even when the home is built upon a level spot the lower
story usually extends and forms a floral garden for the one above.
Flowers there are, everywhere—many that we seem to recognize, but many
more that we have not seen. From what the Prince tells Ferratoni, I
gather that while they last, every ceremonial of whatever sort, is a
great feast of flowers.
The fact that my camera was not on board when we took our premature
flight into the unknown is a matter of deep regret to me, for I would
fain preserve some more permanent impressions of these placid and
beautiful shores.
But we have reached the Prince’s palace. It is a succession of wonderful
terraces, beginning at the river front, and extending back to the hills
behind it. Each terrace is supported by a row of slender columns, and on
the outer edge of each a carved railing leads to a graceful outside
stairway that ascends from one step of flowers to the next. At the
summit, on a level with the hills, the last step forms a round
colonnaded eyrie, on the top of which the sun still lingers. Along the
terraces are groups of waiting people who, as we approach, wave
tranquilly their white arms to the Prince. Their dress and attitudes
suggest some dim, forgotten land of the East. Us they regard with placid
curiosity, yet with a gentle friendliness evident in their faces.
Now, from the wide portal of the lower story, come many down the broad,
white steps to greet us. Young are they all, and beautiful—creatures of
an unknown world, while from either side troop bare-armed boys and
girls, chanting a low, rhythmic melody of welcome.
So are we come at last to the land of my fancy. And a land of fancy
indeed it seems to us. A harbor for vanished argosies and forgotten
dreams. A port for lost rhymes and strayed melodies—for discarded magic
and alchemies long dead. And it is in this enchanted vale that we find
once more the shelter of human habitation.
We shall rest to-night with the Prince of the Purple Fields.
[Illustration:
THE PALACE OF THE PRINCE.
“A harbor for vanished argosies and forgotten dreams.”—Page 242.
]
XXIX.
A LAND OF THE HEART’S DESIRE.
Oct. 12. This is the land of harmony. Here, shut in from the outer world
by the crystal walls of the ages, rhythmic vibrations of the universe
have blossomed in a fair, frail, almost supernatural life. Here the
ideals of Ferratoni are the realities of the daily round, while the
dreams of Edith Gale are but as the play language of little children.
Here, shut away from the greed and struggle of the life we know—few in
numbers and simple in their material needs, fragile and brief in their
span of physical existence and plunged for half the year into a sunless
period of contemplation—the lives of the people have linked themselves
with the sun and stars, with the woods and fields, with the winds and
waters, and with each other, in one rare, universal chord.
It is the natural result of the long periods of sun and darkness. The
polar night binds them in closer sympathy, even as it did those of the
Billowcrest, while during the long sunny day they have only to bask in
the sun and dream, and let the fecund soil provide amply for their
wants. There is no need of struggle—no effort, save to retain life, if I
may apply that term to this languorous melody of existence wherein
greed, jealousy, vanity and the other elements of discord find no place.
There is no old age here—our most frequent excuse for greed. No
necessity for a life of heavy toil to provide for a ghastly period when
all save physical want has perished.
Indeed, there is little effort here of any sort. They are not even
obliged to talk, for their minds are as open books, and there is not, as
with us, the need of many words to cloud and diffuse a few poor
thoughts, that in the beginning were hardly worth while.
Truth here is not a luxury—a thing produced with difficulty and
therefore conserved for special occasions—but an abounding necessity,
like air and water. Concealment, ever the first step toward sorrow, is
impossible.
Love flowers naturally and where all may see. Marriage is union, and
separation unknown. Joy to one is answered in the bosom of many, and
grief is the minor chord that stirs mournfully the heart of a multitude.
Verily is it a “Land of the Heart’s Desire,”
“Where nobody ever grows old, and crafty and wise—
Where nobody ever grows false and bitter of tongue.”
If I seem to have waxed poetic in speaking of these people, it is
because poetry is the language and breath of their race. Even Chauncey
Gale has imbibed something of the pervading spirit, and adapted his
phraseology to the conditions.
“The chant of the trolley and the song of the lawn-mower are heard not
nor needed,” he said to me this morning, as we looked from our high
terrace down on the dream world below.
I speak of it as morning, but there is no morning now. It is always
afternoon—the afternoon of a June day, before the gray dust and the
withering heat of summer have begun their blight. We have been here a
week and we would roam no farther. The world, the vessel, the crew—even
Edith Gale—all seem as a page of some half-forgotten tale—something of
another and long-ago existence in which we have no further part. The
spell of the lotus is upon us. The lives of the lotus-eaters have become
our lives.
We have laid off our travel-stained dress, shaved our beards, and become
in appearance even as those about us. Ferratoni is as one to the manor
born. Mr. Sturritt might have been a seer and a high priest from
childhood. His (to them) extreme age has commanded their wonder and
reverence, and his pink dessert lozenges are highly regarded as a new
and most delightful confection. Altogether he is in high favor, ranking
next, it would seem, to Ferratoni, who, as the favorite of the Prince,
and interpreter for the rest of us, is exalted somewhat unduly. As for
Gale, whose physical and facial lines are perhaps most at variance with
those about us, he has put himself on low diet in order to train down to
a poetic basis, and goes about reciting verses, remembered from
childhood, to slender youths and fair, reclining women, who listen
drowsily as they bathe in the life-giving rays of the returning sun.
Yesterday I heard him repeating “Mary’s Little Lamb” to a group of
languid listeners. It did not matter—they do not understand his words,
and his thought vibrations are, I suspect, altogether too highly
tensioned for this deliberate race.
Now that there is no more night the people live out of doors. There are
no regular hours for sleep or food. Soft-footed, bare-limbed boys bring
viands at call, while æolian harps, yielding pillows, and the perfume of
flowers everywhere woo to somnolence and repose. Our food consists
mainly of preserved fruits, also the meat of a curious, silken-haired
goat which these people possess, and sometimes that of the strange,
leaping rabbit creature—these being their only animals. The flesh of
birds and fishes, however, is plentiful, and to these things are added
many preparations of their chief cereal, a sort of rice, which yields
abundantly each year, without planting. Our sweets are from the sap of a
tree, even finer and more delicate of flavor than our northern maple.
Wine we have from the wild grapes that ripen later in great abundance.
Within the palace I find many curious little lamps and torches,—their
provision against the long night. The walls and floors are draped with
yielding fabrics, woven from the silken fleece of the goat, and from the
long hair of the “skipteroon.” Of feather work, too, I have seen some
delicate examples. Their looms for weaving, their implements for
harvesting, their utensils for preparing food, are all of the simplest
and most primitive form, such as our earliest ancestors might have
employed, and as may be in use to-day in lands where mechanism has made
little or no progress. Their one attempt in this direction is their
invention for dispelling darkness, and this has not yet been shown to
us, for the complaisant Prince has been quiescent since our arrival, and
we have fallen into the way of it all, and are willing to procrastinate,
and to keep on procrastinating while the circling sun dispenses the
anodyne of eternal afternoon.
It is not strange that like the nations of the Incas these people should
be worshippers of the sun. To them comes the fullest realization of its
life-giving glory, and the joyless stagnation of the death-breathing
dark. We who sleep through much of the sun’s absence come naturally to
regard it somewhat as a useful and not always agreeable adjunct to our
lives. Yet even we, after days of dull weather—black nights and murky
mornings—welcome joyously the return of the life-giver, while to these
people it would be strange indeed if the great luminary had not become
at least the shining symbol of Infinity. The terrace form of their
dwelling is, I think, suggested by the sun’s gradual circling ascent and
descent of the sky, and from the topmost step or story they assemble to
bid it joyous welcome and reverential farewell. The world itself here
appears to be a sort of terrace, the first step of which we ascended
when we reached the Violet Fields. The next is the approach to the land
ruled over by the Prince’s serene sister, whom we are soon to see, for
though we are loth to depart from this pleasant vale, we are daily
required by a mental message from her to proceed farther on our journey.
To-morrow, therefore, or the next day, or the day after, we must ascend
still higher this enchanted river and “pause not unduly, nor idly
linger”—so her august message runs—until we shall arrive at the palace
of the Lady of the Lilied Hills.
XXX.
THE LADY OF THE LILIES.
And now, indeed, we are in the land of anodyne and oblivion. Once more
we dream and forget, and the palace of the Prince dims out and fades,
even as the barges that brought us drift back down the tide and
disappear in the distant blue. Here is the world’s enchanted and
perfumed casket, and here within it lies the world’s rarest jewel of
sorcery—the Princess of the Lilied Hills.
We have been here but a brief time—I no longer keep a record of the
days—and we are bound hand and foot, as it were, by the spell of this
Circe of the South. In the first moment that we were ushered into her
presence, and beheld her in her white robe of state, embroidered with
the pale yellow flower of her kingdom, whatever remained to us of the
past slipped away like water through the fingers. Chauncey Gale forgot
that he had a yacht, and both of us that he had a daughter. Mr. Sturritt
forgot everything but his packages of pink lozenges, which he
reverentially laid at her feet, thereby earning her cordial
acknowledgments and our bitter jealousy.
Ferratoni, however, was not long at a loss. He could converse with her,
and it became evident almost from the start that he did not care to
translate either fully or literally. He cut out, and revised, and
stumbled. She detected his difficulty, of course, and seemed to reprove
him. Then he gave up translating altogether, and the rest of us sat
there, simply staring at her, until Gale got himself together and
recited the “Burning Deck,” while I suffered in spirit because reciting
did not seem to be quite what I wanted to do, and I could remember no
other tricks to perform.
I finally prevailed upon Ferratoni to tell her that it was I who had
conceived the expedition, whereupon Gale hastily claimed credit for
having made it possible, while Mr. Sturritt—Sturritt the timid and
unassuming—boldly stated that without him and his tablets we should have
perished by the wayside. It was altogether distressing to hear them.
When we were through, she looked fondly at Ferratoni, and then, still
tenderly regarding him, expressed thanks to all of us with a fervency
that was gratifying to him no doubt, but that to the rest of us seemed a
poor reward.
She added, presently, that as I was interested in the central point of
the kingdom—the South Pole, of course—and that as Gale was interested in
the people’s homes and firesides, and Mr. Sturritt in the matter of
their food, she would have us escorted about with a view to our
observation of these things, but that Ferratoni, whose life and aims
were not so widely different from her own, would remain with her to
discuss the problems in which they were mutually interested.
Perhaps she did not put it just in this way, but Ferratoni did in his
translation; then they both turned away and forgot our existence. We
were conducted outside, ere long, and there was a barge at the door into
which it was indicated that we should enter.
We did not do so, however. The boatmen were in no haste and neither were
we. There is no haste in this land. We lay down by the shore and looked
serenely to the south where rose a lofty terraced temple, the top of
which we had observed from a great distance. We had been told it was
their chief temple of worship, and located exactly in the center of the
sun’s daily circuit. Resting thus on the earth’s axis, it became for us
the outward and material symbol of our objective point—of my life’s
ambition. It was the South Pole!
And now that we are here and it rises before us, the eagerness to set
foot upon that magic point—to scale and stand triumphant on the apex of
the pole itself, as it were, has passed.
“So that is the South Pole,” murmurs Gale. “Well, I never would have
recognized it if I’d seen it any place else. Let’s don’t be in too big a
hurry to get to it, Nick.”
“No,” I answer, “suppose we wait awhile. Perhaps if we wait long enough
the South Pole will come to _us_.”
For there can be no eagerness in this land. It would be wholly out of
place. Neither are we acutely jealous of Ferratoni. Acuteness would be
out of place also.
And so we drowse in the fragrance of the lilies, and soft-eyed,
soft-voiced people come and sing to us, while the barge waits and
becomes a picture on the tide.
And then there falls silence, and it is as if the world and the palace
slept, and so would sleep until the wakening kiss.
XXXI.
THE POLE AT LAST.
November ( ). At the top of the Temple of the Sun.
I do not know the precise date, or the hour. Our watches have long since
stopped, and there has been neither the desire nor the need to wind
them. In a land where the sun slips round the sky, and for half a year
no night cometh, the proper measure of time is of little matter.
Neither have I continued the record of these notes, for I thought each
day to visit this spot, and so waited. In the light of the Lily Princess
we have lingered and drowsed. From the peace of her pleasant palace we
have not cared to stray. And she has smiled kindly upon us all, though
from the first it has been evident that her joy lies in Ferratoni, and
that, in the princess, he too has found at last the ideal—the perfect
spirit vibration that completes the chord of souls.
We have become glad of this and rejoice in his happiness. That is, we
have rejoiced as much as anybody ever rejoices in this halcyon land. We
have been peacefully and limpidly content, and their serene bliss has
been our compensation.
Yet there have been other rewards. We have mingled with the fair people
of the court and found something of the bliss of their untroubled lives.