History of a World of Immortals without a God / Translated from an unpublished manuscript in the library of a continental university

by Unknown

CHAPTER I.

Concerning the Birth and Education of Dr. Gervaas Van Varken, and his Loathing and Abhorrence of the whole Human Race—How he met an Ancient Parsee merchant in Bombay, and got an introduction to the Great Magician of Thibet—How he went to Thibet; what he learned there, and how he departed from it.

[Mr. Gervaas Van Varken was a tradesman who flourished on the Boomptjes of Rotterdam in the early years of the last century. His business was that of a ship-chandler—for so we may approximately translate the inscription, ‘Koopman en Touwwerk en andere Scheepsbehoeften,’ which appeared at the side of his door.

Van Varken drove a tolerably brisk trade, and, being of extremely miserly habits, succeeded in accumulating a respectable amount of capital. He was a man of very morose and sulky disposition, and, when he had reached the period of middle age, married a Vrouw who was not only gifted with a moral character closely resembling his own, but had, moreover, embraced Calvinistic views of the most austere type.

This disagreeable couple were blessed with a small family consisting of one son, called Gervaas, after the name of his father, and this Gervaas, junior, was the author of the diary before us.

The personal experiences of this unlucky youth were such that his imbibing the very gloomiest views of things in general, and, in particular, of human nature, was a simple matter of necessity. In his earliest childhood he arrived at the conclusion that there was absolutely nothing he could do which did not issue in a sound thrashing, administered either by his father or his mother—supplemented, in the latter case, by energetic assurances that his present suffering was a mere joke in comparison with the elaborate and abiding torments in store for him, as a vessel of wrath, in the next world. In addition to these personal severities the child spent the greater part of his time locked up in an empty room, imperfectly clothed, more than half-starved, and with nothing whatever to do but reflect on the inscrutable problem of human life.

When he was ten years old he was sent to a school kept by a savage old friend of the ship-chandler, who carried out the parental system of discipline with even greater vigour; and thus it resulted that when in course of time Gervaas, junior, was moved to the University of Leyden to study for the medical profession—a profession for which he was destined by his father, without the slightest consideration for the young man’s personal wishes—he had contracted such a habit of intense misanthropy that it remained with him as his leading characteristic for life.

Gervaas, though by nature of a somewhat crusty disposition, was by no means a cruel man—at least he had none of that delight in inflicting pain, as such, which characterizes some of our species. In fact he was very fond of most sorts of animals, and confined his malevolence strictly to the human race, of which his experience had been so unfavourable. When his medical education was completed he was sent, as surgeon, for several voyages in an English vessel commanded by another malignant friend of his father; and assuredly the rough and coarse life on board had no tendency to counteract his pessimistic estimate of mankind. The British mariners, with their habitual contempt of foreigners, considered Doctor Van, as they called him, an eligible subject for all sorts of violent practical jokes; which, to do him justice, he retaliated, whenever he got the chance, by the infliction of lingering torments in various surgical operations.

The doctor, who had a considerable gift for languages, soon picked up English, and a copy of the, just then published, ‘Voyages of Captain Gulliver’ falling into his hands, he read them with intense interest; being specially delighted with the account of the crazy philosophers in the third voyage, and, above all, with the horrible description of the Yahoos in the fourth. From this time, indeed, he seems to have invariably used this term in speaking of his fellow-men.

When he had reached the age of about thirty years his mother died; and as his father did not long survive her, the young man inherited an amount of property which afforded him a tolerable income, and rendered him independent of his profession. He resolved to abandon it and visit the East; for, having made several voyages to Bombay, he had come to the conclusion that the Yahoos of that part of the world were less intolerable than the European specimens of the breed.

So he took his passage in an English East Indiaman, and, after an uneventful voyage, landed at Bombay in the early part of the year 1729. As soon as the anchor was cast in the roads he lost not a moment in quitting the ship, having with difficulty escaped the indignity of being obliged to shake hands with the Yahoo captain. On landing he took up his quarters at the house of a trader to whom he had a letter of introduction; and, shortly afterwards, by the merest accident, he encountered in the street an old Parsee merchant, who, though of course a Yahoo, seems not to have been absolutely intolerable in the eyes of the over-sensitive misanthrope, whose notes, at this point, become continuous for the first time.]

‘As I was walking in the shade of a row of trees which lined the street, I was accosted by a very ancient merchant of the Parsee persuasion, who asked me if I had not come from England in the ship which arrived that morning. I replied that I had been a passenger in her, and we fell into conversation. The old gentleman was not nearly so offensive to the senses as are the European Yahoos, and he was perfectly well acquainted with the English tongue. I found that, in the exercise of his calling, he had travelled a great deal in divers parts of Asia; and, from his way of talk, I gathered that the Yahoos of those countries were fully as abominable in his eyes as the European specimens of the breed were in mine own. This common sentiment of loathing for our neighbours proved to ourselves an occasion of union, and before long there was between us as warm a friendship as two Yahoos are capable of entertaining for each other.

‘One day, as he was relating some of his adventures, he told me that, in the days of his youth, when travelling on mercantile business in the Himalayah Mountains, he chanced to meet a Thibetian gentleman named Koot Homi. Having on one occasion done a signal service to this Mr. Homi, it came to pass that the Thibetian, who was of a grateful turn of mind, had always showed himself a faithful friend to the Parsee. The old merchant further informed me that Homi was a man endowed with many and strange gifts; that the famous wonders worked by the Indian magicians or jugglers were the merest play of babies, when compared with the feats accomplished by Homi; and that if you only whispered his name into the ear of one of these magicians when engaged at his work, the magician would give a frightful howl, and run as if Beelzebub himself was in pursuit of him.

‘Among other wonders wrought by this Homi was one which struck me as the most notable of all. This was the power of moving himself, and various articles in contact with his person, in some inscrutable way from one district of the earth’s surface to another, no matter how remote, and apparently in an instant of time. I asked my friend whether he had ever visited Mr. Homi in Thibet. He told me that he had been there, but only once; that a long and terrible journey had to be undertaken; frightful mountain-passes had to be surmounted; that the country in which the magician’s abode was fixed was inhabited by a strange society or brotherhood, the members of which were endowed with many of the powers possessed by Homi himself, who was their chief; and that access, unless by a special permission, which was very rarely granted, was an absolute impossibility.

‘And hereupon the old man added an expression of his never-ceasing regret that he had not availed himself of his opportunity when in Thibet of endeavouring to persuade Mr. Homi to exercise his wonderful power upon him, either by transporting him wholly from the Yahoo regions, or, possibly, by transmuting him into a less hateful form. “I have never ceased to mourn over my stupidity in this respect,” he said, “and, were I only able for it, I should gladly repeat my visit to Thibet. But I am far too old to venture on the fatigues of such a journey. As for you, however, the case is quite different; you are an active and energetic man; and should you think it worth your while to try what might be done in your behalf in the way I have suggested, I will gladly give you a letter which will enable you to pass without hindrance from the Brotherhood to the head-quarters of Mr. Homi.” I thanked him very much for his offer, and asked him to let me think the matter over till next day, when I should give him my answer.

‘The more I reflected on my friend’s kind offer the better was I pleased with the prospect of the journey. Inasmuch as life had become well-nigh intolerable, I cared but little for fatigue and danger. My time also was wholly at my own disposal. So next morning I told the Parsee that I gladly accepted his proposal; and he, without any delay, not only wrote the promised letter of introduction, but also drew up for my use an itinerary of the most convenient road from Bombay to Eastern Thibet, containing notices of the towns, distances, and various peculiarities of the countries through which it was necessary to pass.’

[At this point the memoranda assume a very fragmentary form. This I have observed to be always the case when the doctor was actually engaged in travelling. When stationed for a time in some fixed locality he wrote out his observations pretty fully; but whenever he was moving about, mere hints are available for the guidance of the editor. His journey was evidently very long and arduous, and it certainly occupied several months. In its course many obstacles were plainly put in his way by the natives of the different territories which he had to traverse; and the annoyance thence arising greatly ruffled his temper, and seems to have increased to an almost incredible extent his abhorrence of the human race.

At last his indomitable energy and perseverance were successful. He reached the mysterious Thibetian region; and, having exhibited the old Parsee’s letter, he was permitted by the Brotherhood to pass to the residence of their chief. Koot Homi received the doctor in a very friendly manner, and even declined to inspect his letter of introduction, assuring him that the chief of the occult Brotherhood had no need to do so. Van Varken seems to have resided with the chief for about five months, and was evidently admitted to great intimacy with the whole of the Brotherhood.

One reason for this was clearly the very great interest taken by Homi in the ‘Voyages of Gulliver,’ a copy of which was presented to him by the doctor. In particular, the accounts of the philosophers in Lagado, and of the rational animals in the outward shape of horses, encountered on his fourth expedition, were listened to by the sage with eager attention. The chief does not seem to have even in the slightest degree doubted the veracity of Gulliver; but he certainly expressed the most intense contempt for the Lagado professors, laying much stress on the profundity of their stupidity in not having amended the deplorable condition of the Struldbrugs in Luggnagg, of whose existence the professors were, doubtless, aware. ‘Even when immortal life was given them to work upon, they were incompetent to ward off the effects of senile decay! Why, the merest tiro in our schools would be ashamed to allow the poor old Struldbrug to get into such a state,’ said he, with scornful indignation.

But, though he showed much sympathy with Dr. Van Varken’s longing to be transmuted out of the species he so much abhorred, Mr. Homi did not hold out any hopes of success in so laudable an endeavour. ‘No,’ said he, ‘many years of arduous preparation, to say nothing of rare natural gifts, are indispensable qualifications for such transformation; few even of the adepts are capable of it. But the power of instantaneous passage from one terrestrial point to another is far more easily arrived at.’

And it appears that, after a few months’ probation, the secret of this process was actually communicated to the doctor; but under such rigid obligations to silence that no traces of its nature are to be found committed to writing. All that can be ascertained about it is this—that an instantaneous disintegration, and equally rapid reintegration of the ultimate molecules of the bodies to be moved is effected; that the transit is accomplished through the medium of the undulations of the ethereal vehicle which pervades all space; and that the rate of transmission is identical with that of the transmission of light, namely, about 186,000 miles in a second. Once more the notes become continuous.]

I was greatly pleased at gaining this new and wonderful faculty of moving myself; but, after making a few successful essays, it seemed to me that, after all, I should not be much the better for its possession. Yahoos being everywhere spread over the face of the earth, wherever I moved I should still assuredly And them; and perhaps this was the reason why, as I was walking by myself one evening and chanced to see the planet Venus, or Hesperos, shining in the sky, the thought came into my mind that, inasmuch as the ether fills all the space between the planets, it might be just possible that the power of movement by disintegration of molecules, which, as yet, had only been essayed between places on the earth’s surface, might extend as far as the planets themselves.

The moon, being far the nearest of the heavenly bodies, would naturally seem to afford the most promising opportunity for trying the experiment; but, having learned in Thibet that she is quite destitute of air, I resolved to try some other region; for I thought it would be quite useless to arrive there, and straightway perish for want of breath. If I could only get as far as Hesperos my chances of life would be much better, inasmuch as I was assured, by the same philosophers, that there is good reason for believing that planet to be very abundantly supplied with air. Moreover, it fortunately happened that she was just then approaching the position called by astronomers her inferior conjunction, so her distance from the earth was not much over twenty-five millions of miles.

The main risk I should run in attempting to make this passage would evidently be the possibility, perhaps I should say the probability, of extinction of the vital force during the period of disintegration, which I estimated at a little more than two minutes. It was known to the Thibetian Brotherhood that the disintegrated particles moved with exactly the same speed as light; and as light requires about eight minutes to traverse the distance between the sun and the earth, two would nearly suffice to move it as far as Hesperos in her lower conjunction. Whether after such an interval of suspension the vital force would maintain sufficient energy to accomplish the reintegration on which continuance of bodily life depends, an actual experiment alone could show. But I cared but little for the risk. Life had long become hateful to me; a chance was now given to escape the society of the Yahoos, and all their abominations. I resolved to try my luck—at the worst I should only perish.

I made no communication of my intention to the chief, lest perchance he should raise some objection to my intended enterprise; and, on the very next night, at ten o’clock, I went out, taking with me, in various pockets of the eastern dress which, for convenience in Asiatic travel, I had adopted in Bombay, sundry small articles for the toilet, also my silver watch, and an ingenious instrument for measuring quantities of heat, which had been sent me as a gift just before I left home, by my good friend, Mr. Gabriel Fahrenheit, of Amsterdam, who had lately invented it. I sat down on a rock by the side of the mountain; Hesperos was distinctly visible, though only a thin crescent of her illuminated face was turned towards the earth. Carefully noting the time, which was exactly thirty-seven minutes past ten, and having also marked the temperature, which was fifty-seven degrees of my thermometer, as the instrument is called, I accomplished the disintegration, indicating Hesperos as the goal.

CHAPTER II.
HERE BEGINS THE HISTORY OF HESPEROS.

Of the shining city of Lucetta—How Dr. Van Varken met an apparent Yahoo—Of the great astonishment of the citizens at sight of the Doctor, and how they gave him in charge to a committee of three—How the committee learned the Dutch tongue, and showed the Doctor sundry strange and wonderful maps.

On recovering consciousness I found myself lying on what felt like soft grass on the steep side of a mountain. The sky was intensely dark, no stars were visible, and, of course, there was no moon. Before me, at a considerably lower elevation, and, as well as I could judge, at a distance of four or five miles, I saw what had the appearance of a very brilliantly illuminated city; the illumination was such as no artificial light known on earth could approach in splendour. So strong was it, that even at the distance of the place where I was sitting its effect was quite visible in lighting the hill. In front of the city was a large sheet of water, and on it were many moving bodies, probably ships, all of them lighted with the same strange radiance which pervaded the city. I looked at my watch, and, as might have been expected, I found that it still marked thirty-seven minutes past ten. I had stupidly forgotten that, during disintegration, the machinery could not have worked, so I was unable to verify my computation of the time required for the transit. The mercury in the thermometer quickly moved up to eighty-six degrees.

I judged it best to stay where I was till daylight, especially as I saw some traces of dawn appearing in a quarter of the sky which I hence concluded to be the east. I awaited the coming day with great eagerness, and, I admit, with some anxiety, for it would be hard to say what reception I might meet with. This much was plain—the planet was not destitute of some forms of life, and I had escaped the detestable Yahoos.

But, as the reader will soon learn, my conclusion was over-hasty. As the light gradually increased I began to make out at first the main features, and soon the minuter details of the landscape. The sloping ground on which I had landed formed the base of a high mountain. Dense forests concealed the summit; the lower part, on which I was sitting, was covered with soft short grass, and trees, most of them bearing some sort of fruit, were here and there scattered about. A few yards below me the steepness of the slope eased off into a gentle descent, and the mountain finally terminated on the shore of a deep bay of clear and still water. At the end of this bay lay the city which shone so brightly in the night; it was about five miles from my landing-place, and, as I afterwards learned, was called Lucetta. The opposite shore of the bay, which was nearly ten miles wide, was occupied by a lofty range of peaked mountains. The temperature was high, but by no means intolerable, and the air was perfectly still.

I saw no traces of any habitation outside the city, and no signs of animal life, excepting birds, were anywhere visible, but of the birds there were many and lovely kinds. I was greatly struck by the appearance of the sky; this was completely covered with a canopy of white cloud, seemingly at an enormous elevation. I was very desirous to get a sight of the sun, and, if possible, to measure its apparent magnitude, which I knew must greatly exceed its appearance from the earth; but the thickness of the cloud was such that no trace of the disk was visible. I had hoped, by this means, to satisfy myself that I had really reached Hesperos, namely, by comparing the observed magnitude with that which I had computed, and noted on a leaf of my pocket-book before I left Thibet. So I waited another hour, but seeing no signs of movement among the clouds, and despairing of getting an observation, I got up and walked down the hill in the direction of the city.

Presently the great steepness of the slope abated, and I soon arrived at a wide and smooth track which ran along the shore of the bay. The country was quite open; there were no walls, hedges, or any kind of fences—not even any of those notice-boards so familiar to the wanderer in civilized terrestrial regions, which address him by the name of Trespasser, and convey menaces. I turned into the road, in the direction of the city, and, after proceeding along it for about half a mile, I descried, at some distance, an approaching object, which, to my unspeakable horror, had all the look of a Yahoo.

As we came nearer the suspicion became a certainty. The creature was walking very slowly, and seemed to be quite absorbed in contemplation of a small article which he held in his hand. He was a man of middle age, with an exceedingly intelligent cast of countenance, and his dress did not materially differ from the Eastern costume which had accompanied me from Thibet.

So I could not at all account for the extreme intensity of his astonishment when, at last raising his eyes, he got the first sight of me as I walked towards him. He seemed completely paralyzed, gasped for breath, and for several moments was quite incapable of speech. Such utter stupefaction might have been manifested by the inhabitants of Lilliput and Brobdingnag when they first beheld Captain Gulliver, but in the present case there was no apparent cause for amazement. At length he recovered himself sufficiently to address a few words to me, none of which I could understand. I replied, but with the like want of success. I pointed to the sky, to intimate that I had come from another world, and then to the city, as a hint that I wished to go there. Both of these signs he evidently understood, and he turned back, and accompanied me in silence. I must do my companion, and indeed all the Venusians (or Hesperians) I have encountered, the justice of admitting that, though in Yahoo form, they possess none of the offensive peculiarities of the breed.

We had not gone very far before we overtook a young girl of exceedingly prepossessing aspect, walking towards the city. She too, on seeing me, appeared to be struck with the same overwhelming and stupefying astonishment which had produced so great an effect on my first acquaintance. I could not understand it at all. There was nothing in the personal appearance of either the man or the girl which struck me as extremely unusual. Why, then, should I be so extraordinarily wonderful in their eyes?

When we came up with the girl the man stopped, and they talked in a very excited manner for some minutes. While they were so occupied it occurred to me that something very remarkable might have happened in the reintegration of my body on arrival at the surface of the planet. I might, for all I knew, be suffering from some grotesque distortion of features, or other bodily misfortune. But no, that was not the cause of their wonder, for, as the road ran close along the shore, I took the opportunity of surveying myself in the clear water, and the reflection showed, beyond all possibility of doubt, that there was nothing whatever astray with my personal appearance.

Presently, hearing a slight noise behind me, I looked back, and saw a vehicle on its way to the city approaching us. It was running swiftly, although there were no horses attached, nor any visible motive power; the wheels ran on two steel rods which I had before noticed lying parallel to each other on the road. As soon as the vehicle reached the spot where we were standing it stopped at once, and the man and the girl making signs to me to get into it, I did so. In the vehicle were about a dozen people, of various adult ages, the youngest seemingly about twenty years old, the eldest about sixty. They were of both sexes, and, with one consent, they all, old and young, male and female alike, received me with the same intense, and, as it seemed to me, needless amazement as the first man and girl had shown.

The vehicle resumed its course and ran on swiftly and with exceeding smoothness into the city. It was easy to see that I was the exclusive theme of the eager and excited discourse of the passengers. Their manner was very friendly, but their astonishment showed no signs of abating. A few minutes sufficed to bring us to the end of our journey. The car ran through a long and wide street, bordered on each side with rows of splendid trees. Through their foliage the houses were visible. Each house was separated from its neighbour by an interval of several yards; was but one story in height; and, so far as I was able to judge from a hasty glance in rapid passage, was very elaborately and tastefully ornamented. It was plain that land was abundant, and ground rents, if any, were trifling.

We soon reached our destination—a large open space in the middle of the town. This great square was surrounded by stately public buildings, some of them being of considerable elevation. One of these was especially striking on account of its gorgeous magnificence. It had all the look of a vast cathedral, and the roll of deep-toned music, much resembling the tones of a powerful and curiously sweet organ, issuing from the open portals, served to heighten the illusion. Though still early morning, many people were about in the square, and, as soon as we alighted from the car, I saw the faces of all the bystanders assume the same look of bewildered astonishment which all who had yet seen me so needlessly put on.

From all sides the people came running together; but there was no crowding or pressure; the multitude were most orderly, and seemed quite friendly in their demeanour; but it was plain that, for some mysterious reason, my arrival indicated a crisis in the history of the city. At last a young man, who appeared to be in a position of authority, mounted a low flight of steps which led up to the building before which the vehicle had stopped, and addressed a short speech to the assembled people. The crowd at once dispersed, and three persons came forward and took me in charge.

Two of these were men, one of them elderly, the other of middle age; the third of these custodians, as I had to consider them, was a very beautiful girl, seemingly about twenty years old. The countenances of all three were characterized by marks of extreme intelligence; and each of them had a peculiar look which is common to all the Hesperians I have seen, and which I can no otherwise describe than as a look indicative of immense and profound knowledge. These three persons, as I afterwards learned, were appointed by the man in authority as a sort of commission to take charge of me, and endeavour to ascertain what I was, whence I came, and whither I was going. The real cause of the intensity of the wonder which I excited everywhere will be explained farther on.

The elder man made signs to me to walk up the steps, and enter the large building beside us, which I did, the others following. The steps led up to a spacious hall, from which long corridors branched out in various directions. One of the men inquired by gesture-language if I wished for food. As I was by this time exceedingly hungry, I replied, in the same way, that I was quite ready for my breakfast. Whereupon they brought me to a room which opened into one of the corridors, where, on turning a handle in the wall, a sliding panel opened, and a table on rollers passed through. Various kinds of meats and drinks were on the table, and of these they invited me to partake. I made a hearty meal. I noticed, in particular, respecting some of the dishes, that they greatly resembled in taste various kinds of flesh-meat, very delicately cooked, but they were totally different in appearance from anything of the sort ever served up on earth.

I observed also that my three keepers did everything in their power to induce me to give the names, in my language, of every object in sight. The girl had a sort of small memorandum book, in which, with a fine pencil, she constantly wrote, in what seemed a system of shorthand, the words and sentences I uttered; and she and the two men repeated them articulately several times. They gave me the idea that they were much more anxious to learn my language than to teach me theirs. In fact, I afterwards learned that this was part of the instructions they had received respecting me.

As soon as I had finished my breakfast they took me into a large room, which opened into another corridor, and was hung round with all sorts of charts. Among these I saw, to my intense astonishment, a large circular map, about sixteen feet in diameter, on which, depicted with singular accuracy, were the well-known outlines of the continents and larger islands of the eastern hemisphere of the earth. The immense white masses at the poles, the blue colour of the southern and Indian oceans, the yellow tinge of the Great Sahara and Asiatic deserts were especially prominent objects. The process by which this wonderful map was made was afterwards fully explained to me. It was what they called a sun-picture taken by the help of an enormous telescope in one of the national mountain observatories, of which I learned much more afterwards.

They showed me several other equally excellent charts of the earth, exhibiting different portions of her surface. All of these were taken when she was in opposition, and therefore were all on the same scale. The committee showed great delight when I intimated my acquaintance with the details of the charts; inasmuch as this was a sufficiently clear proof of the place from which I came. I pronounced, as distinctly as I could, the names of the continents, seas, and principal islands, indicating, at the same time, by pointing them out, the localities named. All of these words they repeated as before; and the girl took them down in her rapid shorthand.

The extraordinary quickness with which these three Hesperians acquired the language of Holland would not be easily credited by an inhabitant of the earth. Still it is a fact that, by the simple process of constantly conversing with me, and recording every word I spoke to them, in little more than a week all the three could speak our language with great fluency; while I, who had a great facility for learning foreign tongues, had acquired only a few words and elementary sentences of the Hesperian speech. This training in our language was by no means confined to the three members of the committee. Each morning the results of the day’s conversation were faithfully reported in the Hesperian journals from the girl’s memoranda; and the whole population of the city engaged with heart and soul in the study of Hollandish—plainly with the intention of putting themselves as quickly as possible in the way of getting an explanation of my astounding appearance among them.