THE LORELEI: by a Student-Traveler
JUST where the river Rhine narrows and inclines, making a drop of five feet which causes the water to flow more swiftly, towers the Rock of the Lorelei, four hundred and fifty feet high and nearly perpendicular, at the base of which sunken rocks form a whirlpool in the rapidly flowing stream. At the top of the high rock in olden days, so the legend runs, a maiden sat and sang, and as she sang she combed her golden hair. And her song was so full of magic that boatmen on the river below, falling under the spell of her enchantment, as they listened to the song, forgot the dangers of the whirling waters and were dashed to pieces on the sunken rocks underneath.
Is the tale of the Lorelei a mere poetical personification of the whirlpool and rocks? If so, how account for the tale being universal? Who does not know the story of Ulysses and the Sirens? Virgil's Harpies had the faces of maidens, but ended in foul feathers and talons. And so with many another destructive enchantress in ancient myth. People seem to have loved to trace out in the topography of their native land its analogies with that internal region wherein the Soul goes its pilgrimage. In every land there were sacred mountains, healing founts, caves of the Sibyl, rocks of the Lorelei, etc. The eternal drama of the human Soul has been allegorized again and again, always with the same features, though the topography is changed to suit the race and time. Every man knows the luring enchantress, for who has not been seduced by the captivating charms of promised pleasure, only to be mocked and punished?
And why these cheating experiences of the Soul? Are they the chiding hand of a God or the mocking malice of a fiend; or are we the sport of a Chance whose utter indifference outclasses alike the wrath of deity and the malice of devil? The answer is a commonsense one. Life is not a cradle of down nor a pleasure-garden. It is a drama full of incident, an enterprise full of adventure, a world full of people. In it we find the helper and the adversary; and if there are sirens and wicked giants, there are also the meed of victory, the bride won, the warrior's home-coming. Life is worth while, for the triumphs it contains; and it is because we aspire to the triumphs that we engage in the fights, though our lower nature, the mere varlet, may cry out at the discomfort. The Dragon, once defeated, becomes our ally.
If we would win beauty and truth, we must not seek in them mere balm for the senses, but rise in our strength and be worthy of them. What is worth having is not to be had for the taking.
Beauty rhymes with duty.
Truth rhymes with ruth.
Tarry not in the pleasure grounds of sense, heed not the sweet voices of illusion, thou who aspirest to wisdom—say the ancient teachings. It is the illusion produced by the senses and desires that we have to overcome, if we would not be dashed on the rocks of the Lorelei.
LORELEI
(Heinrich Heine)
ICH weisz nicht was soll es bedeuten
Dass ich so traurig bin,
Ein Märchen von alten Zeiten
Das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn.
Die Luft ist kühl und es dunkelt
Und ruhig flieszt der Rhein,
Der Gipfel des Berges funkelt
Im Abendsonnenschein.
Die schönste Jungfrau sitzet
Dort oben wunderbar,
Ihr gold'nes Geschmeide blitzet,
Sie kämmt ihr goldenes Haar;
Sie kämmt es mit goldenem Kamme
Und singt ein Lied dabei
Das hat eine wundersame
Gewaltige Melodei.
Den Schiffer im kleinen Schiffe
Ergreift es mit wildem Weh'
Er sieht nicht die Felsenriffe
Er schaut nur hinauf in die Höh'.
Ich glaube die Wellen verschlingen
Am Ende Schiffer und Kahn,
Und das hat mit ihrem Singen
Die Lorelei gethan.
Lomaland Photo. and Engraving Dept.
THE ROCK OF THE LORELEI
Lomaland Photo. and Engraving Dept.
THE WESTERN FOUR-TOED SALAMANDER
(Batrachoseps attenuatus)
THE WESTERN FOUR-TOED SALAMANDER:
by Percy Leonard
THE Batrachians occupy a place between the reptiles proper and the fishes. They are distinguished from the fishes by the possession of paired limbs furnished with four fingers and a thumb, and though their early days are passed beneath the water, breathing like fishes through their gills, yet when fully grown, almost without exception they breathe through well-developed lungs. There is a superficial resemblance between the reptilian lizard and the batrachian newt or salamander, and they are often confounded together in the popular mind. True reptiles, however, are easily distinguished from batrachians by their overlapping scales, quite different from the smooth moist skins of the latter. Reptiles breathe as we do by expanding the ribs and drawing the air into the hollow thus formed; but batrachians, lacking ribs, are obliged to swallow their air, and a glance at a toad or a salamander will reveal the incessant palpitation of the throat as the air is forced into the lungs. Reptiles are hatched, or born, as the case may be, perfect copies in miniature of their parents and never go through the tadpole stage. Batrachians are divided into two groups: the Salientia (or Jumpers), and the Urodela. The Salientia (or Jumpers) comprise the frogs and toads; and the Urodela include the numerous tribes of newts, water-dogs, efts, and salamanders.
The illustration shows one of the lowliest of the order of Urodela, the western four-toed salamander (Batrachoseps attenuatus). The legs are ridiculously small in comparison to the long, unwieldy body. That the tail is fat and cylindrical is only to be expected, because being a terrestrial salamander, it has no need of a flat tail for swimming like the water-haunting newts. Probably the bulky tail serves as a store of nourishment in reserve for use in time of famine, as does the hump of a camel under similar circumstances. Here at Point Loma these odd creatures may be found under stones in the damp cañons. In the absence of pools they cannot pass through the tadpole stage under water and so the various phases of tadpole transformation are gone through while in the egg. The males are glossy black; but the female figured in the picture has a light brown skin with irregular blotches of flesh color on the tail.
A male once captured by the writer exhibited a curious case of mimicry. He coiled up just like a rattlesnake and looked so venomous and threatening as to inspire terror in anyone who was unaware of his utter powerlessness to do an injury.
The abnormal humidity of the air enables this delicate animal to survive the rainless months of summer, and probably he never ventures from his shelter till the sun goes down and the dew provides a little moisture. The mere contact of his skin with a dewy surface would probably be as refreshing as a draught of water to a thirsty man; but the salamander, like the frog, does not drink: he simply "blots up" his water through the skin.
Thus the four-toed western salamander passes his uneventful days and nights. His pleasures are few and simple and his sorrows correspondingly light.
According to Theosophy, the inner Essence of every creature in this broad universe either is, was, or prepares to become, man; but the mind staggers in the attempt to conceive the enormous stretches of time before such dull, inert, insensitive beings will arrive at the human stage. But pain is a grand stimulant and spur to advance, and perchance when the salamander gets eaten by a snake or a stoat, he gains as compensation for the pangs of death some slight promotion to a higher order of batrachians in his next rebirth! So mote it be.