There are no schools. Education appears to be absorbed through their peculiar faculty of mental communication or “silent speech,” which develops in childhood, and is now almost universal. A few appear to be unable to master it, though their number is much less in proportion to the race than is the number of those who with us are lacking in the musical sense. In fact there seems to be a close analogy, or possibly a relation between mental speech and the musical vibration—those lacking the ear for tune and melody, they tell us, being deficient in the mental perception as well. The number of these is decreasing, however, with each generation, and in a land where the whole atmosphere breathes harmony the false notes must blend out in time, and the chord at last become universal and complete. There is a written language—a sort of symbolic ideograph—but with the perfection of their mental attainments, it has fallen gradually into disuse, and is now mainly employed in ornamental decoration, and for preserving the songs and records of the people.[[3]]
[3]. In no place does Mr. Chase give an example of the Antarctic speech or writing. Even the native word for their deity or their country is avoided, whether by intention or oversight cannot now be ascertained.
Of the latter we know but little. They are in the keeping of the Princess, who, since our arrival, has been altogether too happy in the present to go delving back into the myths of her ancestors. We are told that the first Princess came from the sun, and in this, too, the Antarcticans somewhat resemble the people of the Incas. In fact, they have so much in common with the ancient Peruvians that we might suspect a common origin, were it not for their difference of color, and even this becomes less marked with each round of their ascending deity.
We are told further that when the first Princess came to the earth she brought so much of the sunlight with her that the great luminary was dark for three days, and that all the light there was came from the heaven-sent being. It is said she found the people a benighted and unsceptred race, even then ready to destroy the life of a gentle youth who had risen up among them as a teacher and a prophet. Overawed by her glory, they had dragged him before her for final judgment. But when the Princess had looked upon the fair youth, and searched with her great radiance his innermost heart, she had laid her arms about his shoulders and declared him her spouse, beloved of heaven, and to be honored only next to herself. And when she had wedded him there before all the people, the sun had suddenly burst forth and laid its golden blessing upon them, and they had lived and reigned and enlightened the race for many years. And their land she had called the Land of the Sloping Sun, and divided it into the Lilied Hills and the Purple Fields, and over the one the eldest daughter, and over the other the eldest son of each generation had ruled.
Two thousand long nights have elapsed, they tell us, since the coming of the first Sun Princess, and though the race has never grown numerous or hardy, it has become gentle and content, and human life has not been destroyed for many generations.
They are deeply opposed to what we know as progress,[[4]] believing it conducive only to discontent and evils innumerable. They regard with sorrowful distrust our various mechanical contrivances. They are not surprised to learn that men are still condemned to death in our country, for the last man so condemned here was convicted of contriving a means to propel a craft without oars—in fact, a sail. It was a poor sail at that, and of little value save as an ornament. I said we might punish a man in our country, too, for inventing such a sail, though I thought we would hardly kill him. And then we learned that this man wasn’t killed either, for the Princess of that time, being still very young and unmarried, had, in accordance with divine precedent, looked upon the inventor and loved him, and granted him her hand in marriage—for this, it appears, was their one method of royal pardon, and certainly a pleasant one for the inventor. The sail, she told them, had been sent from the sun, so that the winds of the fields might aid them, which was all very beautiful, though it seems that the sun might have sent a better sail.
[4]. In comparing Mr. Chase’s record of the customs and characteristics of the Antarctic race with those of the ancient Peruvians, we find in Prescott (The Conquest) a paragraph which reveals still further the striking similarity between the two races. Prescott says:
“Ambition, avarice, the love of change, the morbid spirit of discontent, those passions which most agitate the minds of men, found no place in the bosom of the Peruvian. The very condition of his being seemed to be at war with change. He moved on in the same unbroken circle in which his fathers had moved before him, and in which his children were to follow. It was the object of the Incas to infuse into their subjects a spirit of tranquillity, a perfect acquiescence in the established order of things.”
It was the same Princess and her consort who began this great central temple in honor of their happiness, and who established as universal throughout the nation the “Pardon of Love”—that forever after no one who truly loved, and was so beloved in return, could perish by violence, and no one has so perished for more than five hundred of their long nights. The invention of the present Princess and her brother—the dark-dispeller—has been explained to them as also a gift of the sun, to aid it in vanquishing the long night, though, as it has thus far never been made to work and is regarded by Gale as hopeless, it would seem that in this case, as in the other, the sun might have sent a better one.
This temple, however, is flawless. It stands on an island in the midst of a lake, or rather a widening of the river, and is, as before noted, located exactly at the point where the sun, during its daily circuit, appears always equidistant, above the horizon.[[5]] It is therefore on the earth’s southern axis, and represents, to us, the South Pole.