Scorched and Crisp! say the Moderns.
The Canyon should be hot, and one of our own visitors says: "The sun shone directly up the Canyon, and the glare reflected from the walls made the heat intolerable (n. 61.)
The word han has, unfortunately enough, a perfect right to appear in the old record. Following it we find additional terms:
15. A compound character consisting of the signs for "Sun" (Jih) and "People" (Min.)
16. lung ("used for nagas or snake gods;" "a dragon," "imperial." "It is often used for a man.")
17. chuh ("the illumination of torches; a candle; a light; to give or shed light upon, to illumine")
The statement seems to teach that the Sun People—the men—were using torches to illumine the depth of the hot Canyon.
We have already been informed that a ju or suckling, who was yet a supreme King (like perhaps the last Chinese Emperor of the Manchu dynasty, in 1912 A. D.) and a Child of the Sun, was down in the abyss, so we are prepared to hear that his subjects—some Sun people—were down there too.
Of course, for the greater part of the twenty-four hours, the darkness, particularly in the cave dwellings should be most intense. One visitor, quoted already, tells of "darkness thicker than that of Egypt." Such gloom should be particularly and painfully felt by "Sun People," and we are not surprised to find that they made use of torches or artificial lights. Singularly enough, the chasm, as though remorsefully conscious of the blackness of its character, produces no end of dried-up vegetable stems or stalks fit to be ignited and used as firebrands. These it places convenient to your hand, as though to invite inspection.
Indians today are in the habit of using such torches. We are informed that "the custom still prevails among them of carrying a firebrand," which was noticed by Spanish explorers in the 16th Century, "and induced those discoverers to give to the river the name of Rio del Tizon" (n. 62).