At intervals along the rim recesses and chambers are constructed. Near the openings of these chambers lay movable plates or rods. When two beings wish to pass, one of them descends into the recess; the other one pushes the rod so as to form a bridge over the opening, walks across it, and then removes the plate so that the one who has descended can get up and go on his way.
Diagram IV.—Two beings passing.
If by any chance, while a being is in the recess, the plate or rod which acts as a bridge gets fixed, he is in a dangerous predicament. For suppose a being confined as shown. If he, suffering from want of air, cuts through the roof at AB, the whole part to the right of AB comes tumbling down. For its only support is severed when AB is cut through. It is impossible to make a hole which is not the whole width of matter as it lies on the surface. And with regard to this all constructions have to be made. There cannot be two openings in a wall of a house, unless when the one is open the other is so fashioned as closing to act as a rigid support to the wall, which now depends for its upholding entirely on it.
Diagram V.—A house.
Thus, in the diagram, the house is held up entirely by the side opposite to the doorway EF, which is now open. The roof is supported by the side CD. If an opening AB be made in the wall CD before the doorway EF is closed, the roof will fall in. So, in order to pass through the house, EF must be firmly shut up before AB is opened. The houses are always built in the interior passages so as to leave the rim of the disk free for locomotion.
And there are many things to be said of the inhabitants on this disk with respect to their social and political life. It is hardly necessary for me to put down much about it here, for any one by using the method of the historian Buckle, and deducing the character of a people from their geographical influences and physical surroundings, could declare what the main features of their life and history must be.
But one or two remarks may be made here. First of all they are characterized by what I may venture to call a crude kind of polarity.
In dwellers in our world this polarity, which shows itself amongst other ways in the distinction of sexes, is tempered and modified.