Herds of wild goats of a pinkish hue were passed, but they ran away so rapidly between the hillocks that it was difficult to get a good view of them.
* * * * *
Human habitations were far between. There were no roads; neither were there fences. All was pastoral, primitive, and restful. From the fact that the houses were but partially under roof, we concluded that rain did not fall, moisture being supplied directly through the atmosphere in the form of impalpable humidity, without condensation from above. In this way the disintegration by the washing of the soil, so common in our rain storms was entirely obviated. The conditions of life seemed wonderfully happy, and it looked as if man had only to breathe the life-giving air and eat the incomparable fruit and grain provided so abundantly to continue an existence of the utmost blessedness.
Turning to my brother I asked why he believed that the interior of our planet was peopled before the exterior. He looked at me queerly for a minute and then asked if I had ever heard an old fable about the Garden of Eden, from whence men, for certain reasons had been expelled. I told him that I was familiar with the story, but could not allow him to capture the whole inside of the earth for an Eden.
"And yet," he answered, "there is much to support such a theory. Mind I am not stipulating for garbled accounts of creation handed down from an ignorant age; but there are often some grains of truth in a mass of absurdities. Let us say that in here was the Garden of Eden. Now those who were compelled to leave it, or who did leave it, from whatever cause, naturally looked back to it as the hailing place of their race, and taught that fact to their children. The conditions of life upon the outer world are difficult, compared with those we find here. The story of their lost home would grow in beauty as it descended from generation to generation; and I verily believe that at one period in the earth's history there was a family driven forth which preserved its records, and that this fact has given rise to the Persian and Scriptural accounts of Adam and his family and the garden they left behind them."
"And how do you suppose they crossed the ice?" I inquired.
"I don't know," he answered; "how did Jan von Broekhuysen cross it? And do you know we have also discovered the gate of the garden, where the angel stood with a flaming sword?"
I started.
"What on earth are you talking about?" I exclaimed.
"Mount Horror and Mount Gurthrie! If ever there was a great natural gateway between two worlds it is there. I am sure one is an extinct volcano, and while it may not have been active in thousands or millions of years, it was once; and its awful eruptions of fire were doubtless the flaming sword of the angel!"