“I said, I was upon the Kinchinginga’s. Aye, for no other purpose than on a mission sublime, to climb nearer to heaven in search of the Creator’s secrets profound and reveal them to the human race. Day after day, thus, dauntless and resolute, I scaled craggy precipices. Through mammoth caverns of desolate solitude I wended my way up to reach the goal of my ambition, lured there by my faith.
Abou Shimshek in the Cave
“Night after night, thus, I gazed and scanned heaven’s canopy, studded with twinkling jewels. But alas! it seemed, farther and more remote grew the space between me and the blue heaven, with no mortal kind to cheer my solitude, except the wails of hungry jackals and the wild groans of the Bengal tiger fierce, with myriads of phantom spirits, darting here and there, in weird, fantastic forms; I could not tell whether they were the creatures of some world unseen, or the ghosts of Gothama and his saints keeping vigil over the faithful. But at last, so dire and awful did grow my solitude that, overcome by fright and fatigue, I retreated into a glacial cave beneath a lofty peak.
“I laid my head on a chilled stalagmite, the frozen floor to my back, and my face and belly against what I thought to be the dome of my cavern. But, by the sacred wart that grew on Gehangire’s nose, what reality! What a wonderful sight! A new world, revolving through space—entirely different from ours as it had living souls and vegetation in a far more advanced stage of development than ours,—was revealed to my astonished eyes!
“The greatest efforts of men are brought to naught with the elements controlled by Allah’s command, or are so small in scale and scope as to be beyond compare with His wondrous works. Through the greatest telescope that man’s ingenuity and skill can produce, astronomers cannot agree whether the canals of Mars are single or double.
“Pshaw! Away with those numberless imposters who have deluded mankind with their consummate lies! Some even claim to have traversed the inter-etherial space by flying machines, whose construction was revealed to them in a “sealed package” or found in boxes, buried in tombs and mummies of days gone by! The marvelous medium through which I saw this celestial panorama was nothing strange; the cavern into which I so unconsciously was led was an observatory by nature made!
“Its dome was a mammoth telescope, composed of lenses of great magnitude, various in size and shape. Lenses made of purest water, distilled by the thundering clouds and filtered through heaven’s ether. Lenses congealed by the zephyrs that gently blow from Mount Everest’s snow-capped brow; lenses, annealed and polished through centuries by the fiery orb that governs our earth, from its moorings in wondrous space. Here, to my eye, was a telescope most complete. It brought that strange planet so near as to make me inhale its very atmosphere, touch its soil and waters with my outstretched arms. And which, with your kind tolerance, I will briefly relate.
“The first element on this marvelous world, which my attention did attract, was the wonderful hues of its firmament. There were no “inter-luminous rays” of “rosy radiance” nor “amber isles” floating over “golden seas” of sunsets, or similar trash, that our poets here below have sung for ages gone, over and over again. But instead, wonderfully colored panels of exquisite designs, the whole changing as if by a dissolving slide, at every atmospheric vibration, into still more beautiful patterns, a veritable Kaleidoscope!
“On consulting my astronomical calculations I found that this strange phenomenon was caused by the peculiar inclination, and ascension of this planet toward the sun! As I was scanning this sublime panorama, with rapturous admiration, my attention was diverted to an expanse of water. Its constantly foaming and sparkling nature induced me to examine it more closely and, to my great surprise, upon analysis I found it to be similar to delicious cream soda, with cakes of ice floating on it, and the whole impregnated with phosphates—on account of the immense guano deposits left by extinct birds, along its shores!