"My name is Horace Austen. I came to the Great Victoria Desert to investigate the sculptured columns reported by Hamilton, far to the west of here. I found the ruins and incredibly ancient they are. They must date from fifty thousand years ago, at the latest. Among them was an amazing pictographical record of a race of men driven by the drying up of their country to emigrate to the crater of a great mountain nearby. There was no mistaking the meaning. I was, of course, intensely interested, for nothing of the kind had ever been reported in Australia, and certainly the people depicted were not Bushmen.
"It happened that I remembered Wellington's account of the Mountain of the Moon, whose northern cliff was followed for a few miles by his route of 1887. That appeared to be the best chance for the great crater described on the columns. It was but natural for me to decide to investigate it. There is no use for me to dwell upon my hardships, but the last of my water was drunk when I found the ladder, which was located just as the inscriptions indicated.
"I reached the red plain without accident, and found the fruit of the strange vegetation a palatable and nourishing food. So far I have escaped the red lights that haunt the night, and it is their mystery that I am determined to solve. I went down to the metallic lake, and investigated it. I confess myself quite unable to account either for the nature or for the incredible origin of the fluid. With proper precaution it can be studied without great difficulty, but since I am almost entirely without apparatus, I have learned little enough about it.
"I had been in the crater a week when I decided to approach the city of jewels on the mountain. I have been in Astran over a month, but on account of the savagery and ignorance of the people, and the oppressive rule of the priesthood, I have not been on very friendly relations with them—with the exception of the girl, Melvar, who seems far above the others of her race, and who has been my friend from the first. I have been able to learn but little from them, although I have acquired a fair knowledge of the language. My instructor in it, the beautiful Melvar, is showing a keen desire to learn English, of which she is gaining a command with remarkable speed, and is developing, as well, an insatiable curiosity about the outer world.
"The sentiment against me has been ever running higher, and tomorrow I shall leave the crystal city, and endeavor to round the sea in the north and to reach the mist-veiled land beyond. My only regret in leaving is that I shall see Melvar no more. I wish there were some way to secure her the advantages of a civilized education.
"These may be my last words to the world, if, indeed, they ever come into the hands of a civilized man. And I know that sooner or later the crater will be discovered and entered. My chief purpose in writing this, aside from the satisfaction of leaving an account of my own doings is to state my firm belief, I may say, my certain knowledge, that the strange things that may be observed here, supernatural or incredible as they may appear, result from perfectly natural forces in the control of a civilized power that may not be much above our own advancements.
Horace Austen."
CHAPTER VI
Fowler Recovers