It was time to proceed; our guard evidently thought so. The captain shook us each by the arm, pointed down the road, and we tramped away, watched eagerly by the few inmates of this roadside house—a man, his wife, and three rabbit-eyed, almost naked kids. The road passed through a gateway of stone, hewn in the cliffs, and with a moderate grade conducted us some ten hundred feet in vertical descent, into the Valley of Rasselas.
It was the last step on our long journey, the goal of dreams had been reached, Krocker Land was discovered, and now the revelation was to be crowned by a closing and incalculable drama.
CHAPTER X
Radiumopolis
There had been noticeable for some time a change in temperature. It grew colder and the recurrent periods of darkness were more frequent. It almost seemed as if the stationary sun responded to the secular changes produced by the apparent motion of the firmamental sun, and that, while light remained, a reduced form of winter might still be expected in this oddly conditioned corner of the earth.
Already in some way the rumor of our approach had spread far and wide. The fields were at first crossed by solitary figures trooping to the roadside to see the strangers. These were shepherds of the great flocks of goats and sheep, whose slowly shifting masses drifted over the meadow in irregular blotches of white and brown and black. At times, where we crossed marshy exposures on either side of us, the gurgle of chattering water fowl reached us, and then when we attained a higher ground hosts of red and blue iris-like plants clothed the edges of the fields, from whose corollas rose, like a visible incense, innumerable white and yellow moths or butterflies. It all was transcendently novel and interesting, and though occasionally we shivered when some chilliness entered the air, from passing breezes flung into the valley from the vast cold outside, we almost forgot our discomfort in our excitement and enthrallment.
The spectators along the route became more numerous, a wide-eyed, open mouthed throng, at first scarcely vocal, just an amused, staring audience. They were made up of the larger serving, working class—those I have designated as Eskimos—and they hung over each other’s shoulders in mute astonishment, their black eyes sharply scrutinizing us, and very often their fingers pushed out in expressive glee at the Professor, whose superb shabbiness and challenging splendor of hair always evoked the liveliest pleasure.
But as we advanced, mile upon mile, over a road of perfect construction—evenly arched and well ditched on both sides—we observed a changing character in our audience. The little people were thronging in. They came from distant low villages and they imparted a contrasted demeanor to the wayside. They were mildly clamorous and critical. They broke into ejaculations, hallooed salutations, and extended comments which kept them amused and vibrating with curiosity. A few sombre older people remained silent or grunted a few monosyllables to each other, but the younger element was quite irrepressible. At one place where the road crossed a village community, the guards had to become rigorous in maintaining an open path for us, and into large trees—a tree that here resembled the top-heavy Pawlonia of Asia—urchins nimble as monkeys had climbed in clusters, and dropped on us nuts and grain and leaves.
“Well the kids have the right spirit. I feel more at home now when the enfant terrible shows up. Where the youngsters have a sense of fun it seems to me the fathers won’t have gotten so far beyond it, as to serve us up in an imperial banquet, cut off our heads as intruders, or feed us to the Crocodilo-Python,” said Hopkins to me who was just alongside of him. “I’m half afraid they’ve taken a shine to us, and will have us up in some municipal museum for the education of the public. I feel anxious about the Professor. They surely think he’s a most attractive wild beast.”
And now we were trudging through a farm land; agricultural acres expanded before and around us; the bean, wheat, rye; the grape, apple, cherry; clover fields and honey hives were in evidence, though the harvesting—far later than in the south, a singular inversion again proceeding from the influence of the stationary sun—had been completed. The red and yellow houses of adobe tile or brick were gathered in small clusters and when, over long distances they sprinkled the tawny or sear landscape with patches of bright color, like bits of new cloth on a worn gown, the effect was delightful.