What was climate? “Climate,” retorted the Professor, “is an atmospheric condition fundamentally dependent upon the heat received from the sun, but if there is light, that heat can come from the interior level of the earth itself quite as well.”
“Yes,” we exclaimed, “if there is light, but the light that, as with the sun, insures the processes of growth in plants, should not be here, for the sun has already run its course for the functions of vegetation at the North. What is the meaning of this continuous light that bathes this marvelous new world we have entered? Does it, like the sunlight, build up leaves, decorate flowers, strengthen twig and trunk?”
“Ah! Does it?” soliloquized the Professor. “Solvitur ambulando; look around us. What do you see?”
We did look around us, we were looking even then, and the scene was indeed rich in color, in greenness, in luxuriance perhaps of floral charm. This everlasting illumination, with the strange accommodation of the plants to an enforced sleep, almost maddened us with wonder. To be sure we found out later that the greenness changed, and, if we had studied the matter more closely we would have been made aware of a paleness in the grass (this condition had been evident for some days, while a peculiar effect within ourselves seemed referable to this inexplicable light). I will return to this when it has formed the topic of a later conference, held during those divine hours passed on the hills of the Deer Fels.
We now had satisfied our eyes with the picture show, and we hastened on, for our supplies of duck were almost exhausted, and, although the Professor had added to this a salutary and delicious spinach-like mess, made from the boiled shoots and tender leaves of a plant like our poke or pigeon berry, which grew abundantly in the valleys, yet we had become impatient for some change of food. The pigs suggested a new and appetizing novelty in our cuisine. This indication of game in the country we were approaching whetted our desire to begin a more stirring life, and to penetrate now rapidly towards the veritable center and solution of all this mystery.
It was not long before we had threaded the precipitous ravine, which from the foot of the falls extended into the park-like expanses about the great lake. A great lake it was, dotted with distant islands and embosomed in a subdued white land almost impossible to describe. The borders of the lake were marshy and flat, the water was fresh, and the vegetation in its neighborhood green. It was a physiographic anomaly to find this freshness enclosed in a land on whose face were written most legibly the characters of sterility and dryness. The soil of the low hills was parched, and a cactus or euphorbia growth replaced the broad leaved plants which had pertinaciously clung to our steps up to this point, and had indeed pushed out into the plain, but with an evident aversion, as they became smaller, sparser, and at some remove disappeared altogether. The spiky stiffness of something like the Spanish Bayonet gradually assumed predominance, and the ashen tokens of sage bush (?) multiplied.
We concluded that in our hand-to-mouth method of subsistence it might be unsafe to venture forward on this trackless waste, and, still expectant of finally terminating our exploration with the finding of human beings, agreed to follow the margin of the lake. This would keep us supplied with food, would carry us on, apparently a little north of east, and as its waters were fresh, would doubtless offer some outlet of escape without compelling us to traverse the inhospitable barrens.
It was here that we shot some quail-like birds, which furnished a new element to our larder, and some acid and fruity berries proved edible, after our ludicrously careful experiments had tested their qualities. Then Hopkins ran against a formidable wild hog and laid him low, and while he did not prove exactly delectable, there was a noticeable difference from previous entries on our menus which made that addition welcome also. The Professor extracted some lard which helped as fuel and served to quicken into a blaze our sluggish fires.
The palms noted by the Professor were fully realized, and they made the most curious and extraordinary foregrounds, in conspicuous groups, against the dull lengthiness and vapid immensity of the chlorinated desert beyond them. It was at this time that we hit the zoological phenomenon hinted at before, which completed our nervous prostration, if mental suspense and amazement represent that state. We were encamped about three days’ journey from the deep glade from which we emerged on the plain, and were still following the marginal fertile tracts bordering the lake. The lake furnished some surprises.
Strips of muddy banks forming islands covered with a profusion of plants, among which might tower a palm, banks of marl wherein the Professor picked out cretaceous fossils, occasional warm springs, the condensed vapors of which floated lazily upward, and which, where they spouted from the ground, had erected basins of calcareous sinter, or their waters trickled to the lake between banks red and white like painted boards.