Gradually, gently, and by faint degrees, a glimmer of pale gold divided the darkness with the wavering rise of dawn—a cool wind parted the air into sweet breaths of fragrance—and in the centre of the awful stillness a scarlet sun rose slowly, fixing the red seal of God on the closed history of a world!
Printed in the City of London
by the Edinburgh Press
Transcriber’s Note
Archaic and non-standard spellings (e.g. “sulphureous”, “pigmy”) have been retained.
Some minor changes have been made to the original text, in order to fix typographical errors, and illustrations that were originally placed in the middle of a paragraph have been moved to the end of that paragraph, to make the layout more suitable for e-books. These changes are listed below. Because the original book has no page numbers, the changes are listed according to the first two words of the paragraph where the change was made.
In the original text, the caption always preceded the illustration. Here, the caption has been moved below the illustration.
In some cases (noted below), a missing left double quote (“) has been added to the beginning of the paragraph. However, this added quote will not be visible in versions of the text where the paragraph starts with an illustrated capital letter.
Paragraph starting [“On!” he cried]: Added missing left double quote (“) at the beginning of the paragraph.
Paragraph starting [The great]: Added missing period at the end of the paragraph.