VII
THE CITY OF THE BEAST
A CHAPTER FROM THE HISTORY OF A VANISHED CONTINENT
CHAPTER I
THE TABLES OF HANNO
Plato, the Sage of classical Greece, speaks in his writings of a strange continent which, if historians and geologists are to be believed, must have lain somewhere between the island of St. Helena and the coast of Africa. The poets and philosophers of antiquity called it Atlantis, Oceania, or the Fortunate Islands.
In those days the earth was still a divinity to whom man raised altars. In those days men had not arrived at the overpowering conviction that the whole globe was nothing more than a wretched mite of a ball, which the sun, out of regard for the equilibrium of the universe, or, perhaps for the mere fun of the thing, twirls round and round. They had no idea that you could sail completely round it; measure it; weigh it and calculate exactly how long it has lasted and how much longer it is likely to last. No! The Earth still retained the nimbus of divinity; was still regarded as immeasurable, infinite, incomprehensible; and the sun, moon, and stars were popularly supposed to be his vassals.
Above the earth was heaven; below the earth was the Styx, and the dwellers on the earth lived in intimate relations with them both. No one had an inkling that the blue expanse above was only the reflection of the sun's rays refracted through the vapours of the earth, and that neither the gods, nor the blessed, could endure to live up there for the intense cold. No one knew that only the upper rind of the earth was solid, and that in the depths below the heat was so intense that the devil himself could only exist there in a molten condition.
In those days the earth was still an unappropriated domain. The poet could picture to himself bright fairy worlds beyond the continents already known, and the popular imagination was free to people the uninhabited wilds with all manner of marvels and monsters.
The wondrous thoughts of a poetic spirit betray themselves in these ideas and guesses. The spirit of invention three thousand years ago spoke of two gates which the then known world was said to have. One of these gates lay in the far north-east, between the snow and ice-clad Altai mountains, which set bounds to the wanderings of the nations. Beyond this mountain chain it was said you could hear the din of Gog and Magog, whom the mighty conqueror Alexander had thrust out of the world behind gates of bronze, and who ever since have been baring and blasting rock and mountain, and digging subterraneous ways in order to escape from their prison. Woe betide the world and all that dwells therein if ever they succeed in forcing their way through the woody Imaus and appear, with their hairy faces, angular heads, unknown tongues, arms, and clothing, and deluge the world from end to end like the stroke of a great spirit paint-brush, which, after filling its canvas with mighty nations, splendid cities, and world-renowned conquerors, should suddenly wipe them off again at a single sweep in order to paint fresh subjects.
At the opposite end of the world, in the warm south-west, where the gaze of the dreamer loses itself in the endless blue mirror of ocean, the poet pictured to himself that happier world which sprang from the rapturous embrace of heaven and earth; a world where the air is balmier, where love is sweeter, where man is more valiant and woman more faithful; where the light knows no shadow, joy no grief, and the flower no fading; where everything—herbs, trees, and the hearts of men—rejoices in an eternal youth.
It is an odd phenomenon in the psychology of nations, that popular fancy should always have painted the North with the pale and sombre hues of fear and terror, whilst she looked for the fulfilment of her unattainable hopes to the equally dim and impenetrable South, and constantly sent her dreams and her sighs in that direction.