In spite of the storm, the weather kept on getting more and more oppressive, until, on cresting a hill, I saw before me the cause of all the trouble. About two stads ahead there rose a solid wall of vapor, stretching away to the horizon on each side and to the silver clouds above, and giving forth such an intense heat in my direction that I could scarcely bear it. Every now and then a few drops of scalding water would fall on me from above.
This must be the Boiling Sea, of which I had heard so much and which surrounds all continental Poros. It was an impressive sight.
The pale ended only about a stad ahead, and yet for the life of me I could not summon up courage enough to try and pass around its end. In fact, I could not conceive how the wall ever could have been built even that far, in the face of that terrific heat.
Later I learned that it had been built little by little behind a huge screen of woven fire-worm fur, and only during off-shore breezes at that.
Well, there was nothing for me to do but turn around and retrace my steps, back to the Valley of the Howling Rocks and beyond, in search for an opening through the wall.
I was well beyond the Valley when my earthly ears caught the sound of an approaching kerkool, and as the road was fortunately passing through the woods at the time, I hid myself in a convenient tartan bush.
But this time I displaced one of the huge leaves sufficiently so that, with one eye, I could cover the road. What was my joy to note, as the car passed, that it was of Cupian make and held Cupians!
When the kerkool was safely out of sight and hearing, I resumed my march, and soon came in view of a city of a type so different from any which I had previously seen on Poros that it might well have belonged to another world.
I sat down in a hillside pasture beside the road, amidst gently grazing aphids, and gazed upon the beautiful sight. The city was set upon a rounded hill. On the very summit stood a group of monumental white buildings, ornamented with domes, minarets and stately columns. From this group down to the foot of the hill and across the plain toward where I sat there stretched a plaza of well kept silver sward, flanked by walks and ornamental trees.
The road ran square to the nearer edge of this park, where it forked abruptly and skirted both sides of the lawn. Flanking this divided road, and extending around the base of the hill, stood a multitude of houses; gray concrete or stucco, with high pitched red tile roofs. Nothing more different from the ant cities to which I was accustomed could be imagined.