Of the shining city of Lucetta—How Dr. Van Varken met an apparent Yahoo—Of the great astonishment of the citizens at sight of the Doctor, and how they gave him in charge to a committee of three—How the committee learned the Dutch tongue, and showed the Doctor sundry strange and wonderful maps.
On recovering consciousness I found myself lying on what felt like soft grass on the steep side of a mountain. The sky was intensely dark, no stars were visible, and, of course, there was no moon. Before me, at a considerably lower elevation, and, as well as I could judge, at a distance of four or five miles, I saw what had the appearance of a very brilliantly illuminated city; the illumination was such as no artificial light known on earth could approach in splendour. So strong was it, that even at the distance of the place where I was sitting its effect was quite visible in lighting the hill. In front of the city was a large sheet of water, and on it were many moving bodies, probably ships, all of them lighted with the same strange radiance which pervaded the city. I looked at my watch, and, as might have been expected, I found that it still marked thirty-seven minutes past ten. I had stupidly forgotten that, during disintegration, the machinery could not have worked, so I was unable to verify my computation of the time required for the transit. The mercury in the thermometer quickly moved up to eighty-six degrees.
I judged it best to stay where I was till daylight, especially as I saw some traces of dawn appearing in a quarter of the sky which I hence concluded to be the east. I awaited the coming day with great eagerness, and, I admit, with some anxiety, for it would be hard to say what reception I might meet with. This much was plain—the planet was not destitute of some forms of life, and I had escaped the detestable Yahoos.
But, as the reader will soon learn, my conclusion was over-hasty. As the light gradually increased I began to make out at first the main features, and soon the minuter details of the landscape. The sloping ground on which I had landed formed the base of a high mountain. Dense forests concealed the summit; the lower part, on which I was sitting, was covered with soft short grass, and trees, most of them bearing some sort of fruit, were here and there scattered about. A few yards below me the steepness of the slope eased off into a gentle descent, and the mountain finally terminated on the shore of a deep bay of clear and still water. At the end of this bay lay the city which shone so brightly in the night; it was about five miles from my landing-place, and, as I afterwards learned, was called Lucetta. The opposite shore of the bay, which was nearly ten miles wide, was occupied by a lofty range of peaked mountains. The temperature was high, but by no means intolerable, and the air was perfectly still.
I saw no traces of any habitation outside the city, and no signs of animal life, excepting birds, were anywhere visible, but of the birds there were many and lovely kinds. I was greatly struck by the appearance of the sky; this was completely covered with a canopy of white cloud, seemingly at an enormous elevation. I was very desirous to get a sight of the sun, and, if possible, to measure its apparent magnitude, which I knew must greatly exceed its appearance from the earth; but the thickness of the cloud was such that no trace of the disk was visible. I had hoped, by this means, to satisfy myself that I had really reached Hesperos, namely, by comparing the observed magnitude with that which I had computed, and noted on a leaf of my pocket-book before I left Thibet. So I waited another hour, but seeing no signs of movement among the clouds, and despairing of getting an observation, I got up and walked down the hill in the direction of the city.
Presently the great steepness of the slope abated, and I soon arrived at a wide and smooth track which ran along the shore of the bay. The country was quite open; there were no walls, hedges, or any kind of fences—not even any of those notice-boards so familiar to the wanderer in civilized terrestrial regions, which address him by the name of Trespasser, and convey menaces. I turned into the road, in the direction of the city, and, after proceeding along it for about half a mile, I descried, at some distance, an approaching object, which, to my unspeakable horror, had all the look of a Yahoo.
As we came nearer the suspicion became a certainty. The creature was walking very slowly, and seemed to be quite absorbed in contemplation of a small article which he held in his hand. He was a man of middle age, with an exceedingly intelligent cast of countenance, and his dress did not materially differ from the Eastern costume which had accompanied me from Thibet.
So I could not at all account for the extreme intensity of his astonishment when, at last raising his eyes, he got the first sight of me as I walked towards him. He seemed completely paralyzed, gasped for breath, and for several moments was quite incapable of speech. Such utter stupefaction might have been manifested by the inhabitants of Lilliput and Brobdingnag when they first beheld Captain Gulliver, but in the present case there was no apparent cause for amazement. At length he recovered himself sufficiently to address a few words to me, none of which I could understand. I replied, but with the like want of success. I pointed to the sky, to intimate that I had come from another world, and then to the city, as a hint that I wished to go there. Both of these signs he evidently understood, and he turned back, and accompanied me in silence. I must do my companion, and indeed all the Venusians (or Hesperians) I have encountered, the justice of admitting that, though in Yahoo form, they possess none of the offensive peculiarities of the breed.
We had not gone very far before we overtook a young girl of exceedingly prepossessing aspect, walking towards the city. She too, on seeing me, appeared to be struck with the same overwhelming and stupefying astonishment which had produced so great an effect on my first acquaintance. I could not understand it at all. There was nothing in the personal appearance of either the man or the girl which struck me as extremely unusual. Why, then, should I be so extraordinarily wonderful in their eyes?
When we came up with the girl the man stopped, and they talked in a very excited manner for some minutes. While they were so occupied it occurred to me that something very remarkable might have happened in the reintegration of my body on arrival at the surface of the planet. I might, for all I knew, be suffering from some grotesque distortion of features, or other bodily misfortune. But no, that was not the cause of their wonder, for, as the road ran close along the shore, I took the opportunity of surveying myself in the clear water, and the reflection showed, beyond all possibility of doubt, that there was nothing whatever astray with my personal appearance.