“I have seen them,” he went on. “I have crossed the Mountains of Fear, whose summits tower as high as from the earth to the moon, and I have watched the stars dance at night upon their glaciers. I have starved upon the dead plains of Dzun-Sz’chuen, and I have swum the River of Death. I have slept in the Caves of Nganhwiu, where the hot winds never cease and the dead light their campfires on their journey to Nirvana. And I have seen, too”—there was a strange, entranced look on his face as he spoke—“I have seen the Shadow of God on Tseih Hwan and K’eech-ch’a-gan! But in the end I have dwelt in Wu-yang!
“Wu-yang,” he continued, after a brief pause, “is the center of the Seuen-H’sin—a wondrous dream city beside a lake whose waters are as opalescent as the sky at dawn; where the gardens are sweet-scented with a million blooms, and the air is filed with bird songs and the music of golden bells.
“But forgive me,” sighed the doctor, rousing himself from his ecstatic train of thought; “I speak in the allegories of another land!”
We were silent for a time, until finally I suggested:
“And the Seuen-H’sin—The Sect of the Two Moons?”
“Ah, yes,” responded Dr. Gresham: “In Wu-yang the Beautiful I dwelt among them. For three years that city was my home. I labored in its workshops, studied in its schools, and—yes; I will admit it—I took part in those hellish ceremonies in the Temple of the Moon God—to save myself from death by fiendish torture. And, as my reward, I watched those devils at their miraculous business—the making of another moon!”
We smoked a moment in silence. Then:
“Surely,” I objected, “you do not believe in miracles!”
“Miracles? Yes,” he affirmed seriously—“miracles of science. For the sorcerers of China are scientists—the greatest that this world has yet produced! Talk to me of modern progress—our arts and sciences, our discoveries and inventions. Bah! They are child’s play—clap-trap!—beside the accomplishments of this race of Chinese devils! We Americans boast of our Thomas Edison. Why, the Seuen-H’sin have a thousand Edisons!
“Think of it—thousands of years before Copernicus discovered that the earth revolves around the sun, Chinese astronomers understood the nature of our solar system and accurately computed the movements of the stars. The use of the magnetic compass was ancient even in those days. A thousand years before Columbus was born their navigators visited the western coast of North America and maintained colonies for a time. In the year 2657 B. C. savants of the Seuen-H’sin completed engineering projects on the Yellow River that never have been surpassed. And forty centuries before Christ the physicians of China practiced inoculation against smallpox and wrote erudite books on human anatomy.