At the mountains of madness
of the rampart we had examined; but the extravagant shapes which this
masonry took in its urban manifestations were past all description.
Even the pictures illustrate only one or two phases of its endless
variety, preternatural massiveness, and utterly alien exoticism. There
were geometrical forms for which an Euclid could scarcely find a
name--cones of all degrees of irregularity and truncation, terraces
of every sort of provocative disproportion, shafts with odd bulbous
enlargements, broken columns in curious groups, and five-pointed or
five-ridged arrangements of mad grotesqueness.
As we drew nearer we could see beneath certain transparent parts of the
ice sheet, and detect some of the tubular stone bridges that connected
the crazily sprinkled structures at various heights. Of orderly streets
there seemed to be none, the only broad open swath being a mile to the
left, where the ancient river had doubtless flowed through the town
into the mountains.
Our field glasses showed the external, horizontal bands of nearly
effaced sculptures and dot groups to be very prevalent, and we could
half imagine what the city must once have looked like--even though most
of the roofs and tower tops had necessarily perished.
As a whole, it had been a complex tangle of twisted lanes and alleys,
all of them deep canyons, and some little better than tunnels because
of the overhanging masonry or overarching bridges.
Now, outspread below us, it loomed like a dream phantasy against a
westward mist through whose northern end the low, reddish antarctic sun
of early afternoon was struggling to shine; and when, for a moment,
that sun encountered a denser obstruction and plunged the scene into
temporary shadow, the effect was subtly menacing in a way I can never
hope to depict. Even the faint howling and piping of the unfelt wind in
the great mountain passes behind us took on a wilder note of purposeful
malignity.
The last stage of our descent to the town was unusually steep and
abrupt, and a rock outcropping at the edge where the grade changed led
us to think that an artificial terrace had once existed there. Under
the glaciation, we believed, there must be a flight of steps or its
equivalent.
When at last we plunged into the town itself, clambering over fallen
masonry and shrinking from the oppressive nearness and dwarfing height
of omnipresent crumbling and pitted walls, our sensations again became
such that I marvel at the amount of self-control we retained.
Danforth was frankly jumpy, and began making some offensively
irrelevant speculations about the horror at the camp--which I resented
all the more because I could not help sharing certain conclusions
forced upon us by many features of this morbid survival from nightmare
antiquity.
The speculations worked on his imagination, too; for in one
place--where a débris-littered alley turned a sharp corner--he insisted
that he saw faint traces of ground markings which he did not like;
whilst elsewhere he stopped to listen to a subtle, imaginary sound
from some undefined point--a muffled musical piping, he said, not
unlike that of the wind in the mountain caves, yet somehow disturbingly
different.
The ceaseless five-pointedness of the surrounding architecture and
of the few distinguishable mural arabesques had a dimly sinister
suggestiveness we could not escape, and gave us a touch of terrible
subconscious certainty concerning the primal entities which had reared
and dwelt in this unhallowed place.
Nevertheless, our scientific and adventurous souls were not wholly
dead, and we mechanically carried out our program of chipping specimens
from all the different rock types represented in the masonry. We wished
a rather full set in order to draw better conclusions regarding the age
of the place.
Nothing in the great outer walls seemed to date from later than the
Jurassic and Comanchean periods, nor was any piece of stone in the
entire place of a greater recency than the Pliocene age. In stark
certainty, we were wandering amidst a death which had reigned at least
five hundred thousand years, and in all probability even longer.
* * * * *
As we proceeded through this maze of stone-shadowed twilight we stopped
at all available apertures to study interiors and investigate entrance
possibilities. Some were above our reach, whilst others led only into
ice-choked ruins as unroofed and barren as the rampart on the hill.
One, though spacious and inviting, opened on a seemingly bottomless
abyss without visible means of descent. Now and then we had a chance to
study the petrified wood of a surviving shutter, and were impressed by
the fabulous antiquity implied in the still discernible grain. These
things had come from Mesozoic gymnosperms and conifers--especially
Cretaceous cycads--and from fan palms and early angiosperms of plainly
Tertiary date. Nothing definitely later than the Pliocene could be
discovered.
In the placing of these shutters--whose edges showed the former
presence of queer and long-vanished hinges--usage seemed to be
varied--some being on the outer and some on the inner side of the
deep embrasures. They seemed to have become wedged in place, thus
surviving the rusting of their former and probably metallic fixtures
and fastenings.
After a time we came across a row of windows--in the bulges of a
colossal five-edged cone of undamaged apex--which led into a vast,
well-preserved room with stone flooring; but these were too high in
the room to permit descent without a rope. We had a rope with us,
but did not wish to bother with this twenty-foot drop unless obliged
to--especially in this thin plateau air where great demands were made
upon the heart action.
This enormous room was probably a hall or concourse of some sort, and
our electric torches showed bold, distinct, and potentially startling
sculptures arranged round the walls in broad, horizontal bands
separated by equally broad strips of conventional arabesques. We took
careful note of this spot, planning to enter here unless a more easily
gained interior was encountered.
Finally, though, we did encounter exactly the opening we wished; an
archway about six feet wide and ten feet high, marking the former end
of an aërial bridge which had spanned an alley about five feet above
the present level of glaciation. These archways, of course, were flush
with upper-story floors, and in this case one of the floors still
existed.
The building thus accessible was a series of rectangular terraces
on our left facing westward. That across the alley, where the other
archway yawned, was a decrepit cylinder with no windows and with
a curious bulge about ten feet above the aperture. It was totally
dark inside, and the archway seemed to open on a well of illimitable
emptiness.
Heaped débris made the entrance to the vast left-hand building doubly
easy, yet for a moment we hesitated before taking advantage of the
long-wished chance. For though we had penetrated into this tangle of
archaic mystery, it required fresh resolution to carry us actually
inside a complete and surviving building of a fabulous elder world
whose nature was becoming more and more hideously plain to us.
In the end, however, we made the plunge, and scrambled up over the
rubble into the gaping embrasure. The floor beyond was of great slate
slabs, and seemed to form the outlet of a long, high corridor with
sculptured walls.
Observing the many inner archways which led off from it, and realizing
the probable complexity of the nest of apartments within, we decided
that we must begin our system of hare-and-hound trail blazing. Hitherto
our compasses, together with frequent glimpses of the vast mountain
range between the towers in our rear, had been enough to prevent our
losing our way; but from now on, the artificial substitute would be
necessary.
Accordingly we reduced our extra paper to shreds of suitable size,
placed these in a bag to be carried by Danforth, and prepared to use
them as economically as safety would allow. This method would probably
gain us immunity from straying, since there did not appear to be any
strong air currents inside the primordial masonry. If such should
develop, or if our paper supply should give out, we could of course
fall back on the more secure though more tedious and retarding method
of rock chipping.
Just how extensive a territory we had opened up, it was impossible
to guess without a trial. The close and frequent connection of the
different buildings made it likely that we might cross from one to
another on bridges underneath the ice, except where impeded by local
collapses and geologic rifts, for very little glaciation seemed to have
entered the massive constructions.
Almost all the areas of transparent ice had revealed the submerged
windows as tightly shuttered, as if the town had been left in that
uniform state until the glacial sheet came to crystallize the lower
part for all succeeding time. Indeed, one gained a curious impression
that this place had been deliberately closed and deserted in some dim,
bygone æon, rather than overwhelmed by any sudden calamity or even
gradual decay. Had the coming of the ice been foreseen, and had a
nameless population left _en masse_ to seek a less doomed abode?
The precise physiographic conditions attending the formation of the
ice sheet at this point would have to wait for later solution. It had
not, very plainly, been a grinding drive. Perhaps the pressure of
accumulated snows had been responsible, and perhaps some flood from
the river, or from the bursting of some ancient glacial dam in the
great range, had helped to create the special state now observable.
Imagination could conceive almost anything in connection with this
place.
VI.
It would be cumbrous to give a detailed, consecutive account of
our wanderings inside that cavernous, æon-dead honeycomb of primal
masonry--that monstrous lair of elder secrets which now echoed for the
first time, after uncounted epochs, to the tread of human feet.
This is especially true because so much of the horrible drama and
revelation came from a mere study of the omnipresent mural carvings.
Our flash-light photographs of those carvings will do much toward
proving the truth of what we are now disclosing, and it is lamentable
that we had not a larger film supply with us. As it was, we made crude
notebook sketches of certain salient features after all our films were
used up.
The building which we had entered was one of great size and
elaborateness, and gave us an impressive notion of the architecture of
that nameless geologic past. The inner partitions were less massive
than the outer walls, but on the lower levels were excellently
preserved. Labyrinthine complexity, involving curiously irregular
differences in floor levels, characterized the entire arrangement; and
we should certainly have been lost at the very outset but for the trail
of torn paper left behind us.
We decided to explore the more decrepit upper parts first of all, hence
climbed aloft in the maze for a distance of some one hundred feet, to
where the topmost tier of chambers yawned snowily and ruinously open to
the polar sky. Ascent was effected over the steep, transversely ribbed
stone ramps or inclined planes which everywhere served in lieu of
stairs.
The rooms we encountered were of all imaginable shapes and proportions,
ranging from five-pointed stars to triangles and perfect cubes. It
might be safe to say that their general average was about 30 x 30 feet
in floor area, and twenty feet in height, though many larger apartments
existed.
After thoroughly examining the upper regions and the glacial level