At the mountains of madness
that I scarcely know what to think. Let others judge when they see the
photographs I shall publish.
Naturally, no one set of carvings which we encountered told more than a
fraction of any connected story, nor did we even begin to come upon the
various stages of that story in their proper order. Some of the vast
rooms were independent units so far as their designs were concerned,
whilst in other cases a continuous chronicle would be carried through a
series of rooms and corridors.
The best of the maps and diagrams were on the walls of a frightful
abyss below even the ancient ground level--a cavern perhaps two hundred
feet square and sixty feet high, which had almost undoubtedly been an
educational center of some sort.
There were many provoking repetitions of the same material in different
rooms and buildings, since certain chapters of experience, and certain
summaries or phases of racial history, had evidently been favorites
with different decorators or dwellers. Sometimes, though, variant
versions of the same theme proved useful in settling debatable points
and filling up gaps.
I still wonder that we deduced so much in the short time at our
disposal. Of course, we even now have only the barest outline--and
much of that was obtained later on from a study of the photographs and
sketches we made.
It may be the effect of this later study--the revived memories and
vague impressions acting in conjunction with his general sensitiveness
and with that final supposed horror-glimpse whose essence he will not
reveal even to me--which has been the immediate source of Danforth's
present breakdown.
But it had to be; for we could not issue our warning intelligently
without the fullest possible information, and the issuance of that
warning is a prime necessity. Certain lingering influences in that
unknown antarctic world of disordered time and alien natural law make
it imperative that further exploration be discouraged.
VII.
The full story, so far as deciphered, will eventually appear in an
official bulletin of Miskatonic University. Here I shall sketch only
the salient highlights in a formless, rambling way. Myth or otherwise,
the sculptures told of the coming of those star-headed things to the
nascent, lifeless earth out of cosmic space--their coming, and the
coming of many other alien entities such as at certain times embark
upon spatial pioneering.
They seemed able to traverse the interstellar ether on their vast
membranous wings--thus oddly confirming some curious hill folklore long
ago told me by an antiquarian colleague. They had lived under the sea a
good deal, building fantastic cities and fighting terrific battles with
nameless adversaries by means of intricate devices employing unknown
principles of energy.
Evidently their scientific and mechanical knowledge far surpassed
man's to-day, though they made use of its more widespread and elaborate
forms only when obliged to.
Some of the sculptures suggested that they had passed through a stage
of mechanized life on other planets, but had receded upon finding
its effects emotionally unsatisfying. Their preternatural toughness
of organization and simplicity of natural wants made them peculiarly
able to live on a high plane without the more specialized fruits
of artificial manufacture, and even without garments, except for
occasional protection against the elements.
It was under the sea, at first for food and later for other purposes,
that they first created earth life--using available substances
according to long-known methods.
The more elaborate experiments came after the annihilation of various
cosmic enemies. They had done the same thing on other planets, having
manufactured not only necessary foods, but certain multicellular
protoplasmic masses capable of molding their tissues into all sorts of
temporary organs under hypnotic influence and thereby forming ideal
slaves to perform the heavy work of the community.
These viscous masses were without doubt what Abdul Alhazred whispered
about as the "Shoggoths" in his frightful _Necronomicon_, though even
that mad Arab had not hinted that any existed on earth except in the
dreams of those who had chewed a certain alkaloidal herb.
When the star-headed Old Ones on this planet had synthesized their
simple food forms and bred a good supply of Shoggoths, they allowed
other cell groups to develop into other forms of animal and vegetable
life for sundry purposes, extirpating any whose presence became
troublesome.
With the aid of the Shoggoths, whose expansions could be made to lift
prodigious weights, the small, low cities under the sea grew to vast
and imposing labyrinths of stone not unlike those which later rose on
land. Indeed, the highly adaptable Old Ones had lived much on land in
other parts of the universe, and probably retained many traditions of
land construction.
As we studied the architecture of all these sculptured Palæogæan
cities, including that whose æon-dead corridors we were even then
traversing, we were impressed by a curious coincidence which we have
not yet tried to explain, even to ourselves. The tops of the buildings,
which in the actual city around us had, of course, been weathered into
shapeless ruins ages ago, were clearly displayed in the bas-reliefs,
and showed vast clusters of needlelike spires, delicate finials
on certain cone and pyramid apexes, and tiers of thin, horizontal
scalloped disks capping cylindrical shafts.
This was exactly what we had seen in that monstrous and portentous
mirage, cast by a dead city whence such sky-line features had been
absent for thousands and ten of thousands of years, which loomed on our
ignorant eyes across the unfathomed mountains of madness as we first
approached poor Lake's ill-fated camp.
* * * * *
Of the life of the Old Ones, both under the sea and after part of them
migrated to land, volumes could be written. Those in shallow water had
continued the fullest use of the eyes at the ends of their five main
head tentacles, and had practiced the arts of sculpture and of writing
in quite the usual way--the writing accomplished with a stylus on
waterproof waxen surfaces.
Those lower down in the ocean depths, though they used a curious
phosphorescent organism to furnish light, pieced out their vision with
obscure special senses operating through the prismatic cilia on their
heads--senses which rendered all the Old Ones partly independent of
light in emergencies. Their forms of sculpture and writing had changed
curiously during the descent, embodying certain apparently chemical
coating processes--probably to secure phosphorescence--which the
bas-reliefs could not make clear to us.
The beings moved in the sea partly by swimming--using the lateral
crinoid arms--and partly by wriggling with the lower tier of tentacles
containing the pseudofeet. Occasionally they accomplished long swoops
with the auxiliary use of two or more sets of their fan-like folding
wings.
On land they locally used the pseudofeet, but now and then flew to
great heights or over long distances with their wings. The many
slender tentacles into which the crinoid arms branched were infinitely
delicate, flexible, strong, and accurate in muscular-nervous
coördination--ensuring the utmost skill and dexterity in all artistic
and other manual operations.
The toughness of the things was almost incredible. Even the terrific
pressure of the deepest sea bottoms appeared powerless to harm them.
Very few seemed to die at all except by violence, and their burial
places were very limited. The facts that they covered their vertically
inhumed dead with five-pointed inscribed mounds set up thoughts in
Danforth and me which made a fresh pause and recuperation necessary
after the sculptures revealed it.
The beings multiplied by means of spores--like vegetable pteridophyta,
as Lake had suspected--but, owing to their prodigious toughness and
longevity, and consequent lack of replacement needs, they did not
encourage the large-scale development of new prothallia except when
they had new regions to colonize.
The young matured swiftly, and received an education evidently beyond
any standard we can imagine. The prevailing intellectual and æsthetic
life was highly evolved, and produced a tenaciously enduring set of
customs and institutions which I shall describe more fully in my coming
monograph. These varied slightly according to sea or land residence,
but had the same foundations and essentials.
Though able, like vegetables, to derive nourishment from inorganic
substances; they vastly preferred organic and especially animal food.
They ate uncooked marine life under the sea, but cooked their viands on
land. They hunted game and raised meat herds--slaughtering with sharp
weapons whose odd marks on certain fossil bones our expedition had
noted.
They resisted all ordinary temperatures marvelously, and in their
natural state could live in water down to freezing. When the great
chill of the Pleistocene drew on, however--nearly a million years
ago--the land dwellers had to resort to special measures, including
artificial heating--until, at last, the deadly cold appears to have
driven them back into the sea.
For their prehistoric flights through cosmic space, legend said, they
had absorbed certain chemicals and become almost independent of eating,
breathing, or heat conditions--but by the time of the great cold
they had lost track of the method. In any case, they could not have
prolonged the artificial state indefinitely without harm.
Being nonpairing and semivegetable in structure, the Old Ones had
no biological basis for the family phase of mammal life, but seemed
to organize large households on the principles of comfortable
space-utility and--as we deduced from the pictured occupations and
diversions of codwellers--congenial mental association.
In furnishing their homes they kept everything in the center of the
huge rooms, leaving all wall spaces free for decorative treatment.
Lighting, in the case of the land inhabitants, was accomplished by a
device probably electro-chemical in nature.
Both on land and under water they used curious tables, chairs and
couches like cylindrical frames--for they rested and slept upright with
folded-down tentacles--and racks for the hinged sets of dotted surfaces
forming their books.
* * * * *
Government was evidently complex and probably socialistic, though no
certainties in this regard could be deduced from the sculptures we
saw. There was extensive commerce, both local and between different
cities--certain small, flat counters, five-pointed and inscribed,
serving as money. Probably the smaller of the various greenish
soapstones found by our expedition were pieces of such currency.
Though the culture was mainly urban, some agriculture and much stock
raising existed. Mining and a limited amount of manufacturing were also
practiced. Travel was very frequent, but permanent migration seemed
relatively rare except for the vast colonizing movements by which the
race expanded.
For personal locomotion no external aid was used, since in land, air,
and water movement alike the Old Ones seemed to possess excessively
vast capacities for speed. Loads, however, were drawn by beasts of
burden--Shoggoths under the sea, and a curious variety of primitive
vertebrates in the later years of land existence.
These vertebrates, as well as an infinity of other life forms--animal
and vegetable, marine, terrestrial, and aërial--were the products of