Limanora the island of progress
by the strong rays of the sun from its ancient rigidity, and the still
stony garments shining through their pellucid covering.
We could almost decipher through the milky blueness of the ice-dome,
when the sun shone most brightly, the inscriptions on the tablets
lying beside these forgotten dead. But the winds began to dirge within
this strange diaphanous mausoleum; and even the waters seemed to move
around the cave with suppressed sob. We thought the sounds ominous,
and, rising high up into the roof of the cave, close to the dead that
had slept there so like life for so many centuries, we poised ourselves
and, taking aim, dashed through the narrow entrance, while our comrades
without drew the faleena out by the cord with which they had held it
securely. Later in the day, as the calm continued, the guiding elder
sent others into the cave and they secured one of the most elaborately
hieroglyphed tablets. Those of us who had most recently studied in the
valley of memories were able to trace much resemblance between the
language of the inscription and the ancient Limanoran tongue; and when
we returned to our island, it afforded one of the clues by which we
were able to unravel the history of this ancient antarctic people. They
were the descendants of those whom the northwards migration had left
to their fate amid the growing rigours of the southern winter. After
the departure of these who founded the colonies of Riallaro and became
the ancestry of the Limanorans, the wealthier classes had evidently
abandoned themselves to pleasure and luxury within their splendid and
superheated dwellings, whilst the proletariate, though growing more
vigorous, and venturing far out upon the ice and the ocean on fishing
and furring expeditions, fell deeper and deeper into the contempt
of semi-slavery. Loyalty to their masters and ignorance still kept
them unrebellious in their growing embrutement, till the volcanic
catastrophe solved the problem of their future relationships. Whither
the survivors had gone, when the outburst of the subterranean fires
drove them forth, no one could say; doubtless the peasant fishermen
and hunters took the effeminate caste in their rough boats over the
sea to some warmer climate; probably, if the expeditions survived
the storms and billows of the broad ocean, they landed on the coasts
of South Africa or on those of South America and introduced an alien
civilisation and more complicated problems amongst the primitive
peoples of those isolated regions.
Before we left, we had to investigate the shores of the inland sea
for evidence of subsidence, resting on them for a period whilst we
punctured the slopes of the mountains, in order to give a new direction
to the pressure of the fires upspringing from below. When all the
leomorans that were needed had been placed in position and got into
working order, not more than half of the expedition were required
to attend to them. The others, and amongst them Thyriel and myself,
were allowed to wander over the shores of the gulf or sea, everywhere
finding abundant evidence that the whole neck of land which divided it
from the ocean, high though it still was in the lofty mountain-barrier,
was rapidly subsiding, and would ultimately succumb to the batteries
of the besieging elements. This might take many centuries, but that
the huge volcanic range would be submarine within measurable time
was obvious. Had the rate for even a decade of years been constant,
we could easily have calculated the number of centuries that would
elapse before the great catastrophe; but the amount of subsidence
varied from period to period, increasing and then decreasing. The most
alarming change had occurred since the last visit of the Leomo to their
old home. Square miles that had been low-lying land some few years
before were now encrusted with marine ice; and lofty precipices were
perceptibly lower.
The most striking proof of the rapid subsidence was not observed
till the day before our return. The shoulder of an outlier of the
range pushed its way as a lofty promontory right into the gulf, its
whole length and breadth being covered with glacial concretion. Some
recent tempest had broken off the end of its river of ice, and at the
same time a sudden subsidence of the land had left the face of its
cliff a complete new section, as if shorn by a microtome. The sight
that revealed itself to us as we flew round it was most impressive.
City after city had evidently been built upon the broad bluff, its
pleasant position overlooking the inland sea and its proximity to
easy harbourage ever attracting the population back again after
each cataclysm. Time after time the city had, we conjectured, been
overwhelmed by the ashes of some great volcanic outburst from the
range. There we could see in section the various strata of buildings
one above the other, each filled with ash and dust and preserved by
the power of frost. Hundreds of years must have elapsed between the
destruction of one city and the building of the next, a period long
enough in fact to obliterate the memory of panic and anguish from the
traditions of posterity. In some houses we could still discern the
signs of the stampede that had occurred one day thousands of years
ago. Articles of value were half-torn from their treasuries and then
abandoned; jewellery and dishes made of the precious metals were here
and there held in place upon the mosaicked floors by the frozen mass
of earth above them; they had evidently been seized at the first
warning of the coming catastrophe and then thrown away as alarm made
life dearer. In one chamber we saw the outline of the body of a man
across its threshold, his hand out beyond his head clutching some
receptacle of precious metals. In the space between the outer walls of
two houses the body of a woman was exposed, face downwards, and beneath
the bosom the form of an infant child.
How many long-forgotten tragedies might be unearthed we could not stay
to discover. A little labour and we could have penetrated into these
cities; the application of a leomoran would have melted the dust and
ashes and brought to view the stratified life of ages before. Had we
been interested in following out the existence of these far-distant
relatives of the Limanorans, we could have begun with the lowest layer,
and followed the evidences of civilisation up through each successive
entombment, till finally the people were driven from the site by
frost, a force more rigorous and potent against culture and luxury
than fire. But the Limanorans had enough in the records of their own
ancestry to tell them all the history that might be illuminated by such
excavations. They knew that after an advance in the two or three lower
strata, there would be found no progress except in luxury and the arts
that contribute to luxury. And they had enough of such development in
their own archipelago before their own senses, to allay any eagerness
for viewing illustrations of it in ancient and dead history.
The sight was interesting and impressive, but we all had learned its
lesson too well to desire further acquaintance with it. In Fialume we
had studied similar histories during our pupillage; and daily could
we watch through the idrovamolan the enactment of similar life in the
islands around Limanora. A little apparent advance was followed by as
much retrogression; the generations were as like in essence as two
species of the same genus, the difference being merely superficial and
unvital. It was enough to make the Limanoran heart stop in its beating
to see the dreary sameness of the ages in the history of a people, as
far as development of spiritual character and power were concerned.
The changes and revolutions were but changes of lay-figures under the
official dresses and ceremonials, or at best an expansion of the sphere
of luxury. What mattered it to men that were panting after ideals
they ever saw above and beyond them who were masters and who were
servants or subjects in those unprogressive levels of humanity, who or
how many sated their appetites or covered their skins with the rich
and ceremonious raiment of dominance? The heroisms and romances, the
striking turns of fortune, the world-renowned victories that made the
eyes of other races blaze with wonder were all histrionic to those who
knew what real development was.
This section cut through the history of ten thousand years would reveal
but the same old story that they had read so often in the annals of
their own far past. We turned away sick of heart, knowing the countless
griefs and agonies, struggles and combats, that had gone to the making
of this human stratification, and the complete futility of them all.
The best that could be thought was that oblivion had buried them,
and that the energy set free at the deaths of so many thousands of
generations had perchance a better opportunity of rising in the scale
of vitality as it wandered into other spheres than the human or the
terrestrial.
It was not then without deliberate intention that our departure from
the old home of the race occurred soon after the discovery of this
strange frozen museum of forgotten peoples. After everything was done
that could be done to divert the upward pressure of the subterranean
fires from vents close to the margin of the sea, the faleenas winged
their way back to the north as rapidly as they had come. No incident
took place to mar the return voyage, and we were soon back at our old
employments in Limanora.
CHAPTER XIII
RELIGION
AFTER a few days’ reflection and observation, I felt a change in the
spirit of the people. There was less of that serenity which had struck
me so often as one of the distinctive characteristics of themselves
and their actions. Every family seemed to hurry in its efforts at
development and the pace of their advance might almost be called
feverish now. This was especially the case with all who were engaged in
the more spiritual investigations into the nature of the cosmos. Next
to them in increase of eagerness and enthusiasm came the astronomical
families, the astrobiological, and all whose researches bore upon
stellar conditions and interstellar migration. The gaze of the whole
race was more distinctly outwards and extra-terrestrial.
I had conjectured the cause of this acceleration and impetuosity and
soon definitely knew it to be the result of our expedition to the
south and the reports we brought back. The elders on considering them
saw that the safety of the island as a resting-place and arena for
their progress was not to be depended on for many generations more.
The increase in the rate of subsidence of their old home meant a
transference of the destructive power of the subterranean fires to
the other end of the ancient fissure within a measurable period.
The volcanic vents on the antarctic coast must be closed beneath the
ocean before many centuries were over; and the rushing waters in
quenching their fires would find their way in uncontrollable steam
towards the weakest point of the crust, which they knew to be their own
archipelago. Ere many generations could come and go this terrestrial
home of the race would be blown to dust, and new lands would appear at
some other point on the line of fissure.
Where could they settle on the round of the earth? There was no land
except their old home to the south isolated enough to admit of their
following up their ideals. All the remote islands in other oceans were
already fully occupied, and were impracticable for them unless at the
sacrifice of human life, a condition that would outrage their whole
idea of development. The globe was closed for them except the region