The Lost Continent
At my gesture and words they ceased their shouting and came to a halt a
few paces from us. Then, in deep tones, one who was in advance of the
others and whom I took to be the chief or leader of the party replied
in a tongue which while intelligible to us, was so distorted from the
English language from which it evidently had sprung, that it was with
difficulty that we interpreted it.
“Who are you,” he asked, “and from what country?”
I told him that we were from Pan-America, but he only shook his head
and asked where that was. He had never heard of it, or of the Atlantic
Ocean which I told him separated his country from mine.
“It has been two hundred years,” I told him, “since a Pan-American
visited England.”
“England?” he asked. “What is England?”
“Why this is a part of England!” I exclaimed.
“This is Grubitten,” he assured me. “I know nothing about England, and
I have lived here all my life.”
It was not until long after that the derivation of Grubitten occurred
to me. Unquestionably it is a corruption of Great Britain, a name
formerly given to the large island comprising England, Scotland and
Wales. Subsequently we heard it pronounced Grabrittin and Grubritten.
I then asked the fellow if he could direct us to Ryde or Newport; but
again he shook his head, and said that he never had heard of such
countries. And when I asked him if there were any cities in this
country he did not know what I meant, never having heard the word
cities.
I explained my meaning as best I could by stating that by city I
referred to a place where many people lived together in houses.
“Oh,” he exclaimed, “you mean a camp! Yes, there are two great camps
here, East Camp and West Camp. We are from East Camp.”
The use of the word camp to describe a collection of habitations
naturally suggested war to me, and my next question was as to whether
the war was over, and who had been victorious.
“No,” he replied to this question. “The war is not yet over. But it
soon will be, and it will end, as it always does, with the Westenders
running away. We, the Eastenders, are always victorious.”
“No,” I said, seeing that he referred to the petty tribal wars of his
little island, “I mean the Great War, the war with Germany. Is it
ended—and who was victorious?”
He shook his head impatiently.
“I never heard,” he said, “of any of these strange countries of which
you speak.”
It seemed incredible, and yet it was true. These people living at the
very seat of the Great War knew nothing of it, though but two centuries
had passed since, to our knowledge, it had been running in the height
of its titanic frightfulness all about them, and to us upon the far
side of the Atlantic still was a subject of keen interest.
Here was a lifelong inhabitant of the Isle of Wight who never had heard
of either Germany or England! I turned to him quite suddenly with a new
question.
“What people live upon the mainland?” I asked, and pointed in the
direction of the Hants coast.
“No one lives there,” he replied.
“Long ago, it is said, my people dwelt across the waters upon that
other land; but the wild beasts devoured them in such numbers that
finally they were driven here, paddling across upon logs and driftwood,
nor has any dared return since, because of the frightful creatures
which dwell in that horrid country.”
“Do no other peoples ever come to your country in ships?” I asked.
He never heard the word ship before, and did not know its meaning. But
he assured me that until we came he had thought that there were no
other peoples in the world other than the Grubittens, who consist of
the Eastenders and the Westenders of the ancient Isle of Wight.
Assured that we were inclined to friendliness, our new acquaintances
led us to their village, or, as they call it, camp. There we found a
thousand people, perhaps, dwelling in rude shelters, and living upon
the fruits of the chase and such sea food as is obtainable close to
shore, for they had no boats, nor any knowledge of such things.
Their weapons were most primitive, consisting of rude spears tipped
with pieces of metal pounded roughly into shape. They had no
literature, no religion, and recognized no law other than the law of
might. They produced fire by striking a bit of flint and steel
together, but for the most part they ate their food raw. Marriage is
unknown among them, and while they have the word, mother, they did not
know what I meant by “father.” The males fight for the favor of the
females. They practice infanticide, and kill the aged and physically
unfit.
The family consists of the mother and the children, the men dwelling
sometimes in one hut and sometimes in another. Owing to their bloody
duels, they are always numerically inferior to the women, so there is
shelter for them all.
We spent several hours in the village, where we were objects of the
greatest curiosity. The inhabitants examined our clothing and all our
belongings, and asked innumerable questions concerning the strange
country from which we had come and the manner of our coming.
I questioned many of them concerning past historical events, but they
knew nothing beyond the narrow limits of their island and the savage,
primitive life they led there. London they had never heard of, and they
assured me that I would find no human beings upon the mainland.
Much saddened by what I had seen, I took my departure from them, and
the three of us made our way back to the launch, accompanied by about
five hundred men, women, girls, and boys.
As we sailed away, after procuring the necessary ingredients of our
chemical fuel, the Grubittens lined the shore in silent wonder at the
strange sight of our dainty craft dancing over the sparkling waters,
and watched us until we were lost to their sight.
CHAPTER IV.
It was during the morning of July 6, 2137, that we entered the mouth of
the Thames—to the best of my knowledge the first Western keel to cut
those historic waters for two hundred and twenty-one years!
But where were the tugs and the lighters and the barges, the lightships
and the buoys, and all those countless attributes which went to make up
the myriad life of the ancient Thames?
Gone! All gone! Only silence and desolation reigned where once the
commerce of the world had centered.
I could not help but compare this once great water-way with the waters
about our New York, or Rio, or San Diego, or Valparaiso. They had
become what they are today during the two centuries of the profound
peace which we of the navy have been prone to deplore. And what, during
this same period, had shorn the waters of the Thames of their pristine
grandeur?
Militarist that I am, I could find but a single word of
explanation—war!
I bowed my head and turned my eyes downward from the lonely and
depressing sight, and in a silence which none of us seemed willing to
break, we proceeded up the deserted river.
We had reached a point which, from my map, I imagined must have been
about the former site of Erith, when I discovered a small band of
antelope a short distance inland. As we were now entirely out of meat
once more, and as I had given up all expectations of finding a city
upon the site of ancient London, I determined to land and bag a couple
of the animals.
Assured that they would be timid and easily frightened, I decided to
stalk them alone, telling the men to wait at the boat until I called to
them to come and carry the carcasses back to the shore.
Crawling carefully through the vegetation, making use of such trees and
bushes as afforded shelter, I came at last almost within easy range of
my quarry, when the antlered head of the buck went suddenly into the
air, and then, as though in accordance with a prearranged signal, the
whole band moved slowly off, farther inland.
As their pace was leisurely, I determined to follow them until I came
again within range, as I was sure that they would stop and feed in a
short time.
They must have led me a mile or more at least before they again halted
and commenced to browse upon the rank, luxuriant grasses. All the time
that I had followed them I had kept both eyes and ears alert for sign
or sound that would indicate the presence of Felis tigris; but so far
not the slightest indication of the beast had been apparent.
As I crept closer to the antelope, sure this time of a good shot at a
large buck, I suddenly saw something that caused me to forget all about
my prey in wonderment.
It was the figure of an immense grey-black creature, rearing its
colossal shoulders twelve or fourteen feet above the ground. Never in
my life had I seen such a beast, nor did I at first recognize it, so
different in appearance is the live reality from the stuffed, unnatural
specimens preserved to us in our museums.
But presently I guessed the identity of the mighty creature as Elephas
africanus, or, as the ancients commonly described it, African elephant.
The antelope, although in plain view of the huge beast, paid not the
slightest attention to it, and I was so wrapped up in watching the
mighty pachyderm that I quite forgot to shoot at the buck and
presently, and in quite a startling manner, it became impossible to do
so.
The elephant was browsing upon the young and tender shoots of some low
bushes, waving his great ears and switching his short tail. The
antelope, scarce twenty paces from him, continued their feeding, when
suddenly, from close beside the latter, there came a most terrifying
roar, and I saw a great, tawny body shoot, from the concealing verdure
beyond the antelope, full upon the back of a small buck.
Instantly the scene changed from one of quiet and peace to
indescribable chaos. The startled and terrified buck uttered cries of
agony. His fellows broke and leaped off in all directions. The elephant
raised his trunk, and, trumpeting loudly, lumbered off through the
wood, crushing down small trees and trampling bushes in his mad flight.
Growling horribly, a huge lion stood across the body of his prey—such a
creature as no Pan-American of the twenty-second century had ever
beheld until my eyes rested upon this lordly specimen of “the king of
beasts.” But what a different creature was this fierce-eyed demon,
palpitating with life and vigor, glossy of coat, alert, growling,
magnificent, from the dingy, moth-eaten replicas beneath their glass
cases in the stuffy halls of our public museums.
I had never hoped or expected to see a living lion, tiger, or
elephant—using the common terms that were familiar to the ancients,
since they seem to me less unwieldy than those now in general use among
us—and so it was with sentiments not unmixed with awe that I stood
gazing at this regal beast as, above the carcass of his kill, he roared
out his challenge to the world.
So enthralled was I by the spectacle that I quite forgot myself, and
the better to view him, the great lion, I had risen to my feet and
stood, not fifty paces from him, in full view.
For a moment he did not see me, his attention being directed toward the
retreating elephant, and I had ample time to feast my eyes upon his
splendid proportions, his great head, and his thick black mane.
Ah, what thoughts passed through my mind in those brief moments as I
stood there in rapt fascination! I had come to find a wondrous
civilization, and instead I found a wild-beast monarch of the realm
where English kings had ruled. A lion reigned, undisturbed, within a
few miles of the seat of one of the greatest governments the world has
ever known, his domain a howling wilderness, where yesterday fell the
shadows of the largest city in the world.
It was appalling; but my reflections upon this depressing subject were
doomed to sudden extinction. The lion had discovered me.