 CHAPTER V. OF LIMONORA. THE ISLAND OF PROGRESS BY GODFREE SWEVEN. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. JOURNEY TO THE VALLEY OF MEMORIES. One of the things this people feared most was enslavement to the past, and I was encouraged to strip my mind of all sentiment connected with the life I had led before my arrival and all superstitious devotion to the historic. Only the dead past was one of their primary maxims. Nor would they permit religion or any other conservative element to howl tradition. The world is well-quid of what it has been, was another of their sayings. They seemed to look upon the past as a fierce pursuer ever ready to overtake and strangle them. Out and away from it were they ever hurrying. It was the dark shadow over existence. And into the future, into the future and the sunshine, they cut their way through the thick tangle of life. I was much surprised then, after I had been admitted to the full confidence of my pro-parents, to hear them refer with pleasure, if not joy, to what seemed nothing but a glorification of the past. The name Fiolum came repeatedly into their conversations with each other till at last it roused my curiosity. There was something imaginative in the ideas connected with it. It never rose to their lips without bringing into their eyes a beautifully piteous expression that bordered almost on the ecstasy of joy. They saw that they had peaked my curiosity, and before I had asked them they gave me the information I desired. The word Fiolum translated meant, the Valley of Memories. It was the great library and university of the island. There the second stage of education was largely past. If by age of fifty all superstitious veneration of the past had been eradicated from the nature of the new citizen, he was led to this valley day after day, month after month, until he had seen the career of the race, and had grown familiar with the steps of its development. He learned to shudder at the darkness out of which it had come, and to watch with joy the growing light and the fleeing shadows as it neared the present. Thus did he learn true gratitude for what he was, and true reverence for the future towards which they were all striving. I was not yet fit to enter the precincts of the valley. I had still too much of that anguished yet exquisite homesickness for my own past to be trusted with insight into a past that might seem great to me. And yet my probation would be shorter, as my buried world was so different from theirs. There would be less danger of superstitious reverence awaking in me for any of their old stages or antiquated institutions, and no danger of Ilela stirring my adulterous devotion. This new world puzzled me, they saw, and they explained that it was but the older name for the same valley. It meant the resting place of the untrammeled. In fact, their great library and university was their graveyard too. Years passed in happy renovation of my whole being, body and soul. As I looked back I began to shudder at the past out of which I had come. It's low ideals and it's still lower planes of living. It seemed centuries behind me and not mere years. It had grown into a murky cloud on the far horizon. I could see how often I had been on the verge of despair or disease and began to know the blindness and ignorance that had been almost the air I breathed. I shrank in horror from all I had been, for I could examine the poor fabric of it almost microscopically now. There was little fear indeed of my ever longing for what I had left behind me. Thus at last there came the supreme moment that I had labored for. I was permitted to visit Phylum. I shall never forget the day. I had swept out of my mind analogies for their great graveyard from the doleful surroundings of death to which I had been accustomed in my native land, the long train of mourners, the ghastly hearse with its burden of morality, the uncant grass of the place of tombs, the dreary weight beneath the unsympathetic sky, and then the rattle of the clods upon the coffin-lid, and the frantic effort to drive from the soul the thought of the gradual corruption of the body and the final residue of skull and bones. Years though I had been in Limonora I had never heard of a funeral. Indeed deaths were as rare as births in a community that had striven to avoid the lavish waste of nature, and had so studied the human frame as to know how to arrest decay of its powers, and to give every individual full possibility of developing himself and through himself his race. The reckless and indiscriminate bearings and dines of the old world were no advance on the course of the animal or even the vegetable sphere, the higher the organization the fewer the young and the greater the care of them. But men in other lands had still, with all his thought and foresight, the extravagant method of nature, and had increased and multiplied without stint in order that an occasional exception might help by favoring conditions to lead the race onwards and perhaps upwards. The reasons of Alexander's and Cromwell's, of Muhammad's and Socrates, of Homer's and Dante's and Shakespeare's had lived and died unknown, because they had not been born into the circumstances which fitted their peculiar faculties. This people had seen that the method of nature was haphazard, if not heartless, that the rate of progress could be indefinitely accelerated if every child that was born were born with a definite purpose, and his life were guarded and extended till that purpose was fulfilled. They meant every act of generation for a definite advance. Birth and death were in the hands of the race and not of chance, and thus it was that I had never seen or heard of obsequies during the many years of my probation. So my difficulties were solved by my guardians before we set out for the national place of tombs. Yet my curiosity was as active as before. This was the beginning of a new epic in my life. How could its wonder surpass those of the past years? And I was all eagerness to study the past history of this noble race, to study the gradual ascent to the height they had now reached. The whole atmosphere was jubilant as we rose into its upper levels and thrilled with light and electricity. Even unseen living forms from other stars mingled with the sunlight that supplied so much for the support of our being. There was not a cloud to mar the purity of the ether, inspired with wandering breaths of wind. We rose joyous and bright under the gleam of the sun, I alone having my exhilaration somewhat dashed by the consciousness of my laggard gate. For my limbs were not yet light enough, my arm and leg muscles not strong enough to accomplish any but the briefest journey upon wings, and that in the most awkward and shambling way. I was born in one of their felinas, or weight transference flies. It was one of the smallest, yet I had room to move about freely in the car in spite of the baggage of the troop. It was not unlike a huge tropical butterfly that I had admired in a case in one of our museums. The car was long and narrow and pointed like a boat at either end. From each side stretched out wings that were enormous beside the body they carried, and these, rainbow-hued, seemed to fill the whole air through which we passed with a solid gleam, so quickly did they shuttle up and down. Aft extended slant-wise to great antenna-like shafts that moved hither and thither to defeat the baffling puffs of wind, and so direct our flight. Along the key lay the engine that produced the bead of the wings, silent and motionless as if it were but a shaft that strengthened the framework. There was no vibration in spite of the great speed of the felina. A huge awning, so high above us as to be out of reach of the wings at their fullest stretch, seemed to hold us easily aloft at whatever level we desired, and to let us gently down whenever the wings beat slowly enough to be seen as they moved up and down. It was in one of these slow movements that I discovered the principle of these sails. They were made of the wonderful metal irrelium, and had its properties of lightness, tenuity, and strength. I had noticed as they flashed solidly through the air that there was an alteration in the flash of greater or less sheen. I now saw that each wing consisted of two fine plates of open scrollwork sliding over one another back and forth. In the upward stroke the holes were open so that the air passed easily through. The hole expanse looked like a delicately reticulated fan. In the downward stroke the upper plate so slid over the lower that the apertures of both were completely closed, and the wing formed a solid sheet of metal. I afterward saw how simply this was accomplished. Under the irrelium network had but one motion, that on the hinges attached to the side of the car, but it had grooves on its fore and aft edges. Into these corresponding projections on the upper network fitted, moving in them easily by means of small half-hidden wheels. This upper plate was attached to independent hinges on a long rod that was drawn back and forth about half an inch by a connection with the driving engine. Its motion, however, was completely controlled by the ligatures that drew the wing upwards and downwards, so that they should ever be in harmony, and the closing of the pores should occur only at the beginning of the downward beat, and they're opening only at the beginning of the upward beat. The effect to the eye was very beautiful. The transparency of the metal let the colored light of the sky shine through it even when solid. But when reticulated the azure seemed to form into a flashing loom of the finest lace. I could not cease gazing at the ever shifting lights that played through the embroidery of the wings. It was pleasing to the ear as well, for the whirr and creak that usually accompanied the flight of great birds and the movement of machinery were used up as undertones to a grand but simple musical march that seemed the very spirit of the beat of the wings. For a time these sights and sounds held me entranced, so that I was scarcely conscious of our ascent. When the power of the charm had freed my senses, I looked down and my heart leapt into my mouth. Eagles being swept from the island by the blast of the storm-cone appeared to me as flies crawling over the sun-glitter of the houses below, or on the snows of Lila Roma. I shrank back breathless at the sight, and imagined myself falling down this heart-sickening distance. Then the almost irresistible desire to throw myself into this abyss came over me, and I clutched at the framework of the car that I might not yield to this feeling. I had forgotten my companion for the time. One glance at her drove the terror from my mind. I saw the beauty of the benignance that shone upon her face, and my spirit nestled in her protecting smile that had interpreted a rite the horrors of my thoughts. I was not merely thankful that I had not been alone with my terrible longing. I could almost give my life up to this being who swept out my fear by the loving kindness of her glance. My guardians had been unwilling to trust me alone in the Felina, even though the engine and the machinery were simple enough to have been managed by a child. So they sent me with Thairiel, who I long afterwards found, had been selected by the sages as my spiritual twin as soon as they had tested my past history, my faculties, and my possibilities. None other in the whole community was so fitted to stimulate my best qualities. To be preferred by me as intimate friend and comrade or, if passionate emotions followed the same direction of friendship, to mate with me as parent or pro-parent, when full maturity had been reached. This I came to know only when all had fallen out as they had anticipated and desired. We were both allowed our full option and free will in our spiritual approaches and agreements. We were not forced into each other's company. Only when opportunity for mutual protection or confidence came were we paired for the venture. Everything issued as they had planned, just as if we had had no free choice in the matter, and yet our impulses felt as free as if we had been the only living organisms in the universe. We chose with a passion that would not be denied. We were willing in our freedom of attraction to surrender life and all to each other. This flight was one of the first great adventures on which we were together, and it is graven upon my very heart. Thyriel, O Thyriel, I await thee with soul weary of waiting. What are the years now but centuries without thee? I am alone but for God and thee. It is the only consolation of my soul that thou risest ever towards God and livest in God, and that I rise and live with thee. This is exquisite pain, and delight too, for me to tell of that flight into the ether. For then I first realized how incomplete the sum of my existence without this being. She was so gentle and yet so strong, so full of eager sympathy, and yet so vigorous of character. She knew every weak point in my system, and bent herself to correct its weakness or protect me from its effects, without making me conscious of her sacrifice. With power that I could not but acknowledge as the superior of mine, she played the companion and equal. I could have worshipped her almost as a divinity, but she modestly bent herself to my level and veiled her superiority in her childlike playfulness. I shrank in fear from the implied familiarity, and could not bring myself to recognize except intellectually the common humanity and the difference of sex. For years I felt too much adoration to pass into love. It was indeed long before I could admit myself capable of her friendship. But gradually she led me to put more confidence in my powers, and to recognize the superiority of some of them. My intellectual admiration took a warmer glow that soon fused our intercourse into the most devoted friendship. So braced were we by our mutual help in our common pursuits, that we seemed helpless, the one without the other. Yet the sense of sex was not stirred for years after the bond between us had grown inseverable. It was this flight that first awakened me to the wealth of her nature and her immeasurable power and desire of self-sacrifice. Like her people, she had none of the statuesque beauty or regularity of feature that has swayed the thoughts and passions of European sex. But the spirit that shone through made the face divine. I rested almost as in a dream, as I felt the benignance of her soul, and before long I was able to look calmly over with her at the increasing depths of light through which we had come. Below us we saw Valiant Hill, purled with the gleam of wide-scattered houses. We could see the flash of streams and rivers as they broke through the darkness of forests, or fell in snowy cascades, and around the coast the sea spun for the black fringe of rock a moving thread of surf. Around us rolls the caroling of many voices to the gates of heaven. Song after song, anthem after anthem, burst forth from the various groups of our comrades. Valiant were they as thistle down, reveling in the pure serenity of the upper air. For every joy I could have thrown myself among them and joined the harmony of their flight. But her glance was upon me, and I returned to thoughts of prudence. She showed me why we had risen so high into upper air far above most of the Lymanorans who were flying with us. These phalinas could not adapt themselves to the varying winds as the human figure and arms could when managing wings. They had to rise into the regions of calms or of steady winds, in order that they might float by power of sail down to their destination. What seemed a mere awning acted in two ways. It served as an aeroplane to steady the whole structure in the air and as parachute when it began to descend, and could be inflated with heated air, to help the wings in rising the phalina upwards. She pointed out in the far distance below us a gleaming line that marked the valley towards which we were voyaging, and then looking at a height gauge that hung beside her steering seat, and at a wind gauge that stretched over the side of the car. She decided by a brief calculation that we had reached the proper key place of the arch we were making in our journey, and that we should, by changing our course, wing our way with ease down to the desired goal. She touched a notch on the side of the car and above there sounded a flute-like note, that varying in strength and pitch, made no disharmony with the music of the wings. I looked up and there I could see the awning gradually collapse. It had bulged downwards I had noticed in a strange way. The tenseness of its curves disappeared, and as we began to fall it became concave and broke the velocity of our descent. The wing still plied with bewildering swiftness of beat, and forced us onwards as we shortened our distance from the earth. We still could hear the music of our comrades, but so softened by the long space between that I could have imagined it in spherical harmony of orbs which circle round the throne of God. But I could see them, dim flakes of light in the azure as they out-distance thus, the few laggers that had skimmed far above us for a short time, still showing the outlines of their forms, yet rapidly lessening into star-specs. I was gazing out at them with the exhilaration of the outlook and of the ether in my blood, when the wings suddenly began to labor with short irregular beat. I glanced at Thairiel. She kept her face unmoved as she examined the engine beside her and the various keys and wheels and hinges of the machinery. I took courage, for she looked quite unconcerned, yet I could see that she had not discovered the cause for the uneasy motion of the wings. She told me that she would have to examine the outside, but that I might keep my mind at peace, for there was no danger. She adjusted her wings and dived from the side, then rose to her swiftly descending phalena, and by the strength of her muscles seemed to stay in the descent, while she looked at all the gearing of the sails from below. Then she climbed into the car and began to work at a small pump in the four-part. I ran to help her, and in a few minutes I felt the phalena buoyant again and holding its own against gravitation. We had refilled the balloon of the awning enough to keep her afloat. Thairiel stopped the engines and let the sails lie lazily out on the same plane as the car. Then she fastened a cord to the bow, and having adjusted her wings again, seized the cord and leapt over. I saw her purpose. She was towing the main phalena through the air, still at a great height from the earth. We were near enough, however, for me to see as I looked over the danger we had escaped. We had been falling upon a group of pinnacled and serrated rocks that would have gored our vehicle and endangered my life. Moreover, we were still a long way from phylum. Thanks to the cessation of our music, the attention of the distant aeronauts was drawn to our labored flight. It was not half an hour before we saw them hastening back to meet us like a swarm of butterflies, and in a few minutes more they were beside us. I watched their evolutions in the air with absorbed light, and ere I knew what they were about. They each held a cord from the bow of our phalena, and Thairiel was on board with me directing our flight. How loud their chorus sounded now that they were near. They timed the beat of their wings and the straining of their cords to it, and we spit on our downward way even more quickly than before. I did not know till long after how great the danger out of which I had escaped. Yet I was conscious of my comrade's courage, and that to her I owed much. It brought us closer together in spiritual friendship, and we seemed to feel ourselves singled out of mankind for mutual confidence. CHAPTER VI OF LIMONORA, THE ISLAND OF PROGRESS BY GODFREE SWEVEN This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. PHYALUME I was reveling in the thought of our comradeship and in the exhilaration of the motion through the air when the chorus began to soften. It sounded far off, like the echo of an echo, and out of the distance rang notes of welcome. Our company burst out of their low tones of pleading into loud triumph and joy. Then came the whispered softness of their former song, answered softly as if from the hollows of the earth. This swelled again into welcome and the air rang with notes of joy. My eyes followed our route, and beneath us I saw a huge valley forested to the ridge on either side and spanned with a glittering roof that turned the light of the sun into myriads of many-colored gems. Over the cliffs, or in through the olive-green or blossoming trees, swept streams with rainbowed cascades, covering the vast dome with spray till it seemed an arch of ice that melted in the sun. We made for the entrance of the gorge, out of which fumed and fretted through gates of pinnacled rock a milky torrent. Born on mighty pillars of limpin-metal rose a great archway, and this enclosed lesser semicircle spanning the various roads that led to the wild tropical scenery of the dale. I never saw such an impressive spectacle beneath human roof. Cataract rose above cataract in the center. On all sides fell miniature cascades, or rose fountains ascend in wayward clouds there breaking waterspears and flags. The flowers and shrubs and trees of every climate under heaven seem to be collected here, and to blend in marvelous harmony of color. Cool winds blew from hidden sources wafting the fountain-spray or the odors of the flowers about us. The beating rays of the sun were softened by the stream-cooled dome, and out of some cave or hollow in the far distance came the murmur of entrancing music. We had descended and passed far within the wondrous structure before I could recall my senses from their bewildered enjoyment of the scene. Then I saw that our company had parted in various directions, vanishing in groups or pairs around a verdant cliff or into some overarching bower. I was left alone with Thairiel. The sudden loneliness of the vast valley-hall made me feel the delight of having her spirit to lean upon. In spite of the companionship of the flowers and the close ranks of the forest, I felt the great spaces of the valley solitary because of the loftiness of the roof, like the arch of night making space seem more vast than under the warm, indefinite sky of noonday. Bewildered and alone, my thoughts sought the shelter of friendship. Not long had I felt this consolation when both of us were in the shadow of a nobler and more mature personality. He came I knew not wince, and the suddenness of his appearance added to the eye felt at once for his character. He was, I was certain, one of the sages of the community, so deeply had the centuries engraved their experience upon his face and spirit. There seemed to come from him even before he spoke or recognized our presence of a nine and godlike influence, and I knew at once the greatness of his soul. There were the lines of long struggle and complete self-mastery upon the countants like the curved stratification and cleavage of the older rocks. He had not to speak before I had surrendered myself entirely to his guidance. He, who had seen so many hundreds of years pass over the earth and learned all the lessons they had to teach, was the natural master of two such novices in life as we were. For now I felt that, however superior Thaeriel was to myself in instincts and development and beauty of soul, she was completely overshadowed by this spirit of centuries. Yet when he spoke to us we felt he still had the elasticity of youth about him. He had in his words and actions the rapid recoil of healthy tissues that have a long career before them yet, and in his faculties and ideas there was still the unlimited capacity of development. After explaining that he was to be the interpreter of this house beautiful for us, he led us by a maze of paths through the blossom and the verdure to an open space, from the center of which rose a noble flight of steps flanked by particles and colonnades. These we ascended, resting at times on broad platforms and looking out on the ferry scene that more and more unfolded itself to our eyes. At last we stood on the highest platform, not many hundred feet from the gleaming roof. He touched a spring here and there, and out of the tessellated floor came rest that moved automatically with the movements of the head and eyes, wherever I gazed as I reclined, thither my rest wheeled round. This I afterwards discovered was managed by hidden springs in the groove in which the head rested. These were rests of observation, and the purpose was to allow of the whole energy unconsciousness being directed into one channel, that of vision. The numberless easy methods of rest and motion that this people used would have certainly induced sloth and luxury, but for their inherent energy of nature. To them these methods were but economizers of the time and power which might be spent on less routine work. I soon saw that the valley ran more than a score of miles into the heart of the mountains, its deepest hollows rising now by easy gradations, again by bold platforms of rock far above the level on which we rested. For the dome I could now see consisted not of one span whose top ran horizontally along the ridges of the valley, but of hundreds of spans that rose arch above arch up the slope of the mountain. There was something in the terracing of the valley too that suggested the hand of man. Nature's work had been supplemented and rounded by noble art. There was regularity in irregularity, statuesque beauty amid wild grandeur. Human thought had utilized the massive ideas of nature. The scene would have overawed the spirit and made it solitary, but for the familiarity of minor features molded by human imagination that had not geological ages and forces at its disposal. In amongst the greenery of the forest stood on lofty pedestals what I took for memorial statues of the dead, with features so like to life in every minute line and curve, and even graining of the skin, that I marveled at such waste of human energy and imagination. My guide soon saw my mental question, and showed me that they were the dead themselves. The moment after every trace of life was gone from the body it was irilluminized by an ingenious process. For every atom of tissue and cell there was substituted one of irrelium, and thus no decay could approach it. It would retain for untold centuries the form and expression of the vanished man down to the minutest detail. As we passed farther back into the valley I noticed a difference in the appearance of the statue-esque dead. They had not the hues and expression of the living, but were leprous white, as if hewn out of marble with infinite care. I appealed to Ulmo, my guide, and he told me that these were the dead as they had been preserved before the age of irrelium and the discovery of the process that rapidly changed living tissue into this metal. At that period the body used to be buried for years in stalactic caves where the percolation of liquid gypsum turned it after a time into a calcareous statue. These caves ran into the mountain at the head of Philum, and were now used for converting traceries and forms to delicate to work in marble into white stone. They made a beautiful contrast in ornamentation to the rainbow-hued limpidity of irrelinium. The process had been too long and slow for the petrification of the dead. And about the same time as the method of extracting irrelinium from the rocks had been discovered, the careful study of the petrifactive methods of nature had been led to the new and rapid process of immortalizing the form and features of those who had passed from life. From our movable rest I could never have seen what all these statues were. I would have said that this was the island's great gallery of sculpture. But there were other things that Ulmo pointed out to us before he led us round this vast hall of his ancestry. He showed us far back in the recesses of the valley up the slope of the mountain what looked in the distance like a great settlement of some burrowing animal. This was the oldest bearing place of the island, where had been laid in apertures in the rock the urns that contained the ashes of the dead, for they had brought the practice of cremation with them in their primitive migration from the south. Then followed a period of superstition and recession, in which the priest taught the sacredness of the human form and his final resurrection, and when they buried the bodies deep in the earth beneath the earned rock recesses. A period of reaction against religion followed, and sanitation became one of the first essentials of the new scientific era. It was feared that the plagues would come from this old bearing place on the side of the mountain, if the percolating waters brought the corruption of the rotting corpses down into the valley. It was resolved that the remains of their ancestors should be dug up and removed to a mound made for them on a level with the sea. Then it was found that almost all the bodies had become stone-white as snow, for the calculus percolations that came along the surface of the rock down the hill had done their work, and an ancient digging up of one of the lower rows of graves revealed the marvelous stalactite caves underneath. There had been a movement towards a return to the practice of cremation, but it was stopped at once by this discovery. The caves became the natural bearing place, and out of them the dead were brought and erected in the valley when they had turned into stone. After we had viewed the whole scene from our platform under Ulmo's direction, he made us enter a car that had sprung up at his touch. It seemed made of gossamer, and I was afraid to enter it, till I felt the toughness and strength of its material. It floated rather than ran round the valley above the tops of the tall trees. I could see no wheels, and there were no rails for them to travel on if it had had them, nor had it any wings or sails like our Felina. At last I saw that it was hung by a transparent cord of metal from some moving force in the dome that to me was invisible. It was an electric car, and electric currents bore it aloft and swept it along with lightning rapidity. But a touch of Ulmo's finger broke the circuit and stopped it in a moment. I was not long hailed by this new wonder, for beneath and brown stretched the great graveyard that seemed a harmony of forest, wild, and garden. We rested at intervals of a few miles on the lofty platforms, descending the flights of steps at times to view the statuesque dead and their surroundings. Here and there we came across groups of young men and young women intently listening to strange voices that seemed to issue from some hidden being within the statute dead. These were students, and the sounds were the voices of the dead, treasured up on fine tablets of Aurelium, which could either be read or made to re-utter their recorded words. To me the silent bowed figures of the living seemed lifeless, the whispering dead seemed the living. It was a piece of necromancy, I felt at first, and, but for my questioning intellect, I should have shrunk back in fear. It is true, I could not see the lips of the erect figure move, and when I gazed long enough some trimmer of the eyelid would betray the life of the listener. But for the first few minutes the illusion was complete, and all the surroundings, the stillness, the far echo of wailing music, the somber trees, seemed to confirm it. Every new group we encountered produced the same eerie feeling. But we passed on, and the joy which filled the spaces of the great valley buried the sense of death. It was the least funeral scene I had ever witnessed, for along the paths and wide tree-arched avenues went bands of carolers singing songs of triumph and gladness. The air was sweet with the perfume of flowers, and masses of varied color broke the olive darkness of the groves. The world was at once jubilant and harmonious. Farther and farther into the valley we flashed in our lightning car, and even my inexperienced eye could see the change in the erect dead. Many of the figures were taller, the attitude was often overbearing and arrogant, and the expression was generally mean or cunning or translucent like so many European faces when surprised in unconscious repose. The farther we receded the more familiar the forms and features seemed to become, so like were they to the normal human beings of our western world. Animalism, sensuousness, rapacity, vindictiveness, cruelty, fanaticism grew more and more frequent, the near to the primitive graveyard we approached. At last on the faces of the dead that had been dug out of their old tombs there was manifest the touch of the ape, the tiger, the wolf, or the snake. I shudder to see with all the regularity of the features and the stature and grace of the figures. They came nearest of all to the ideal beauty and the haughty bearing of aristocratic Europe. It scarcely needed the explanation of Ulmo to see that the body had then been developed at the extreme of the soul. Underneath the handsome and generous outlines lurked the beast that had entered into the making of ancestry. Splendid animals they had been, and, as our interpreter explained, given up to war in field sports and at intervals debauchery, or to the overreaching of trade and money-making, or to the subtleties and falsehoods of political life. They belonged to the age just before the great immigrations. As we took our way back on the other side of the valley I could notice how rapidly these lordly animal forms disappeared and yielded to the compact little figures, irregular features, and divine expression of face I had grown accustomed to in the Lymanorans. The dead were grouped in families and in order of time after the epic of exiling, and a student could trace the growth of a talent or virtue. But many of the family groups were small. The line had suddenly ceased. In these I could see, after a time, an occasional evidence of atavism in the size or the sensuousness of the form, and the interpreter explained how, on the appearance of this recession, the right of having posterity had ceased, or expatriation had occurred. The general sense of the unfitness of an individual for fatherhood or motherhood was too strong in the community to need any expression in public resolve. Those who felt this great misfortune fall upon them knew that their race must be cut off, and they set themselves to eradicate the desire of family life. If they could not eradicate it, and at the same time make effort to subdue their retrogressive tendency, they had to go into exile. At first action on the part of the community had been needed. Now this expurgative policy worked almost automatically and without friction. When we had taken a comprehensive view of phylum, we entered another phylena, which had been substituted for our disabled car. We shot farewell glances at Ulmo, and were off in the air before I had well disentangled my thoughts from the last sight. Below us receded the massive archways of the door and the foaming streams at the entrance of the valley. The jubilant music began to grow dim, and the dome shone softly in the colors of the sunset. I thought we were to be alone on our return journey, and begin to question Thairiel on some of the mysteries of the day. She had not much light to throw on them, for she was herself a novice in life. But of a sudden, like a flock of homing pigeons, a band of our comrades broke out into the level sunlight from the mouth of phylum, and along with them other bands that streamed east and north and south. Before long the western train had overtaken us, and their voices sang like caroling at Heaven's gate. They saw our phylena land safely at the house of my pro-parents, and then joined by Thairiel. They streamed away through the twilight sky, ever breaking off into more and more widely separated groups till they were lost across the horizon, or in the darkness of some distant valley. Week after week, and at last day after day, we took our path through the azure of phylum. For several years under the direction of Ulmo we became acquainted with the history of Limonora, and saw the gradual development of the civilization and of the human form and faculty. We came to feel how naturally ends followed means chosen in the mind and frame of man, as in the plant creation and in the other animals. We saw how creative had been this community, not in the arts merely, but in that art of all arts, human nature. They had molded generation after generation to higher and ever higher purpose. How poor and subsidiary seemed all the sciences when compared with this great practical science, the knowledge to mold man into any required form, to bend his energies ever upwards. Every week there grew upon us the consciousness that there was no more plastic material in the whole world than the human soul, when it had reached a certain stage of development. Ulmo traced for us each new faculty in power and virtue to a starting point, and showed us how feeble it was to begin with, and how rapidly it grew when once artificial effort was turned upon it. At first it was the physical powers that he drew our attention to. In family after family, for example, he showed us how the capacity of flight had been acquired, and how the human frame had gradually become adapted to it. The body grew lighter, the shoulder and breast muscles stronger, the bones hollower, the arms longer, and the legs shorter, with greater strength at the heels. He acknowledged that there was something peculiar in Limonora that made this adaptation easier. A magnetism seemed to come from the earth that made the force of gravitation less. There was also something more exhilarating in the atmosphere and climate that differentiated it from all other lands. This explained why I had so rapidly acquired the tripping, noiseless gait I had so admired when first I saw Nula. There had been a time in the history of the earth when the human body was so light and agile, in proportion to its size, that a few coincidences in nature, as, for example, the increase of swift land and tree enemies, would have made it ultimately winged. That was the geological epic, when, after a period of great contraction and increase of density, the period of the huge Sarians and other monsters of the prime. The orb had, through volcanic explosions within it, and the impact of myriads of aerial lights on its crust, expanded its texture and partially volatilized its internal elements. Since then it has been cooling down within, and thus growing less in size, though losing none of its mass. This can be seen in the twistings and foldings of the rocks and the enormous wrinkles on its surface. The result has been that animals, and men with them, have been growing heavier for their size. The possibility of man becoming a flying race has passed away. Land and sea animals have no longer the chance of developing into birds of the air, and even some of the tribes of winged things have almost surrendered their prerogative of flight, nothing but embryo and unused wings remain to them. It is only in exceptional spots like Limonora, where the magnetic conditions and the spongy nature of the interior of the earth lessen the force of gravitation. That men should ever acquire the power of artificial flight with any ease. By dint of the application of enormous force, and of inventive mechanical power, men in other lands may master the art of aerial voyaging. But it will never become an accomplishment of the individual. There will be too much strain and stress for it ever to grow a pleasant mode of travel. Thus Ulmo flashed light upon the past and the future as we traversed the groves of Phylum. We grew familiar with the great forces of the universe, and their bearing upon the problems of mankind, and gained the true perspective of existence. I felt that Europe was but standing still, reform herself and advance in science and art and civilization as quickly as she might. European man himself was not progressing, but only the external results of his individual efforts. It would take ten thousand years for the huge nations of Europe to make the step upwards that these islanders made in a day. Material progress meant nothing to the Lymanorans, unless it meant also the progress of the men themselves in capacity, in power of attaining higher and higher goals. Year by year I came near to the special purpose of my education. As we passed over the family groups of the island, and learned their sciences and arts, both Thayeriel and myself began to feel drawn to one branch of investigation above all others. Every family had a special department of the civilization assigned to it, and for generations had cultivated this. To prevent narrowness of view in its members, and to enable all to understand the value and purpose of the work of each, a long tract of their youth was devoted to a bird's-eye view of the departments of human knowledge and progress, and that no section of life might be left at the mercy of accident. There worked with the representatives of every family, one or two super-numeraries. Thus new blood was introduced, for the alien was generally chosen from a family not even distantly connected, and had such a nature and temperament as would be likely to lead to marriage and to the best results in posterity. There was one family growth to which I was specially drawn. The faces of the dead seemed to me exquisitely beautiful, the natures that shone through their petrified bodies attracted me with tenfold power. Every day as I entered Phialum I felt inclined to bend my steps thither, and the clothes of the day generally found me amongst them. Umo tried with some amusement to himself to break me of the habit, which yet grew stronger and stronger, and Thyriel showed the same tendency. Perhaps one feature which gave great attraction to the place was its seclusion. It was almost the only family growth that had not two or three studying the records. Here we were generally left to our own companionship, for Umo had often to go when we arrived there, and with our common tastes we found the time far too short. At last I came upon the explanation. We were studying the growth of some feature through the generations, and I had remarked to Thyriel how like she was to this family and character and appearance, when suddenly the foliage parted near where we stood, and disclosed three figures, two of whom seemed to my undiscriminative eyes facsimiles of the last of the group which had been illuminized. The feeling of worship was aroused in me, for I felt in them the beautiful nature of Thyriel, and besides this the atmosphere of years and experience mellowing it and making it seem loftier and more divine. The third was different and yet as noble, and when I gazed into her face I found the solution of a problem that had begun to perplex me, the source of those characteristics of Thyriel which made her different from the two others and from the family group. The last was her mother, the other two were her father and aunt. This was the treasure-house and sleeping-place of her ancestry. Her own relationship had instinctively drawn her to it, and my natural kinship with her had attracted me there. We were now to begin the special study which was to make us useful working members of the community, filling our own places in it, and serving its great and final purpose with our own labor and thought. Many years would we have to spend in this secluded grove mastering the knowledge and achievements of this family. Its distinctive name was Leomo, which meant Earthseers, and its department was the study of the crust and inner movements of our orb. It was one of the peculiarities of all Thymenoran science that it was art too. Nothing was lost. Every investigation or discovery or law had practical issue, and it was the duty of the investigator to find out how his work bore upon the progress of the race to its final aim. As I saw farther and got deeper into this study, I discovered that much which had seemed purely speculative was most practical and revelant to the purpose of the race. A shallow view would have rejected nine-tenths of it as useless application of the energies, as mere fancy thinking. The wider my knowledge, the more my admiration of the far side of these investigators grew. They seemed to me to have almost the gift of prophecy as they looked at the facts they accumulated and the conclusions they tried to draw. It was easy to follow them, for every generation had reduced the ancestral writings and thoughts and achievements to the briefest available form, and indexed all that previous generations had done. It was the duty of every student of a family after he had finished his general education and seen the advances made in other branches, to bring all his ancestors' researches and suggestions into relation to these, and to place a brief account of them on record in the latest phraseology and scientific light, so that any alien student might greed or hear with understanding. There was thus, in every family grove, a summary of all that was known or achieved in his Department of Science or Life. And this great graveyard was also the Library of the Race, so classified and summarized and indexed that any man could take a complete survey of its contents in a few years. There was the Living Index II, available in every grove. Anything that was obscure could be at once explained by the representatives of the family. Besides these there were families whose duty it was to supervise the relationships of the various sciences and branches. They could point out to the investigators how far their work tended to overlap or interfere, what was futile in their efforts, what directions still had to be taken, and what paths to be traversed. They permitted no piece of work to be wasted. Everything was correlated by them to the purpose of the Race and to its contemporary efforts. The boundary lines of the various departments were defined and mapped by them. They were the organizers of research, the dividers and economizers of intellectual labor. But they themselves had their separate functions and duties. Some had the faculty of order exceptionally developed, and they were the classifiers of the community and of the work of the community. Others had the logical powers in a special vigor, and they followed out the philosophy of the Race, the correlation of the ideas and of the lines of reasoning. A third group consisted of those with a dominant imagination. These looked into the future. They performed some of the functions of imaginative writers in Europe, sketching out imaginary routes for the Race and for each family into the unknown. But they also covered a much wider field. They put into form and expression schemes and projects, such as European men of action of the most romantic careers have often attempted to carry out, but have seldom been able to put into words. These were not allowed to interfere with action. But the ideas, plans and romances they invented, and put into shape were tested and accepted or rejected by the practical men whose fear they touched. Imagination, it was held by the Lymanorans, was apt to be futile, if not machievous. Faculty threw wand of its being arranged on the side of utility. And yet, if trampled and yoked to the necessity of practice in the individual, it came to be stifled. They specially cultivated it in these families in order that it should have full scope and development, but took care, by arranging these families with those that superintended the purpose and progress of the Race, that their romances should have full relevancy to the goal of all their efforts. Many of the projects and ideas which seemed at first the most fantastic were found after many generations to be sound and most possible of realization. One of the striking features of the civilization was complete absence of literary class or profession or group of families. They smiled at the pure frippery of European literature, which used imagination as a mere means of entertainment. It seemed a complete inversion of the natural order of things to make that faculty, which was the prerogative of every one who could speak, and the servant of the highest purpose of life, into a special art to suit the pleasure of the idler hours. They held that the man who had thought a thing out could express it best. So they trained up every citizen to the fullest power of lucid and final expression. In their language, so perfect was it, there was one best way of saying a thing, and everyone who knew the language aright and understood the thing could find this best way. Style as a matter of mere expression they laughed at as linguistic trickery. The force and life of everything lay in the idea, and the expression grew out of that and was part of it, as the color was a part of the flower. It was only clumsy and inchoate language that could admit of style or literature as a special art. And it was trifling with one of the most divine faculties to prostitute it to the entertainment of leisure hours. It was to class imagination with the arts of the mimic, the buffoon, and the juggler. Art for art's sake, one of the latest creeds of the writers of Europe, was to them almost blasphemy. It made the garment of ideas, the garb of human progress, into a separate entity, and the servants of God into the tailors of human folly, and the dress more than the figure it clothed, and the body more than the soul. Literature, without the intensity of the loftiest purpose of the race, was but a tinkling symbol. Expression was the gift of nature to every civilized man, and woe to the race that neglected it in any of its individuals, the race that should divorce it from its ideas, that let the men who write Filch the glory of those who think. Like strong beliefs had they about the profession of teaching a separate from parenthood and investigation. It meant disloyalty on the part of most citizens to their most immediate duties. Who could develop the instincts of youth and be so deeply interested in his future welfare as those who are bound to him by the ties of nature? And then, when he had matured and needed the wider education, who could give it him so well as those who are most familiar with his special objects and themes? If he was to follow the art and knowledge of some other family, the sooner he went under the tutelage of its representatives after his intellectual life began the better. The only portion of their youth that the men and women could spend with profit under others than their parents or pro-parents was the period of general knowledge, of summarizing the results of the whole past. The representative of one of the supervising families alone could give with ease a survey of the whole field of knowledge and art and action. They and they alone were in any way an approach to the profession of teaching, and they were saved from the petrifying influence of pedagogy by their wider duties in correlating the science and arts, the fields of knowledge and action. Thus reasoned and the emotions were kept from getting benumbed by the variety of a too easy superiority. The beings they pitted most in the world were the despot and the professional teacher, for these get buried in unreality before the life is out of them, and are so unquestionably supreme that nothing but what is pleasing to their minds dare approach them. They fall out of relation to truth, and it is difficult for them ever to regain that wholesome fear of contradiction and that shyness before destiny which constitute the essence of sanity. They have to become intolerant. The schoolmaster soon becomes intellectually barren. The despot soon falls the victim of luxury and of illusion. For the sake of grown men and women who might be sacrificed to it, as well as of the children and youth, they abolished the profession of teacher. Individual training was the only true foundation of a sound progress. Two might be permitted to form a companionship in education and study, just as two might form the friendship of marriage, but that was only when the periods of possible adivism had been safely traversed. Nor must they be wholly given up to their comradeship. The parental influence and solitude must continue to govern their lives. Thayeriel and I had become educational companions and friends, but every item of our education was supervised without our noticing or feeling gulled by it. There was no prying into details, but every change in our character and every stage in our training was tested at the periodical investigation of the citizens. Our parents or pro-parents took the keenest interest in all that we did and all that we tended to become. Now that our specialization had begun, we were put wholly under the care of Thayeriel's parents and family. I still returned to the home of my pro-parents, but spent the hours of training with the Leomo. There had evidently been discovered in the preliminary investigation of my faculties some especially suited to the pursuit of earth-seen. From the beginning of my journeys to Phaeolum I had been attracted to this family of earth-seers, and the result confirmed the decision. My taste all developed in the same direction, and the more I penetrated into the mysteries of the science and craft, the more deeply interested in it I became. Every day, under the guidance of my new friends, I listened to the voices of their ancestors stored upon Irelium tablets, for these tablets, when placed in a voice instrument, reproduced the exact sounds which had engraved the letters upon them. Their written alphabet was in fact a natural one. The letters were the forms produced by the sounds themselves when uttered by an instrument that blew loose particles of Irelium arranged on a vibrating disc of the same metal. By a simple process the particles, when they took their form, were permanently fixed to the disc, which then became an everlasting record, easily read by any Lymanoran, or when placed in the voice instrument, speaking the words into his ear. This voice instrument was a kind of organ, whose minute keys and stops were easily controlled by the ridge of letters. I ever preferred to listen to the records of the past instead of reading them, for I never attained great facility in deciphering the letters because of my own long familiarity with the English alphabet and writing. But Thaeriel could read the tablets with great ease. I came to prefer her reading to the sound of her ancestor's voices, although these gave fuller meaning to the ideas they communicated, and it was pleasant to feel that she was listening with me and not tiring her throat. Our minds seemed to become one, as we sat silent and motionless with ears intent on the statue of someone of her forefathers. There was a strong magnetism from the dead minds gradually welding our souls together. Yet there was nothing personal or emotional in our studies. For years they were chiefly historical, watching the growth of earth science through the generations, seeing the share that each member had in its development. How little they knew of it even up to the time of the exilings. The earliest ancestors groped among barren facts and their classifications. They named the rocks and the elements of the rocks, and speculated on the order of their formation. They told the story of the growth of glaciers in the original Antarctic land from which their ancestors had migrated, and tried to explain the origin and development of the strange archipelago in which they lived. But they saw no practical application of the resulting theories, even when they knew the stratum and its trend. They often failed in their directions as to where certain minerals would be found in it. Still the strides made by the family, both in the knowledge and its application, were marvelous, since the island had been purified and the true purpose of their civilization was known. An instrument that I had grown accustomed to during the previous or general stage of my education enabled me now to see at a glance the improvements of each age or generation. It was the Amerlin, which might be translated Historoscope. It focused for the eye and ear any periods of the past. The whole pageant of some section of the history of any man, science, or object could be flat stereoscopically in a few minutes on a dark surface. Willst all the sounds that accompanied the scenes would be reproduced in any required pitch and tone. It was one of the duties of the students and representatives to take numberless sun pictures and sound pictures of all the important scenes in the life of the family and in the development of their science and art and instruments. In order to reproduce any scene, the two long strips of heirillinium that contained the series of momentary pictures of it were made to rotate as swiftly as they had rotated when receiving the impressions, and the sun pictures being transparent, light and magnifying glasses threw them life-size on a wall opposite the spectator. The lightning movement produced the full effect of action in life, and, as all the tints of the scene had also been impressed on the strips, there was nothing wanting to produce the illusion of life but the voices and the sounds. These too had been taken on an heirillium strip, and this, when placed in a voice instrument, added all that was needed to make the whole scene live. It was the duty of the students in each generation to single out the most striking and representative series and have them ready-mounted in the instruments, that any new scholar mind in a few days take a bird's-eye view of the whole development of the family. Thus I was able to sit and study the past as if I had been a contemporary and eye-witness of it. The very music that accompanied and harmonized each act and scene was faithfully reproduced as loud or as low as I desired. I had but to touch a certain spring in the historoscope and raise or lower the tone. It was little wonder that we so rapidly covered the history of the family and its achievements. By means of the work of former students we were able to avoid all the mistakes and unessential details of the route they had transferced, and Thayeriel's friends pointed out every pitfall that edged the road, every by-path that led only into the darkness or into some inextricable Lambranth. Our steps were watched with infinite care, for, with all the knowledge and skill we had already acquired, we were but infants on the threshold of a universe of darkness. What was twilight in the future to our guides was to us midnight blackness. That was no science, they held, which did not flash light upon the gloom before us, and their whole efforts were bent on turning every fact and law into a prophecy and every student into a foreseer as well as a seer in his own science. The limited faculties of man fenced in by narrow bounds the future into which it was possible for them to see, but they were ever extending these bounds and creeping towards the infinite. It took but a few years to master the recorded lore of the Leomo. The work of our predecessors had made it so easy, and it was an epic in our existence when we began the practical part of our training. We were by no means done with phylum, but less time was now devoted to its historical and theoretical studies. I well remember the morning when our guardians and guides informed us we were fit to see the practical application of the science throughout the island. Taking some new apparatus, they embarked me in a kind of phylena which had been invented since I came to the island. The families of imagination had long ago suggested it, and one of the families engaged in the development of methods of flight had just succeeded in perfecting its mechanism and making it easy to manage. This aerial car had no wings, but rolls by means of the many vacuum tubes which were the most important part of its impelling machinery. A powerful electric engine created and destroyed the vacuums many hundred times a minute. Each tube sucked in the air ahead and expelled it with great violence at the stern of the car. Both actions aided in propelling the phylena. The result was that, though not so graceful as the old wing car, it went with much greater swiftness. Indeed, laden though we were, we kept pace easily with the flight of my companions and guides through the air, and its parachute attachments obviated any risk, even if all the tubes should by accident become ineffective. Its chief disadvantage was that it could not rise out of the denser air of the lower atmosphere, and at the same time keep up its great speed. The old style of phylena, or far phylena, as it was called, to distinguish it from its new arrival, the core phylena, was still kept in use for higher journeys, and the flight family set themselves the problem of inventing a means of propulsion through space without the aid of air. One dealt with the possibilities of electric currents, and experimented on the method of alternating attraction and repulsion, using the repulsion in the rear of the car and the attraction in front. Another dealt with the possibilities of the rays of light that were ever transversing space, experimenting on their power of starting machinery in vacuum, and keeping it in rotation. A third made effort to test the capacities of the aether, which was the basis and medium of all things. A more difficult and problematical path of investigation. Yet one not to be abandoned without certain proof of its impossibility. For many apparently insoluble problems had been solved in a manner that made incredulity hide its head. LIEU MARIA As I was attached to Lieu Maria, or the science of earth seeking, I did not follow up their experiments in the building of air cars. I only saw the results when at last they came out perfect from their hands, and greatly admired the easy and swift action of their core phylena. Over the hills and valleys and plains we flew close enough to see what was going on upon the earth below. Again and again we passed over long wisps of steam or columns of dense smoke. I conjectured that the steam indicated the heat wells like that which penetrated the rock near the house of my pro-parents, and supplied every chamber with heat or power as required. It went down some miles into the crust of the earth, and could be closed or opened at will by a huge lever worked by the steam it emitted itself. The denser brooms of smoke I took to indicate the sinking of their artisan power wells by the Lieu Moran. For I had seen hours being mined. I had seen the entrance of the great aeryllium tube into the earth, ring within ring, and its slow but inevitable work from day to day and week to week. The principle of this Lieu Moran, or earth perforator, had been found by investigation of the anatomy and method of work of the fulus or rock-boring shell, partly chemical partly mechanical. The edge of the lowest ring was like a sharp-tooth file that, as it rotated by means of power applied from the center of force, wore its way gradually into the rock, the ridges of the file being as hard as the diamond. An inner ring file was attached to it on the inside, and between the two was let down a certain chemical compound, which by the friction of the files produced little explosions in the rock below and thus quickened the process. Other ring files followed in the same way. Another chemical compound, differing according to the character of the rock to be attacked, was let down in the space within the concentric rings, and rapidly decayed the rock so that it ascended like a column of thick black smoke. After all the ring files were at work, the Lieu Moran needed little guidance, for by an application of the principle of the spectroscope, its use of the chemicals according to the nature of the rock became automatic. As soon as the volatized mineral that ascended out of the rings changed its character, the beams of light that passed through it changed the spectrum, and the new spectrum influenced a certain solution that controlled a thread, and this thread set free a steam of the proper chemical compound down the Lieu Moran. A still more striking use of the spectrum was the linkalar or spectroscope analyst and recorder. It analyzed the vapors that ascended from the tubes, and recorded their spectra on a moving strip of aerolinium that was guided by the descent of the Lieu Moran into the earth. Thus anyone could see what strata were passed through in any given time and the extent of the strata. But the linkalar did much more than this. Whenever it struck any vein that had the much desired aerolinium in it in any quantity, its spectrum released a spring which opened a small tube. Through this streamed the aerolinium vapor into a cavity of the earth, whereby means of a purifier it deposited only the pure metal. There was less demand for the other metals, gold, silver, platinum, tin, copper, iron. But there was also an arrangement for separating and depositing their volatized forms in other cavities. Thus they were able to have more than they required of the metals, and especially of aerolinium, the most precious because the most adaptable of all. I was now to see a further development of these mining instruments. We winged our way to a part of the coast which was farthest from the surrounding islands, and most easily protected from invaders by the storm-cone. I noticed the exceptional loneness of the sandy beach, as shelving as that on which I had originally landed. There were none of the great bastions of rock which, molded with such symmetry of terrace and escarpment, barred off all landing on the island. We directed our course far up the mountain, and alighted on a rocky platform overlooking the sea. The new apparatus had been sent after us in a phylena and was now placed in position. A cylinder was erected on the ground and attached by machinery to wires and pipes that had been laid from the center of force. But this was unlike the old Leo Moran, in having the mouth tightly closed. And I soon saw the principle on which the new perforator was to work. The air was exhausted in the cylinder, and then a powerful stream of electricity was made to pass through a piston constructed of innumerable wires which kept moving with lightning rapidity over the surface of the rock at the bottom. The success of the experiment soon manifest itself. For, as soon as a spring was touched, a valve that separated the end of a projecting tube from the airtight cylinder was opened, and out-streamed a dense column into the atmosphere above. The spring was afterwards managed automatically so that as soon as the red-hot electric piston had eroded enough of the rock and volatized it, the valve sprang open, and the moment the vapor and smoke had all escaped, it was shut, and the air was immediately exhausted. We returned day after day to the place and found that the new perforator, or Tylero Moran, as it was called, worked with ten times the swiftness of the old instrument. The chief objections to it were that the metal vapors were denser and more offensive, and that the irrelium cylinders had to be often or renewed because of the great friction and the intensity of the electric heat. The one was obviated by a longer smoke tube and an application of a vent of wind from the storm cone. The other was obviated by longer cylinders and refrigerative packing between two of their layers of irrelium. But the strangest result, strangest for me at least, was to come. The Tyler Leo Moran descended miles beyond the usual force well into the crust of the earth at a great rate of speed, and I soon saw preparations for some change. Great channels of their usual metal were laid down to the beach, and irrelium barriers erected in the sea along the shelving shore from bastion to bastion. By the greater rapidity of the descent, the increase of the proportion of their favorite metal, and the ease with which the electric current volatized the material below, our guides judged that they had reached rock that was already molten. Before long there began to ooze out of the smoke tube a red-hot stream that trickled its way down the slope. Then the airtight lid was burst off the cylinder. Out of it came the electric piston on a wave of red-hot lava, and down the channels the thick stream of molten rock flowed till it reached the barriers in the sea. There, with vast columns of steam it cooled and solidified, forming a new and stronger rampart to check the inflowing fire. Day after day we found that the beach was disappearing, and in its place, when the steam cleared, we could see that the great gap in the bastion works of the island was filled up. This was the first of their lava wells I had seen. Its operations explained to me the massive symmetry of the rocky shores and the cyclopean terraces and chutes down the mountain sides, that had, I thought, been either chiseled by tens of thousands of years of slavish labor, or laid by the hands of a race of giants now vanished from the earth. This little people was itself the Vulcan that turned the bowels of the world into smelting works and used the mighty forces lying underneath the crust of our orb with the ease of a smith at his forge. What had the Lymanorans to fear from invaders with even the mightiest war engines that had ever been invented? They had made themselves fortifications which would outlast the attacks of any human invention. When the betelene circle of prepasses was complete around their island, who could land troops, even if they evaded the blast of the storm-cone? To the Lymanorans themselves the height of their shores was no disadvantage. In fact, it gave them easy starting points for their wing expeditions. They could plunge from the jutting cliffs into the air and so gain impetus for their flight. Thus they had been able to destroy that spirit of militarism which, after a certain stage, is the implacable foe of true progress. It is based on two of the most childish and most primitive forces in the human breast, combativeness and the passion for display. Hence the impossibility of stamping out the contagion. Ever and anon in the former history of the island, the age of peace seemed to have begun. But marauders from abroad would land and stir the instinct of brigandage and make an army and a military leader necessary. Thanks forward again all the arrangements of the community were made subordinate to the ambition of the soldier. An intrusion of savagery and brute force, however veiled in glory and the panopolis of civilization, is irresistible by the powers of peace. Only slow and silent conquest of the armed power brought back progress in peaceful arts again, again to be maintained and thrown back from some external accident. Not that they ever pretended that they could eject struggle out of their life, but they did aim to raise the plane of conflict and competition. Never could this people have entered on the rapid development of their powers without their lava ramparts and their storm-cone to keep off all occasions of militarism. These lava wells still had other uses. Out of their flow were made the rock foundations on which the houses of this people were built. It puzzled me for years to know how they succeeded in making their immense platforms and terraces out of the hardest trap. Their mansions stood out from the precipices and cliffy sides of the mountain on isolated plateaus that gave the inmates free view on every side and free circulation of air around. These rose-pitcher-esque and romantic from the top of lonely rocks, like the castles of the Rhine, dominating the whole locality. Down the rocky foundations poured at times torrents of water from the sluice-gates of the mountain, cleansing or cooling the surroundings, yet never was there any danger for these everlasting ramparts. Another use to which these lava wells were put was to modify the temperature. They were generally opened and let flow in the coolest months of winter, and the red-hot cascades falling into the sea heated it to such an extent that the climate of the whole island was mellowed and tempered. From the wells far up the slope of the mountain the lava flow had been so guided and molded that immense channels had been made down to the edge of the cliffs, with sides as lofty as the precipitous shores themselves. Down these were shot in summer great avalanches of mountain snow right into the ocean, so tempering the strength of the summer heat. But these were only subsidiary uses of the tapings of the central earth fires. Their main and original purpose was to relieve the perturbations of Lila Roma. It was one of the chief duties of the Leomo to watch over the destiny of their island, which was volcanic in its origin, though it had been greatly added to in former ages by the coral insect. Lava streams had overspread the coral, and then the myriads of minute architects had thrust out their structures farther and farther into the sea, and thus the lowlands had been broadly extended, while the red-hot layers of lava added massiveness to the body of the island. Yet it was continually shaken by earthquakes and threatened with partial, if not complete, disaster. It was the function of Leo-Marie to watch the approach of these earthquakes and guard against them. The Leomo had the most delicate instruments for recording every tremor of the earth's crust. They had also thermometers and electrometers down their heat wells and lava wells, and these automatically recorded at the surface every variation of the heat and magnetism of the earth. They had classified through the many centuries all the preliminary and con-commitment circumstances of earthquakes, and had found and formulated certain causal relations amongst them. Thus the minutest symptom of change in the records made by their instruments roused them to watchfulness. They were soon able to tell in what direction the explosive materials were accumulating, and how far below the surface of the earth. Then, when they had fixed with more or less definiteness the time they had to spare, they began sinking lava wells right into the perturbed lake of fire. The vent acted as a safety valve. The shakings of the island ceased as the steam roared forth, and the molten rock began to yeast down the side of the mountain. All danger was passed for another period of time. Again and again throughout the past ages, the Lyomo had saved the island from the ravages of earthquake and uncontrolled lava streams from the crater of Lila Roma. Never did they intermit their vigilance or cease to advance their knowledge of the earth and its inhabitants and laws. It seemed to me at first that nothing could occur in the crust of our planet, which they would not foresee. I came afterwards to know the limits of Lyomarie, and the reasons why they pushed almost fervently forward to further knowledge. They were ever afraid that something unforeseen might occur and threaten the stability of their land and the progress towards the nobler life. Once in the dark ages before the great exilings, an appalling disaster had occurred which plowed deep into the consciousness of the people the necessity for the development of this earth science. Their central steady stood on a great plateau up the slope of Lyoma. Within recorded memory there had been no great outburst from the mountain, and the inhabitants traveled fearlessly up to its rim and down the bowl of its crater. At times there had been slight spittings of ashes and once or twice a new fumarole, or hot spring or even lava fountain had opened at some point on the mountain slope, but these were all at a distance from the bustling luxurious city, and most of them had awakened slight notice. The volcano indeed had been practically quiescent since the Great Migration from the Antarctic regions and the ceiling of the archipelago by the circle of Fog. The citizens were keeping one of their annual feasts and were lapping in luxurious ease and pleasure. They had been exhilarated by a long period of prosperity and a recent victory over the savage clan that inhabited one of the adjacent islands. The country people and a number of hermits living in lonely parts of Lymonora had been alarmed by various premonitory symptoms, sultry clouds turbaning the head of Lila Roma, tremors in the earth more and more threateningly repeated, great and unaccountable disturbances in the sea, and a hot, heavy, brooding atmosphere around the whole island. Some of them came to the city and warned the revelers to be prepared for some catastrophe, but they were waved aside as dreamers, mere superstitious disturbers of life and its traffic. Half the city was gathered together in the central marketplace to see a great spectacle, when the earth shook beneath them. They fell on their faces and cried to their gods, but it was in vain. The market stood on a plateau high above the rest of the city, overlooking the ocean. Like a cap this platform was blown into the air, and all the pleasure-seekers vanished like smoke. Out on the sea and here and there on the land a rain of dust fell mingled with minute pieces of human flesh, but never was any one of the gathered thousands found, and as if to obliterate the traces of her ghastly work, the mountain set down a broad stream of lava, which filled up the gulf where the marketplace had been, and sealed up the dust-buried city, preserving it for after ages like a fly in amber. Those who escaped destruction fled, to some distant parts of Limonora, some to other islands, but all were buried for centuries in groveling superstition. It was out of the hermits and the country people that a new nation was built up, which set itself as a first duty to establish Lyomaurie, that it should not be taken unawares by any repetition of this great catastrophe. Nor has it ever recurred, although there have been many premonitory symptoms. The lava swells or vents eased the labors of the internal fires and saved the island. Their new and deeper wells, driven by the entire Lyomaran, and reaching the internal fires, gave them greater sense of security. Euralium floats were let down which would not be injured by the great heat, and these, communicating with an indicator at the mouth, told of every disturbance at the surface of the lake of fire. All the indicators were connected with the center of force, and automatically recorded there all they had to tell. The same system of centralized record placed the various indicators of the climolands or earth sensors at every moment ready to the hand of the Lyomo. These climolands were down every force well and told every variation in the heat, the density of the air, the kind of vapor, the magnetism, and the movement of the crust of the earth. No change in the earth below the island down to a distance of 30 or 40 miles. The latter the greatest depth they had reached was neglected. Every indication was properly tabulated and classified, and year was compared with year and month with month, till the meaning and importance of every change were exactly known. The furthest records of the past, as well as those more recent, were daily consulted in order to find the generalization that would fit any new symptom. The Lyomo felt daily the pulse of lilaroma, as a doctor would that of his most valued fever patient. They knew that they had the fate of the race in their hands, and no indication was of too little importance for them to consider. What would all the strivings and labors of the nation come to, if any laxity on their part should allow such a volcanic catastrophe to recur as had destroyed the capital of old? End of Chapter 7 Chapter 8 of Lymonora, the Island of Progress by Godfrey Swevin. This Librivox recording is in the public domain. REMLA In studying the practical aims and issues of earth science, I was taught to manage their apparatus, and to intercept every tremor in the earth's crust and every indication of the instruments. I had already been taught to make their apparatus, for my physical discipline had begun several years before I was admitted to phylum. It was in fact one of their primary maxims that muscular exercises should go on contemporaneously with intellectual and spiritual pursuits, that no citizen should be allowed to neglect for even a day the development of the body intimately as the soul is interwoven with it. As soon as I was thoroughly tested and put through my course of probation, the training of my muscles was begun, and along with the magnetic molting of my brain tissues went the development of the force tissues of the body and the powers of my senses. But no one was permitted to enter their great practical university or workshop till he had become a certain devotee of the race. The ministries and arts and crafts which gave the nation its peculiar powers could not be communicated to anyone who might by some change become an alien. It was thus that many years of residence in Lymanora passed before I was admitted to one of the marvels of the island, the great valley of REMLA. I well remember the evening of my initiation. The night work was as a rule done by the younger men and women of the community. The elders took their turn at the machinery by day, as they had to husband sleep during the hours of darkness and silence. I had often wondered whither went my pro-parents at a fixed hour every day. They vanished in the distance as the sun began to wester, and they returned that evening with high color in their cheeks and the look of having used their muscles with a will. Their physical life seemed to take new impetus from these expeditions. One day on their return they told me that I was to be admitted to REMLA, which they explained to me in the center of force. The mature judgment of the community had decided that I could now be fully trusted. My practical and muscular education was to begin. I was to set out that evening with a band of young workmen who kept the first watch of the night. The sun had scarcely set when my escort arrived, and, as with my slow powers of locomotion I could not be expected to keep up with them, I was placed in one of their flight-cars. I had no companion, for the whole band flew in front and drew the car by some magnetic power unseen, and it was so light-hung and so balanced by wings and domes and parachutes that it seemed capable of being the sport of every wind. Over the central ridge of the island we swept towards a distant slope of Lila Roma. Suddenly, underneath me in the growing darkness, they're shown out in a deep broad valley, a vast dome of light, transparent enough to reveal the flitting shadows underneath it. It seemed the laboratory of a world. Enumerable streams flashed under its upper edge. They sped from the summits of the surrounding hills, or across the gorges from other and more distant ranges. I had seen as we flew hundreds of noble aqueducts spanning the valleys with their arches and columns, some of them thousands of feet up the slopes of Lila Roma. All the waters which the great mountain gathered from the clouds of heaven made their way towards this marvellous domed valley. At its mouth there was a deep gorge, where the artificial or natural was not clear to me then, and through the chasm leaped a river mightier than any I had ever seen. It seemed to be on its way to the sea, but I could not trace its course farther than its massive gateway out of the valley. Beneath the dome I could see vast wheels of air lineum move at all levels. They seemed so fragile that a pebble thrown at them would break them. Yet each turned spindles of enormous power, which moved swifter than lightning. I soon saw that all the intricate machinery was sheathed in casings of their translucent metal, along which flowed a slow, gluttonous stream of some liquid that dripped through perforations on all points of friction. As we alighted, night fell, and the titanic crystal workshop gleamed with a soft radiance that seemed to come from no centers, but was diffused everywhere in the manner of the sun-like or the atmosphere. It was like a vast ice cave of the Arctic Circle, lit by brief and splendid summer. Fairy-like yet vast, it seemed a fabric of some dream-world, but the splash and hiss of the forceful waters and the unresting motion of the machinery made it all real enough. The noises were by no means deafening. They were subdued and musical with a halo of mysterious whisper, like the sounds of nature on a bright day of summer. Nor was the sight bewildering to the eyes. There was too much symmetry in it to perplex and dazzle. High guides and companions tripped lightly and fearlessly through the labyrinth of movement, till they reached an edifice underneath the dome more elaborate and majestic in its beauty than the noblest of Gothic cathedrals. Its towers and spires and pinnacles seemed to aspire to the very stars as we looked up, and yet the loftiest of them failed to reach the zenith of the vast diaphanous roof. Towards this building radiated the moving network of spindles and axles that the flashing water-wheels turned, and out from it passed great transparent tubes of metal woven together fantastically into a forest of gigantic trees and flowers. Nothing of this arabesque of movement marred the colossal symmetry of all beneath the crystal canopy. The church-like building was the shrine of force. In it we found one of the wise men of the elders seated on a high throne, and beside him stood muscular forms ready to do his behests. He laid his hand on a keyboard of innumerable keys, each of which was marked with some hieroglyphic. The attendants scattered to various points along the mosaic floor and watched the working of the labyrinth of wires and tubes. At the touch of the master the whole edifice vibrated, and a sound as of the most sublime orchestration filled the vault. We saw countless wheels and pistons move in flash beneath their transparent metal sheaths, and along each tube, now lit as with starlight, we could watch the rush of vapors or liquids towards their destination in the various factories and houses in the valley and along the mountainside. It was one of the masters of physical force who manipulated the keys. He was controlling and harmonizing the vast power that was concentrated in rim-la, and, instead of the demonic jarring of the engines and machinery which I had been accustomed to in the industrial centers of other lands. The sounds of the marvellous vault made sweet concord that ever varied with the transference of power from purpose to purpose. He was the poinsman of the numberless railroads of energy, and at the same time the musician of the titanic workshop. His will disciplined and guided both the generation and the distribution of all the force of the island. Our troop took the place of that which had been on guard through the sunset and twilight, and separated in pairs throughout the valley, each pair taking under his charge one section of the labyrinthine movement. My comrade, Uriel, the cousin of Thairiel, was a youth of splendid build, the strength of his upper limbs seeming almost bovine, his shoulders and arms not too large for his size, yet giving the impression of gigantic power. I soon saw how much he could do. We were to inspect the generators of force underneath the dome. He first led me to the various streams which came leaping down the slopes and cliffs. One of them from some cause only to be ascertained at the cone of Lila Roma was swollen into a yellow torrent that threatened to overflow its lava banks and flood the valley. In a moment he saw the danger, and rushed to the wing dam dividing the upper course and controlling the amount of water which should flow down to its various wheels and the amount which unused should find its way to the great exit. He found that the separating barrier had lost its automatic motion through the sudden increase of the overflow and the intrusion of a huge boulder that had come down like a battering ram upon it. He set me to guide the machinery and power that moved the dam to suit the strength of the current, and then, fixing a narrow aurelium shield in the bottom of the channel, he leapt into the torrent. The shield I could see, keeping a wreck just above him, shed the stones and bolters to this side and that. Thus protected he raised a huge hammer which he had taken with him and by three or four well-directed blows split the obstacle into half a dozen pieces. He then bent down and removed them out of the way, and suddenly I felt the steering gear begin to work, and saw the dam swing round into the channel leading to the center of force. Wilts the bulk of the torrent found its way to the exit, which was deeper and broader. The danger was past, but a moment's hesitation, either in order to bring up the heavier tools or to call other assistants, would have rune many of the great works upon the levels below and stop the whole operations of Remla for several days. Uriel shook the water from his garments as he leapt out, and in minutes he was on his way with me to the other brooks, cascades, and conduits which gathered the aqueous forces of Lila Roma into this valley of power. Not a drop that fell from the tributary clouds about the head of the mountain did its work for this singular people. The moisture-lifting power of the sun and the force of gravitation that fought with it were alike made the servants and yoke-fellows of the Lymanorans. They refused to waste the energy that nature gave them so freely. This I saw more fully illustrated as I followed Uriel. Having inspected all the forms of steam power, he sped round to the side of the valley nearest to the western shore of the island. There in a great cave or hollow in the rock, brilliantly lit, I saw myriads of wires and cables concentrating from all westward directions on an immense block of labrimore or Irelium alloy. This, he explained to me, was the great electric storage battery of the waves. From the northwest and the southwest came the chief storms and currents that broke on the shores of the island, and underneath the beatling cliffs of lava erected on the western shores. They had a line of long, lofty caves running some hundreds of feet underneath into the land. In these huge veins and water wheels were hung from the roofs and the higher portions of the sides, and the waves as they ran in and out beat their paddles and made them whorl with lightning swiftness. The motion thus communicated was turned by their electro-generators into currents of electric force, which found its way by the network of wires and cables that I saw into this enormous storage battery. In another series of caves they cooped up the water of the full tides by means of gigantic dams and sluice-gates, and this during ebb drove huge wheels and turbines and thus sent the power of the moon into their treasure-house of power. Every storm that ruffled the surface of the ocean, every current that swept past their shores, every ebb or flow of their tides added its quota to the energy accumulated in their electric treasury, a far more wonderful concentration of wealth than any Sinbad's valley or Golconda. Here was ready to the hand of man power greater than all that the nations and the generations had ever been capable of. And the winds had been made as much the slaves of this people as the waves, for another great cavern that we visited was the storehouse of the energy of the winds. In every gorge and pass and golly around Lila Roma, up almost to its crater, had been erected immense windmills, which as they revolved generated electricity. This found its way from all points by massive cables buried in the earth through the conservator of energy in the second cave. Uriel tested the wires to see that they were not leaking anywhere and tested the batteries for faults, and finding everything in good order, we passed into a third power treasury in the rock. This was the vastest of all, for into it there poured the energy of the power wells which was not needed by the private houses spread over the face of the island. As soon as the head of steam was shut off from the machinery or the tubes of any mansion, its whole force was turned upon an engine near the mouth of the well, which kept generating electric force day and night. The accumulation of energy in this cave of wells would have been enough to supply ten times the power that Europe had ever used in her industries. In order to round off our tour of inspection, Uriel led me to another but smaller cave which had just been fitted up with storage batteries. This was the cave of the sun. For generations it had been contented that most of the power from the sun's rays was lost, even when they reached the earth, and the inventors had at last worked out the problem of its utilization. I had noticed as I flew over the country in a fallina, vast gleaming spaces sparkling like gigantic diamonds in the sunlight. These were the reflectors which collected the sunbeams and concentrated their heat and light into power. Upon the slope of Lyroma they utilized the miles of snow surface and gathered their gleam into a few heat engines that sent the generated electricity to Rymla. Vast as the force was, which in these various ways was bent into the service of this people, there seemed still to be the need of increasing it. Never a week passed without some solicitation of the collection and distribution of energy by an improvement in the machinery. The mechanic families were ever busy competing with one another in invention and practical application of some principle or idea, and the pioneering families who wrote imagination to the verge of practicability marched ahead of them, mapping tracks and highways into the unknown future. One proposal was to utilize the magnetism of the earth as a new source of energy, and already one of the mechanical families was far on the way to its realization. Another that was near at hand was the use of the expansion of their liquefied and solidified air for purposes of power. One plan somewhat farther off from the realm of practicability was the utilization of the primal ether by means of its compression and expansion. Yet they were working at it in full hope of finding a solution of the problem at some unexpected turn of their imaginative road into the darkness. They had achieved so much that they had almost boundless faith in their ultimate power to solve all problems presented to their minds. They would face the death of the whole race sooner than the thought of ceasing to push forward into the night that encircled life. My mind was almost paralyzed at the thought of the vastness of the power controlled in the center of force, but it explained to me the ease with which they could drive their leomorans miles and miles through the solid crust of the earth, the power they had over the volcanic fires of Lila Roma, the strength of the blast they could send far out to see from their storm-cone, and the general facility with which they could control and use even the most titanic forces of nature. I did not wonder now that they were the masters rather than the servants of nature. Especially when I saw that by the strength and nicety of their machines they could concentrate all this tremendous force upon any single point or distribute it over a wide area at the striking of a key on the great keyboard of forces. I have seen one of the masters of energy turn the whole current from the ten thousand services it was doing throughout the island upon making of a diamond. So enormous was the temperature it generated in a few moments, that a piece of carbon, submitted to the heat and pressure, came forth a magnificent jewel gleaming and sheening in the light. But this was for no silly purpose of personal ornamentation. It was meant for the friction edge of a leomoran down where it bit into the rock. It was the easiest thing in the world for this people with all the concentration of power they had at their call to follow nature in their most occult or tremendous processes. There was not a metal they could not produce with their high temperatures and enormous pressures. It is true that all other operations had to be stopped in order to transmute rapidly common materials into gold, irillineum, or diamonds. But it could be done, and they had no need to dig into the bowels of the earth like other men for the more precious metals and crystals which had accumulated there in the volcanic or chemical past. It was one of their commonest sayings that no science which was not creative was worthy of the name. True, there were often long tracks of scientific investigation that seemed entirely barren, and many of their researches seemed to lead now hither. But when I inquired more minutely, I found the investigators had realized many of the practical applications of the discovery when once they should reach it. They regarded as futile all abstract inquiries which had only a distant and unforeseen chance of ending in something useful. Even their astronomy had a keen eye to the possibilities of their future. It led not only to a deeper knowledge of the living heart of creation and to a wider enjoyment of the pleasures of imagination and faith, but to the purpose of the immediate life. It gave them immortal forms for their art and especially their architecture. It molded or suggested their divinest music. It brought into even their physical life influences unlike those of the earth. And they hoped, with full faith, that through this they might catch the wandering thoughts or voices of the beings of other worlds, and at last reach the power of immigration from star to star. Their most creative science was chemistry, for this had reached the secrets of nature's most mysterious processes, and had imitated and generally abbreviated the workings of her great laboratory. The lima-norns did not need to grow the plants and trees that used to produce their food. Agriculture had ceased to be necessary for them except as a part of landscape gardening. The elements and combinations that used to be extracted from their harvests in order to support and exhilarate life could be created directly in the chemical laboratories. Everything needed as diet was drawn straight from the earth without the long process of growth and cullination. They had the prime factors of sustenance in unlimited quantity and purest form with the minimum of labor, and they could give to these the exact quality and refinement which would bear them straight to the various tissues or cells of the body without the need of its offensive chemical processes. Most of the chemistry of life's sustenance was accomplished before the food entered the human system, and the space and energy of the body that had before gone to the elementary process of life were now free for other and higher institutions. Pharmacy and chemical science combined to create all that the Constitution required, not only for support and frictionless continuance, but for its progress towards longer life and more ethereal texture. Their medicine had ages before past the crude stage of mere cure of disease. They laughed at the idea of the science as merely therapeutic. It must be creative. The interrelations of the higher and lower elements of the nature were unremittingly studied in the case of every member of the community, and every means of change in them that would lead to the ennobling of limonor and humanity was carefully prescribed. I was led through their food factories and grew deeply interested in their processes of analysis and combination. They seemed never to have any hesitation about the exact quantity of each element and the exact temperature and pressure needed to produce any given kind of sustenance. One of the most singular departments of these factories was that in which they had yoked the infinitesimal plant and animal life of the universe to the chemicalization of their food and medicine. They knew how to utilize all the life they could come across, however microscopic, and here under their marvelously powerful magnifying instruments I could see the minutest of all life enslaved to their purposes. Nothing could surpass the exactitude with which they had defined the functions and spheres of these mysterious beings invisible to the naked eye. Each had its own department of industry. No one of them interfered with the other. It was life put to its best purpose of sustaining the noblest life. When I saw the huge aeryllium tubes bearing out the results in aerial or vaporous form, I grew anxious to test the effects at the other end of them. At my own request I was taken one day to Umelefa, the great series of public halls and baths which formed the chief center of associative life in the island. I had not known of the institution before, for I was still too little advanced in physical nature to be clear of the inner chemical processes needed for nutrition, and it had not been thought necessary to show me a section of their public life in which I could have no special share. But, now that my own eagerness for knowledge had brought me to the stage of education which demanded insight into this institution, they were willing that I should inspect it and see all its peculiar features.