|
other. This was done purposely, so as to remind every man of his
duty to Atlas on every occasion on which he might meet a fellow-
citizen.
The Banqueting-Hall of the children was usually very large.
The furniture, which had been brought by the first colonists, and
gradually disused by adults, never needed repair. A vast open
doorway facing North opened on the mountainside on to the
vineyards and orchards, the meadows and gardens, in which the
children passed their time. Suckled by the mother for three
months only, the child was then already able to nourish itself on
the bread and wine, and on the flesh of the amphibious herds, of
which there were several kinds; one a piglike animal with flesh
resembling wild duck, another a sort of amatee tasting like
salmon, its fat being somewhat like caviar in everything but
texture, and a sure specific for any of childhood's troubles. A
third, an ancestor of our hippopotamus, was really tamed, and was
employed by the serviles for preparing the ground for the corn,
trampling through the fields while they were covered with sea-
water, and thus leaving deep holes in which the seeds were cast.
Its flesh was not unlike bear, but more delicate. Notable, too,
was the great quantity of turtle; also the giant oysters, the
huge deep sea crabs, a kind of octopus whose flesh made a
nutritious and elegant soup, and innumerable shell-fish, added to
the table. The waterways were haunted by shoals of a small and
poisonous fish,* whose bite was immediate death to man, a fact
which altogether cut off communication between one island and
another except by air, as the hippopotamus-animal, although
immune to its bite, was unable to swim.
Of the sleeping chambers I shall tell more particularly in the
course of my remarks on Zro.
.pa
III.
OF THE AIM OF THE MAGICIANS OF
ATLAS: OF ZRO; AND ITS PROPERTIES
AND USES: OF THAT WHICH
COMBINED WITH IT: AND OF
BLACK PHOSPHORUS.
It was the most ancient tradition of the Atlantean magicians
that they were the survivors of a race inhabiting a country
called Lemuria, of which the South Pacific archipelago may be the
remains. These Lemurians had, they held, built up a civilization
equal, if not superior to their own; but through a
misunderstanding of magical law--some said the 2nd, some the 8th,
some the 23rd--had involved themselves and their land in ruin.
Others thought that the Lemurians had succeeded in their magical
task, and broken their temple. In any case, it was the secret
Lemurian tradition that they themselves represented the survivals
of a yet earlier race who lived on ice, and they of yet another
who lived in fire, and they again of earlier colonists from Mars.
The theory, in fine, was that the aim of man is to attain the
Sun, whence, according to one school of cosmology, he was exiled
in the cosmic catastrophe which resulted in the formation of
Neptune. His task on any given planet was therefore to overturn
the laws of Nature on that planet, thus mastering it sufficiently
to enable him to make the leap to the next planet inward. Exactly
|