A DWELLER ON TWO PLANETS
OR
THE DIVIDING OF THE
WAY
BY PHYLOS THE THIBETAN
SEVEN SHASTA SCENES
By Frederick S. Oliver, Amanuensis
INTERLUDE VI
Returned from the far south, and in camp. In camp at the timber line on Tchastel's
side, awaiting the nightfall, and through the long afternoon gazing out over a wealth
of scenery not in word power to paint. To the north "Goose Nest" mountain, its crater
ever full of fleecy snow, rears itself aloft eleven thousand feet. Down yonder in
that gemlike valley is the lovely town of Sissons; down, to our traveler, albeit
on a plane seven thousand feet above the ocean. Night. But not in a tent door. No,
on muleback, he and a companion are toiling upwards. There is no moon, no wind,
no sound, save a few strange noises arising from the nether regions. No moon, yet
plenty of light, since the snow seems self luminous, so that objects appear against
it in sharp silhouette. How black the bleak rocks and ledges! And those glimmerings
of light afar in the night, what are they? Lamps; lamps miles away, thousands of
feet lower, yet in seeming not so far off. It is cold; oh, so frightfully cold,
numbing the mind! And still-as the grave. No sounds now arise to the ear; 'tis too
high for aught save silence. So cold; and yet midday sun heats reflect from the
snows as from a mirror, and then the temperature if fearful to feel, yet the snow
melts not. Here is a hot, sulphur spring, one-thousand feet below the apex. Warm
your chilled hands in the hot mud, wipe them quickly, lest they freeze, and climb
on. Your eyes, could you see them, congested as they are in the rarefied atmosphere,
the color of liver, would horrify you. Your breathing pains you; your heartbeats
sound like the thuds of a piledriver; your throat is afire from thirst. No matter;
here is the top! Two o'clock a. m. in July, 188-. As yet no light, but faint dawn.
But ere long the soul is awestricken by a weird glow in the cut, which lights nothing.
The beholders are filled with a strange disquiet; see the waxing light, and--in a fearful wonder,
almost terror---see the great sun, scarce heralded by the aerial rarity, spring
from. beneath the horizon. Yet all below is in "the darkest hour before the dawn."
No ridges, no hills appear, no valleys, nothing but "night's deep darkness." We
seem to have lost the world, and, for the nonce, are free of time! The planet is
swallowed up, leaving the mountain top's half acre sole visible spot of all the
Universe, save only the fearful splendor of Helios. Understand now, for you may,
the sensations of Campbell's "last man." The world all gone, and self and comrade
alone on a small spot in midair, whereon the almost rayless sun casts cold beams
of strange, weird brightness. Look north. Afar in the night axe four cones of light,
Mt. Hood, Mt. Adams, Mt. Tacoma, and St. Helen's tall torch, all peers of our Ieka.
As the Day King soars higher lesser peaks appear, then long black ridges, ranges
of vast extent, begin near by, only to lose themselves in distant darkness.
Now the void of night vanishes, hills stand forth, silvery spots and streaks
appear as the dawn lights lakes and rivers, and at last, no fog obscuring, in the
distant west, seventy miles away, is seen a great gray plain, the Pacific's broad
expanse. To the south, interrupted streaks of silver show where flow Pitt and Sacramento
rivers, while over two hundred miles away behold an indentation of California's
central coast, marking the Golden Gate, and San Francisco's world-famed bay.
MAP OF ATLANTIS
MAP OF ATLANTIS
ATLANTEAN WORLD MAP