The Coming Race Read online

  Chapter III.

  Slowly and cautiously I went my solitary way down the lamplit road andtowards the large building I have described. The road itself seemed likea great Alpine pass, skirting rocky mountains of which the one throughwhose chasm I had descended formed a link. Deep below to the left laya vast valley, which presented to my astonished eye the unmistakeableevidences of art and culture. There were fields covered with a strangevegetation, similar to none I have seen above the earth; the colour ofit not green, but rather of a dull and leaden hue or of a golden red.

  There were lakes and rivulets which seemed to have been curved intoartificial banks; some of pure water, others that shone like pools ofnaphtha. At my right hand, ravines and defiles opened amidst the rocks,with passes between, evidently constructed by art, and bordered by treesresembling, for the most part, gigantic ferns, with exquisite varietiesof feathery foliage, and stems like those of the palm-tree. Others weremore like the cane-plant, but taller, bearing large clusters of flowers.Others, again, had the form of enormous fungi, with short thick stemssupporting a wide dome-like roof, from which either rose or drooped longslender branches. The whole scene behind, before, and beside me far asthe eye could reach, was brilliant with innumerable lamps. The worldwithout a sun was bright and warm as an Italian landscape at noon, butthe air less oppressive, the heat softer. Nor was the scene before mevoid of signs of habitation. I could distinguish at a distance, whetheron the banks of the lake or rivulet, or half-way upon eminences,embedded amidst the vegetation, buildings that must surely be the homesof men. I could even discover, though far off, forms that appeared tome human moving amidst the landscape. As I paused to gaze, I saw tothe right, gliding quickly through the air, what appeared a smallboat, impelled by sails shaped like wings. It soon passed out of sight,descending amidst the shades of a forest. Right above me there was nosky, but only a cavernous roof. This roof grew higher and higher at thedistance of the landscapes beyond, till it became imperceptible, as anatmosphere of haze formed itself beneath.

  Continuing my walk, I started,--from a bush that resembled a greattangle of sea-weeds, interspersed with fern-like shrubs and plants oflarge leafage shaped like that of the aloe or prickly-pear,--a curiousanimal about the size and shape of a deer. But as, after bounding awaya few paces, it turned round and gazed at me inquisitively, I perceivedthat it was not like any species of deer now extant above the earth,but it brought instantly to my recollection a plaster cast I had seenin some museum of a variety of the elk stag, said to have existed beforethe Deluge. The creature seemed tame enough, and, after inspecting me amoment or two, began to graze on the singular herbiage around undismayedand careless.