List Members,
Here is the last of the three missing chapters which were mistakenly omitted
from the book Etidorhpa. If you have already downloaded, paste this last
missing chapter in.
I am trying to post it to the site, but my site host is clogged, I might not
get it done until tomorrow.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE CRY FROM A DISTANCE. I REBEL AGAINST CONTINUING
THE JOURNEY.
As we paced along, meditating, I became more sensibly impressed with the
fact that our progress was down a rapid declination. The saline
incrustations, fungi and stalagmites, rapidly changed in appearance, an
endless variety of stony figures and vegetable cryptogams recurring
successively before my eyes. They bore the shape of trees, shrubs, or
animals, fixed and silent as statues: at least in my distorted condition of
mind I could make out resemblances to many such familiar objects; the floor
of the cavern became increasingly steeper, as was shown by the stalactites,
which, hanging here and there from the invisible ceiling, made a decided
angle with the floor, corresponding with a similar angle of the stalagmites
below. Like an accompanying and encircling halo the ever present earthlight
enveloped us, opening in front as we advanced, and vanishing in the rear.
The sound of our footsteps gave back a peculiar, indescribable hollow echo,
and our voices sounded ghostlike and unearthly, as if their origin was
outside of our bodies, and at a distance. The peculiar resonance reminded me
of noises reverberating in an empty cask or cistern. I was oppressed by an
indescribable feeling of mystery and awe that grew deep and intense, until
at last I could no longer bear the mental strain.
" Hold, hold," I shouted, or tried to shout, and stopped
suddenly, for although I had cried aloud, no sound escaped my lips. Then
from a distance could I believe my senses ? from a distance as an echo,
the cry came back in the tones of my own voice, " Hold, hold."
" Speak lower," said my guide, " speak very low, for now an effort such as
you have made projects your voice far outside your body; the greater the
exertion the farther away it appears."
I grasped him by the arm and said slowly, determinedly, and in a suppressed
tone: " I have come far enough into the secret caverns of the earth, without
knowing our destination; acquaint me now with the object of this mysterious
journey, I demand, and at once relieve this sense of uncertainty ; otherwise
I shall go no farther."
" You are to proceed to the Sphere of Rest with me," he replied, " and in
safety. Beyond that an Unknown Country lies, into which I have never
ventured."
" You speak in enigmas; what is this Sphere of Rest? Where is it?"
" Your eyes have never seen anything similar; human philosophy has no
conception of it, and I can not describe it," he said. " It is located in
the body of the earth, and we will meet it about one thousand miles beyond
the North Pole."
" But I am in Kentucky," I replied; " do you think that I propose to walk to
the North Pole, manif man you be; that unreached goal is thousands of miles
away."
" True," he answered, " as you measure distance on the
surface of the earth, and you could not walk it in years of time;
but you are now twentyfive miles below the surface, and you
must be aware that instead of becoming more weary as we
proceed, you are now and have for some time been gaining
strength. I would also call to your attention that you neither
hunger nor thirst."
" Proceed," I said, " 'tis useless to rebel; I am wholly in your
power," and we resumed our journey, and rapidly went forward
amid silences that were to me painful beyond description. We
abruptly entered a cavern of crystal, every portion of which was
of sparkling brilliancy, and as white as snow. The stalactites,
stalagmites and fungi disappeared. I picked up a fragment of
the bright material, tasted it, and found that it resembled pure
salt. Monstrous, cubical crystals, a foot or more in diameter,
stood out in bold relief, accumulations of them, as conglomer
ated masses, banked up here and there, making parts of great
columnar cliffs, while in other formations the crystals were small,
resembling in the aggregate masses of white sandstone.
" Is not this salt?" I asked.
" Yes; we are now in the dried bed of an underground
lake."
"Dried bed?" I exclaimed; " a body of water sealed in the
earth can not evaporate."
" It has not evaporated; at some remote period the water has
been abstracted from the salt, and probably has escaped upon the
surface of the earth as a fresh water spring."
" You contradict all laws of hydrostatics, as I understand that
subject," I replied, "when you speak of abstracting water from a
dissolved substance that is part of a liquid, and thus leaving the
solids."
" Nevertheless this is a constant act of nature," said he;
" how else can you rationally account for the great salt beds and
other deposits of saline materials that exist hermetically sealed
beneath the earth's surface?"
" I will confess that I have not given the subject much
thought; I simply accept the usual explanation to the effect that
salty seas have lost their water by evaporation, and afterward the salt
formations, by some convulsions of nature, have been
covered with earth, perhaps sinking by earthquake convulsions bodily into
the earth."
" These explanations are examples of some of the erroneous views of
scientific writers," he replied; " they are true only to a limited extent.
The great beds of salt, deep in the earth, are usually accumulations left
there by water that is drawn from brine lakes, from which the liberated
water often escaped as pure spring water at the surface of the earth. It
does not escape by evaporation, at least not until it reaches the earth's
surface."