"How wonderfully strange and exciting it all seemed! Down the crowded
canal we slowly moved, amidst the calling crews, the pleasant cheers,
and beckonings of sightseers; and back of us rose on its hills the City
of Light, that, as we passed still further away, and watched it in the
fading sunset, began to glow, and finally, to shine like some titanic
opal in the velvet shadows of the night.
"These numerous arms of the canal some miles from the City coalesce and
merge into the enormous trunk canal that passes on to Scandor through
hills and mountains and the plain country, excavated by the wonderful
Toto powder. This trunk canal is doubled; upon one member, the boats
pass outward to Scandor, and on the other the boats return. Branches
pass north and south at centers of population, and of some of these
which pass actually into the frozen depths of the polar countries, I may
tell you later.
"As we slowly progressed into the undulating plain country, with its
villages and farm lands, diversified by woods, and sometimes solitary
projections of rock, as the stars stole urgently into the sky, as the
phosphori lamps began their soft illumination of the decks, and while
murmurs of songs from merrymakers on the land came to us in snatches
bewitchingly, though incongruously mingled with the delicious odors of
the Napi grass, I turned to Chapman, and felt that now, throughout the
hours of the genial night, I would pour out unchecked the flood of
inquiry that had risen again and again to my lips in this strange new
life.
Pages:
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132