The greetings were pleasant, and as the
Superintendent spoke his former earth language, which had been French,
we got along intelligibly.
"The rooms of this house were large, square apartments, simply furnished
with the white chairs, tables and couches I had seen in the City of
Light, but on its walls were drawings and photographs of the quarry, the
country, and groups of the workmen. Amongst the pictures were some
wonderful large scenes of an ice country, and the lustrous high wall of
a gigantic glacier. I pointed these out to Chapman. He told me that to
the north of the mountains lay the great northern sea, in winter a sea
of ice, and that from continental elevations within it glacial masses
pushed outward, invading the southern country. A road led over the
mountain from Sinsi to regions beyond, where there were fertile
intervals and plains inhabited by populations of the small, early people
we had met.
"Here were their settlements, from which the workmen of the quarries had
been brought. Beyond this again lay the margins of the polar sea. The
Superintendent--his name was Alca--had visited this region, and probably
made the pictures I wondered at. The Superintendent said we should visit
the great quarry in the morning before we started again for Scandor. And
he showed us, as the darkness descended about us, a marvellous
phenomenon. Standing on the roof of his house, we looked up the mountain
side to the immense opening forced in its flank, and it had become a
great surface of palpitating, rising and falling light.
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