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rock of preCambrian slate. The buildings were far from equal in size, there
being innumerable honeycomb arrangements of enormous extent as well as smaller
separate structures. The general shape of these things tended to be conical,
pyramidal, or terraced; though there were many perfect cylinders, perfect
cubes, clusters of cubes, and other rectangular forms, and a peculiar
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sprinkling of angled edifices whose five-pointed ground plan roughly suggested
modern fortifications. The builders had made constant and expert use of the
principle of the arch, and domes had probably existed in the city s heyday.
The whole tangle was monstrously weathered, and the glacial surface from which
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strewn with fallen blocks and immemorial debris. Where the glaciation was
transparent we could see the lower parts of the gigantic piles, and we noticed
the ice-preserved stone bridges which connected the different towers at
varying distances above the ground. On the exposed walls we could detect the
scarred places where other and higher bridges of the same sort had existed.
Closer inspection revealed countless largish windows; some of which were
closed with shutters of a petrified material originally wood, though most
gaped open in a sinister and menacing fashion. Many of the ruins, of course,
were roofless, and with uneven though wind-rounded upper edges; whilst others,
of a more sharply conical or pyramidal model or else protected by higher
surrounding structures, preserved intact outlines despite the omnipresent
crumbling and pitting. With the field glass we could barely make out what
seemed to be sculptural decorations in horizontal bands - decorations
including those curious groups of dots whose presence on the ancient
soapstones now assumed a vastly larger significance.
In many places the buildings were totally ruined and the ice sheet deeply
riven from various geologic causes. In other places the stonework was worn
down to the very level of the glaciation. One broad swath, extending from the
plateau s interior, to a cleft in the foothills about a mile to the left of
the pass we had traversed, was wholly free from buildings. It probably
represented, we concluded, the course of some great river which in Tertiary
times - millions of years ago - had poured through the city and into some
prodigious subterranean abyss of the great barrier range. Certainly, this was
above all a region of caves, gulfs, and underground secrets beyond human
penetration.
Looking back to our sensations, and recalling our dazedness at viewing this
monstrous survival from aeons we had thought prehuman, I can only wonder that
we preserved the semblance of equilibrium, which we did. Of course, we knew
that something - chronology, scientific theory, or our own consciousness - was
woefully awry; yet we kept enough poise to guide the plane, observe many
things quite minutely, and take a careful series of photographs which may yet
serve both us and the world in good stead. In my case, ingrained scientific
habit may have helped; for above all my bewilderment and sense of menace,
there burned a dominant curiosity to fathom more of this age-old secret - to
know what sort of beings had built and lived in this incalculably gigantic
place, and what relation to the general world of its time or of other times so
unique a concentration of life could have had.
For this place could be no ordinary city. It must have formed the primary
nucleus and center of some archaic and unbelievable chapter of earth s history
whose outward ramifications, recalled only dimly in the most obscure and
distorted myths, had vanished utterly amidst the chaos of terrene convulsions
long before any human race we know had shambled out of apedom. Here sprawled a
Palaeogaean megalopolis compared with which the fabled Atlantis and Lemuria,
Commoriom and Uzuldaroum, and Olathoc in the land of Lomar, are recent things
of today - not even of yesterday; a megalopolis ranking with such whispered
prehuman blasphemies as Valusia, R lyeh, Ib in the land of Mnar, and the
Nameless city of Arabia Deserta. As we flew above that tangle of stark titan
towers my imagination sometimes escaped all bounds and roved aimlessly in
realms of fantastic associations - even weaving links betwixt this lost world
and some of my own wildest dreams concerning the mad horror at the camp.
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The plane s fuel tank, in the interest of greater lightness, had been only
partly filled; hence we now had to exert caution in our explorations. Even so,
however, we covered an enormous extent of ground - or, rather, air - after
swooping down to a level where the wind became virtually negligible. There
seemed to be no limit to the mountain range, or to the length of the frightful
stone city which bordered its inner foothills. Fifty miles of flight in each
direction showed no major change in the labyrinth of rock and masonry that
clawed up corpselike through the eternal ice. There were, though, some highly
absorbing diversifications; such as the carvings on the canyon where that
broad river had once pierced the foothills and approached its sinking place in
the great range. The headlands at the stream s entrance had been boldly carved
into
Cyclopean pylons; and something about the ridgy, barrel-shaped designs stirred
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ecraft%20-%20At%20the%20Mountains%20of%20Madness.txt up oddly vague, hateful,
and confusing semi-remembrances in both Danforth and me.
We also came upon several star-shaped open spaces, evidently public squares,
and noted various undulations in the terrain. Where a sharp hill rose, it was
generally hollowed out into some sort of rambling-stone edifice; but there
were at least two exceptions. Of these latter, one was too badly weathered to
disclose what had been on the jutting eminence, while the other still bore a
fantastic conical monument carved out of the solid rock and roughly resembling
such things as the well-known Snake Tomb in the ancient valley of Petra.
Flying inland from the mountains, we discovered that the city was not of
infinite width, even though its length along the foothills seemed endless.
After about thirty miles the grotesque stone buildings began to thin out, and
in ten more miles we came to an unbroken waste virtually without signs of
sentient artifice. The course of the river beyond the city seemed marked by a
broad, depressed line, while the land assumed a somewhat greater ruggedness,
seeming to slope slightly upward as it receded in the mist-hazed west.
So far we had made no landing, yet to leave the plateau without an attempt at
entering some of the monstrous structures would have been inconceivable.
Accordingly, we decided to find a smooth place on the foothills near our [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]