The Night Land

Yet, there was this, about that small and peculiar book, that it did

speak of many of these things, as it were that it did quote from the

pens of those that did have actual witness; and set all out with a

strange gravity, that did cause one to consider it as meant to be indeed

the tellings of Truth, and to seem thiswise to have great difference

from all that I had read before concerning those matters.

And there was, further, a part in the ending of the book, that did seem

to be writ of a time that came afterwards, maybe an hundred thousand,

and maybe a million years; but who shall say.

And therein it did tell of an huge and mighty Valley that did come out

of the West, towards the South-East, and made turning thence Northwards,

and was a thousand miles both ways. And the sides thereof were an

hundred miles deep, and the Sun did stand in the Western end, and made a

red gloom for a thousand miles. And in the bottom there were great seas;

and beasts strange and awesome, and very plentiful.

Now this, as may be seen, was as the talk of Romance; yet did I turn my

wits to their natural end, and made thus plain of it. For, in truth, I

to have something of belief, and it to seem to me that in a bygone

Eternity, when the world was yet light, as in my heart I knew to have

been indeed a thing of verity, there was a great and wondrous

earthquake. And the earthquake did burst the world up, along a certain great curve

where it had weakness; and there fell into the yawning furnace of the

world, one of the great oceans; and immediately made of itself steam,

and so brake upwards again, and tore the earth mightily in its swift

uprising. And thereafter there was a mist and confusion and rain upon the world.

And, indeed, all very seemly put; and not to be taken as a light tale.

Then, in that ending of the book, there was one that did write, having

lived in a vast later age, when the Sun had come anigh to his dying, and

the upward earth was grown quiet and cold and not good to live upon. And

in that time the Mighty Chasm had been calmed by the weight of an

Eternity, so that it was now a most deep and wondrous Valley, that did

hold Seas and great Hills and Mountains; and in it were great forests of

kinds, and Lands that were good and healthful; and Places given over to

Fire, and to Steamings, and Sulphur Clouds; so that they held Poisons

that had ill for Man.