In the end the Mi-Go drove the Old Ones out of all the northern lands,
though they were powerless to disturb those in the sea. Little by
little the slow retreat of the elder race to their original antarctic
habitat was beginning. *       *       *       *       *

It was curious to note from the pictured battles that both the Cthulhu
spawn and the Mi-Go seem to have been composed of matter more widely
different from that which we know than was the substance of the Old
Ones. They were able to undergo transformations and reintegrations
impossible for their adversaries, and seem therefore to have originally
come from even remoter gulfs of cosmic space. The Old Ones, but for their abnormal toughness and peculiar vital
properties, were strictly material, and must have had their absolute
origin within the known space-time continuum--whereas the first
sources of the other beings can only be guessed at with bated breath. All this, of course, assuming that the nonterrestrial linkages and
the anomalies ascribed to the invading foes are not pure mythology. Conceivably, the Old Ones might have invented a cosmic framework
to account for their occasional defeats, since historical interest
and pride obviously formed their chief psychological element. It is
significant that their annals failed to mention many advanced and
potent races of beings whose mighty cultures and towering ethics figure
persistently in certain obscure legends. The changing state of the world through long geologic ages appeared
with startling vividness in many of the sculptured maps and scenes. In
certain cases existing science will require revision, while in other
cases its bold deductions are magnificently confirmed. As I have said, the hypothesis of Taylor, Wegener, and Joly that all
the continents are fragments of an original antarctic land mass which
cracked from centrifugal force and drifted apart over a technically
viscous lower surface--an hypothesis suggested by such things as the
complimentary outlines of Africa and South America, and the way the
great mountain chains are rolled and shoved up--receives striking
support from this uncanny source. Maps evidently showing the Carboniferous of a hundred million or
more years ago displayed significant rifts and chasms destined later
to separate Africa from the once continuous realms of Europe (then
the Valusia of primal legend), Asia, the Americas, and the antarctic
continent. Other charts--and most significantly one in connection with the
founding fifty million years ago of the vast dead city around
us--showed all the present continents well differentiated. And in
the latest discoverable specimen--dating perhaps from the Pliocene
Age--the approximate world of to-day appeared quite clearly despite the
linkage of Alaska with Siberia, of North America with Europe through
Greenland, and of South America with the antarctic continent through
Graham Land. In the Carboniferous map the whole globe--ocean floor and rifted land
mass alike--bore symbols of the Old Ones' vast stone cities, but in the
later charts the gradual recession toward the antarctic became very
plain. The final Pliocene specimen showed no land cities except on the
antarctic continent and the tip of South America, nor any ocean
cities north of the fiftieth parallel of South Latitude. Knowledge
and interest in the northern world, save for a study of coast lines
probably made during long exploration flights on those fan-like
membranous wings, had evidently declined to zero among the Old Ones. Destruction of cities through the up-thrust of mountains, the
centrifugal rending of continents, the seismic convulsions of land or
sea bottom, and other natural causes was a matter of common record; and
it was curious to observe how fewer and fewer replacements were made as
the ages wore on. The vast dead megalopolis that yawned around us seemed to be the last
general center of the race--built early in the Cretaceous Age after a
titanic earth buckling had obliterated a still vaster predecessor not
far distant. It appeared that this general region was the most sacred spot of
all, where reputedly the first Old Ones had settled on a primal sea
bottom. In the new city--many of whose features we could recognize
in the sculptures, but which stretched fully a hundred miles along
the mountain range in each direction beyond the farthest limits of
our aërial survey--there were reputed to be preserved certain sacred
stones forming part of the first sea-bottom city, which were thrust up
to light after long epochs in the course of the general crumpling of
strata. VIII. Naturally, Danforth and I studied with special interest and a
peculiarly personal sense of awe everything pertaining to the immediate
district in which we were. Of this local material there was naturally a
vast abundance. On the tangled ground level of the city we were lucky enough to find
a house of very late date whose walls, though somewhat damaged by a
neighboring rift, contained sculptures of decadent workmanship carrying
the story of the region, much beyond the Pliocene map, whence we
derived our last general glimpse of the prehuman world. This was the
last place we examined in detail, since what we found there set upon us
a fresh, immediate objective. Certainly, we were in one of the strangest, weirdest, and most terrible
of all the corners of earth's globe. Of all existing lands it was
infinitely the most ancient. The conviction grew upon us that this
hideous upland must indeed be the fabled nightmare plateau of Leng
which even the mad author of the _Necronomicon_ was reluctant to
discuss. The great mountain chain was tremendously long--starting as a low range
at Luitpold Land on the coast of Weddell Sea and virtually crossing the
entire continent. The really high part stretched in a mighty arc from
about Latitude 82°, E. Longitude 60° to Latitude 70°, East Longitude
115°, with its concave side toward our camp and its seaward end in the
region of that long, ice-locked coast whose hills were glimpsed by
Wilkes and Mawson at the antarctic circle. Yet even more monstrous exaggerations of nature seemed disturbingly
close at hand. I have said that these peaks are higher than the
Himalayas, but the sculptures forbid me to say that they are earth's
highest. That grim honor is beyond doubt reserved for something
which half the sculptures hesitated to record at all, whilst others
approached it with obvious repugnance and trepidation. It seems that there was one part of the ancient land--the first part
that ever rose from the waters after the earth had flung off the moon
and the Old Ones had seeped down from the stars--which had come to be
shunned as vaguely and namelessly evil. Cities built there had crumbled
before their time, and had been found suddenly deserted.