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 navigable pass, there grounding the plane and
preparing to do some exploration on foot. Though these gradual slopes were partly covered with a scattering of
ruins, low flying soon disclosed an ample number of possible landing
places. Selecting that nearest to the pass, since our next flight would
be across the great range and back to camp, we succeeded about twelve
thirty p.m. in coming down on a smooth, hard snow field wholly devoid
of obstacles and well adapted to a swift and favorable take-off later
on. *       *       *       *       *

It did not seem necessary to protect the plane with a snow banking for
so brief a time and in so comfortable an absence of high winds at this
level; hence we merely saw that the landing skis were safely lodged,
and that the vital parts of the mechanism were guarded against the cold. For our foot journey we discarded the heaviest of our flying furs, and
took with us a small outfit consisting of pocket compass, hand camera,
light provisions, voluminous notebooks and paper, geologist's hammer
and chisel, specimen bags, coil of climbing rope, and powerful electric
torches with extra batteries; this equipment having been carried in the
plane on the chance that we might be able to effect a landing, take
ground pictures, make drawings and topographical sketches, and obtain
rock specimens from some bare slope, outcropping, or mountain cave. Fortunately, we had a supply of extra paper to tear up, place in a
spare specimen bag, and use on the ancient principle of hare and hounds
for marking our course in any interior mazes we might be able to
penetrate. This had been brought in case we found some cave system with
air quiet enough to allow such a rapid and easy method in place of the
usual rock-chipping method of trail blazing. Walking cautiously downhill over the crusted snow, toward the
stupendous stone labyrinth that loomed against the opalescent west,
we felt almost as keen a sense of imminent marvels as we had felt on
approaching the unfathomed mountain pass four hours previously. True, we had become visually familiar with the incredible secret
concealed by the barrier peaks; yet the prospect of actually entering
primordial walls reared by conscious beings perhaps millions of years
ago--before any known race of men could have existed--was none the
less awesome and potentially terrible in its implications of cosmic
abnormality. Though the thinness of the air at this prodigious altitude made
exertion somewhat more difficult than usual, both Danforth and I found
ourselves bearing up very well, and felt equal to almost any task which
might fall to our lot. It took only a few steps to bring us to a shapeless ruin worn level
with the snow, while ten or fifteen rods farther on there was a huge,
roofless rampart still complete in its gigantic five-pointed outline,
and rising to an irregular height of ten or eleven feet. For this
latter we headed; and when at last we were actually able to touch
its weathered Cyclopean blocks, we felt that we had established an
unprecedented and almost blasphemous link with forgotten æons normally
closed to our species. This rampart, shaped like a star and perhaps three hundred feet from
point to point, was built of Jurassic sandstone blocks of irregular
size, averaging 6 x 8 feet in surface. There was a row of arched
loopholes or windows about four feet wide and five feet high, spaced
quite symmetrically along the points of the star and at its inner
angles, and with the bottoms about four feet from the glaciated surface. Looking through these, we could see that the masonry was fully five
feet thick, that there were no partitions remaining within, and that
there were traces of banded carvings or bas-reliefs on the interior
walls--facts we had indeed guessed before, when flying low over this
rampart and others like it. Though lower parts must have originally
existed, all traces of such things were now wholly obscured by the deep
layer of ice and snow at this point. We crawled through one of the windows and vainly tried to decipher
the nearly effaced mural designs, but did not attempt to disturb
the glaciated floor. Our orientation flights had indicated that many
buildings in the city proper were less ice-choked, and that we might
perhaps find wholly clear interiors leading down to the true ground
level if we entered those structures still roofed at the top. Before we left the rampart we photographed it carefully, and studied
its mortarless Cyclopean masonry with complete bewilderment. We wished
that Pabodie were present, for his engineering knowledge might have
helped us guess how such titanic blocks could have been handled in that
unbelievably remote age when the city and its outskirts were built up. *       *       *       *       *

The half-mile walk downhill to the actual city, with the upper wind
shrieking vainly and savagely through the skyward peaks in the
background, was something of which the smallest details will always
remain engraved on my mind. Only in fantastic nightmares could any
human beings but Danforth and me conceive such optical effects. Between us and the churning vapors of the west lay that monstrous
tangle of dark stone towers, its outré and incredible forms impressing
us afresh at every new angle of vision. It was a mirage in solid stone,
and were it not for the photographs I would still doubt that such a
thing could be. The general type of masonry was identical with that
of the rampart we had examined; but the extravagant shapes which this
masonry took in its urban manifestations were past all description. Even the pictures illustrate only one or two phases of its endless
variety, preternatural massiveness, and utterly alien exoticism.