Having given you, by quotation from our chroniclers, a synoptical view of two important discoveries which facilitated our communication with your race, I will now, continued the Dosch, refer you to your own impressions, and the eccentricities of the uninitiated from thought substitution, for the clear demonstration of our auramental powers. Or if, in review, you can recall examples of instinctive spiritual manifestations, you will be able to judge of our method in dealing with the instinctively stupid, partly with hopes of reflecting the extremes of absurdity, and in sub-part for our humorous gratification in tracing the commotional hubbub of selfish instinct in its search for the means of saving grace to rescue folly from its own attaint. You will soon be able to judge of the limits that we are confined to in auramentation. With the instinctively evil, our efforts excite fear and ritualistic prayers for propitiation, and exorcism of supposed inimical agencies foreign to self. But with the good we are able to impart happy encouragement. Selfish excess, in all of its forms, bespeaks a material agency and end, and as this is the god of realization with the gregarious democracy of the gigas, the influence of our auramental efforts—if their source was known—would be denounced with bell and book, as heretically pedantic and puritanical. But goodness imparts an animus joy that affords in life tangible impressions of immortality.
We now will pass to our fourth important epoch, 161noted for the personal introduction of the Dosch Giganteo to Indegatus, Pr?tor of the present City of the Falls. In the process of rehearsal we shall allude to the third or falcon era.
Indegatus, Pr?tor of New Heraclea or more properly Heraclea of the Falls, was a man of indefatigable energy, and at the period of Giganteo’s introduction had just rescued the city from great peril. The peril from the besiegers was in fact less dangerous than the factious dissensions of the populace within the city walls. Aware that idleness was the mother of envy and turmoil, he had caused the latifundium to be divided into garden plots apportioned to the size of each family, for the cultivation of edible roots and cereals. While engaged with his two sons, Unipho and Gnipho, in the cultivation of their land, a bee alighted on the father’s shoulder, attracting his attention from the singularity of its appearance and fearless confidence. Apparently satisfied with the attention it had received it flew to a neighboring flower occupied by a companion. Shortly after he felt a sharp sting on the back of his hand; a quick glance discovered a speck variegated with dark and shining particles, which he was about to brush away, supposing it to be an insect; when something peculiar in its movements attracted a more minute inspection, this resulted in the recognition of a little body possessing the dressed outline of the human form. Startled with superstitious fear from an apparition so manifestly supernal, he called his sons that their stronger eyes might confirm or dispel the impression of his more attenuated sight. After an inspection of a few seconds they burst into a merry peal of laughter, exclaiming in a breath, “It’s a little man in Heraclean armor and sagum, flourishing his sword and spear as if he wished us to understand his signs!”
“My sons,” urged the father with anxious fears, “give more reverend heed! He appears in a guise that 162betokens admonition from the regions of the nether world. Give earnest attention to his direction that the import of his visit may be revealed.”
Gnipho. “The little stranger points to one of my ears as if he wished to be admitted to a hearing?”
Indegatus. “My son, must I admonish you a second time to be more reverend in speech when addressing a being bearing tidings, you know not from whom, or from whence?”
Gnipho. “You have advised us, father, to follow the example of our superiors, and this stranger phantom appears to be in no serious mood, for he laughs at your fears. But I will admit him to an audience, that he may declare the object of his visit!”
Indegatus. “Presume not to take advantage of his levity, for as you are well instructed, and know that when I advised, it was for your dealings with mortality?”
Gnipho. “Now he laughs outright, and my ear resounds with his mirth, as if filled with the infantile chirping of a joyous cricket. But now he speaks!”
Indegatus. “Listen?”
Gnipho. “Yes father. He asks if I can hear him distinctly.”
Indegatus. “Then in virtue of my office as pr?tor and augur, I will address him. Speak Nuntius: What tidings bear you from the spirit world? and from whose realm do you come in this disguise?”
Gnipho. “Again I hear his small voice in the chuckling check of merriment, as if he would fain speak in reply.”
Indegatus. “Then listen, my child, to the message he bears? It surely cannot presage ill if he is in merry mood!”
Gnipho. (Listening.) “He says he is not a spirit, but of mortal birth, like ourselves. But I will repeat his own words. ‘Say to your father, that I have been long acquainted with his goodness, and desire to relieve 163his anxiety for the self-imposed misery of his people. Also to render him other efficient aid in a small way!’”
Indegatus. “Ask him, with grateful thanks, his name, and from whence he came?”
Gnipho. (Laughing.) “He says his name is Giganteo, the Dosch or patriarch of the Manatitlans, a race of animalculans whose country lies six hundred stadia to the southeast of the deserted city of Heraclea.”
Indegatus. “Ask him how he proposes to help us?”
Gnipho. “He says by adding to your knowledge, in a privileged way that enables the small to help the great! He expresses a wish for us to retire with him to the parapet steps of the northern wall, where we shall be comparatively free from the shrill vibrations of the cicada’s winged notes.”
Indegatus. “We will move as he directs.”
Gnipho. “Now that we have complied with his request, he charges me to listen, and treasure all that I hear, that I may repeat it to you.”
Indegatus. “We will keep silence that your attention may not be distracted.”
After an hour’s close attention, Gnipho rehearsed to his father and brother, The Admonitory Request of Giganteo, Dosch of Manatitla. “Your ancestors of old Heraclea trained falcons for hunting, and through their borrowed use the Manatitlans obtained a knowledge of giga and animalculan nations beyond the ocean. We wished to recompense the service by imparting the source of our happiness to the people of Heraclea in return. But tyrannous ingratitude had so blunted affectionate sympathy, that your immediate ancestors alone listened to our warnings. But even they would have shared the common fate, if we had not found among the slaves those capable of judging between the good and evil. The majority of the enslaved were as relentless, as the doomed were 164blind to their impending fate. They had determined that none of their hated oppressors of either city should be spared; but the Manatitlans through the same means that I propose to offer for your aid, foiled the deadly intention of the slaves. While the old Heracleans were reveling in the height of their prosperity, falconry, as with all the pontine races coeval with their transatlantic progenitors, was their favorite pastime. Aeriolus, a worthy successor of Buzzee, visited the mews of old Heraclea, and with equally well devised skill in preparation, conceived the idea of utilizing the swift flight of the falcons and powers of abstinent endurance for crossing the ocean, the shores of which he had visited with the limited powers of the bee volant. Adventuring, with associate volantaphs, trials for their control in hunting, he soon perfected guiding attachments as efficient for directing their movements in flight as those devised for the bee. Selecting the swiftest and strongest he gradually accustomed them to long sustained flights over the ocean, insuring their welcome back to the mews by increased docility—under direction—to the will and lures of the falconer, when in the field. The anticipated difficulties from opposing wind currents, and means of obtaining food sustenance, and disposing of it while in flight, had been successfully overcome by prolonged observations verified with tests. Food was obtained by directing the falcons’ attention to flying fish as objects of prey, which, with parachute aid, they were able, after a little practice under the stimulus of hunger, to devour in mid air.
“In memorial of his success Aeriolus gives in testimony the transcribed after observation. ‘The transition from meat to fish, for a “fasting” flight of instinct, was adopted with far greater avidity than in human acts of ritualistic conformity to mythical injunctions, which we have seen practiced by the sectarian devotees to creeds, as negative compensations for over indulgence of the carnal affections.’
165“When the arrangements of Aeriolus were fully perfected, he and thirty associates, with their wives, bade a hopeful farewell to the people of Manatitla, and started from the lochia (plaza) of Manicul? upon their adventurous air voyage of discovery, with a leading falcon and three followers. Studying to aid the falcons by every possible means they, to their joyful surprise, discovered land on the morning of the fourth day from the start, and, at an early hour thereafter, alighted upon the lofty peak of an island mountain, since known as the Corcovado, a mountain summit of Corvo, one of the Azorean Isles. After regaling the falcons in relief from their lenten diet, they, of their own accord, continued their flight to the mainland. Our joy was much depressed, while passing over the beautiful land scenes, by the fierce cries of giga hosts engaged in battle encounter. In our course eastward, to a country of colored races resembling the aboriginals of our own, not a day passed without our forced observation of a battle scene, with fields and smoking ruins that bespoke the devastation of warful rage.
“Sick and despairing from the constant recurrence of murderous acts of despoliation, we at last reached, in returning, a cluster of islands in the western ocean to the northward of our point of arrival. On the largest island we found a hardy species of falcon, and, with the lure of our own, obtained four. After a few days’ training of our transport addition we returned to the island where we first landed. Anxious to return to our people, and the cheering welcome of loving affection, we only tarried upon the island a sufficient time to accustom our newly acquired birds to devour their food while sustained by the parachute and their wings in mid-rest. Starting, homeward bound, on the morning of the sixtieth sun from the date of our departure from Manicul?, we reached it again on the third day with the first notes of the 166evening anthem of thanksgiving, in which we gratefully joined in our descent to perch.
“Some days were occupied in the public rehearsal of the events and discoveries transpiring in the progress of our voyage; the resulting issue proving a source of congratulation, nathless, our disappointment from the unfavorable prospect afforded for an affectionate reception by the animalculan resident............