We have too many idle, too many to feed; it were better were our population reduced one-half. We will gather all the provisions of the land into great warehouses, and only those shall eat who labor to build our great pyramid, within which the chosen shall find refuge from the rising waters and the destructive cold. When the pyramid is completed, we shall store it with great quantities of grain and fuel and textiles to last for years; and as the waters rise, if they shall cover the eminence on which we shall built it, which seems impossible, we shall ascend from the lower to the upper chambers. On the morrow we will begin our preparations, which will not be wasted, though the flood and cold come not, as it will make for us a most pretentious tomb. I shall send a great force to gather grain and other foodstuffs, another to collect fuel, others still shall be put to work to weave heavy woolen textiles. Five thousand shall quarry stone for the pyramid of Theni, which shall be built upon the highest mountain near our city. Thirty thousand shall drag and carry great stones from the quarries to the site and fifteen thousand more shall shape and place the stones. Twelve thousand shall act as guards and task masters, to see that the work is done and speedily. I shall tell the pyramid is for my tomb and until my death to be used as a great storage warehouse; else the people may grow frightened and desperate. They have not yet learned to fear storage plants. Those of the people who are too old or too young to labor shall die. Dimly discernible from the city is the central high mountain range, extending from the eastern coast far to the northwest and there ending in a rugged promontory, jutting out into a frozen sea. The country across these mountains, and even to their snow-capped, fog-bannered peaks, is a land of ice and snow, destitute of all life, except a few wild and hardy white-clothed birds and beasts. Even from the mountain peaks you may see the spires and walls of an ice-encased, long dead city. Near the city is a lesser range, upon which to their very tops grow dense groves of palm and other fern-like trees. In the shelter of these groves are many villas of the rich. Upon the highest of this range and near our granite quarries I have decided to build the pyramid. The task of building, beginning today, will be pushed with the utmost speed. The road leading from the city to the top and from the quarries we broadened and regraded. The site was cleared and leveled and the basal walls, six hundred and eighty feet square, started. The height is to be three hundred and fifty feet and the wall angle is approximately forty-seven degrees. During the building there was much sickness and many deaths from starvation and hardship, for all of which I was held responsible, and until the laboring-people swore at and called me Santa, The Terrible.