Erewhon Revisited Twenty Years Later, Both by the Original Discoverer of the Country and by His SonButler, Samuel
Philosophy
Erewhon Revisited Twenty Years Later, Both by the Original Discoverer of the Country and by His Son
Butler, Samuel
Satire; Utopian fiction; Utopias -- Fiction
I camped for the night here, and again found my single blanket
insufficient. The next day, i.e. Tuesday, December 8, I had to pass as I
best could, and it occurred to me that as I should find the gold a great
weight, I had better take it some three hours up the mountain side and
leave it there, so as to make the following day less fatiguing, and this
I did, returning to my camp for dinner; but I was panic-stricken all the
rest of the day lest I should not have hidden it safely, or lest I should
be unable to find it next day--conjuring up a hundred absurd fancies as
to what might befall it. And after all, heavy though it was, I could
have carried it all the way. In the afternoon I saddled Doctor and rode
him up to the glaciers, which were indeed magnificent, and then I made
the few notes of my journey from which this chapter has been taken. I
made excuses for turning in early, and at daybreak rekindled my fire and
got my breakfast. All the time the companionship of the dog was an
unspeakable comfort to me.
It was now the day my father had fixed for my meeting with George, and my
excitement (with which I have not yet troubled the reader, though it had
been consuming me ever since I had left Harris’s hut) was beyond all
bounds, so much so that I almost feared I was in a fever which would
prevent my completing the little that remained of my task; in fact, I was
in as great a panic as I had been about the gold that I had left. My
hands trembled as I took the watches, and the brooches for Yram and her
daughters from my saddle-bags, which I then hung, probably on the very
bough on which my father had hung them. Needless to say, I also hung my
saddle and bridle along with the saddle-bags.
It was nearly seven before I started, and about ten before I reached the
hiding-place of my knapsack. I found it, of course, quite easily,
shouldered it, and toiled on towards the statues. At a quarter before
twelve I reached them, and almost beside myself as I was, could not
refrain from some disappointment at finding them a good deal smaller than
I expected. My father, correcting the measurement he had given in his
book, said he thought that they were about four or five times the size of
life; but really I do not think they were more than twenty feet high, any
one of them. In other respects my father’s description of them is quite
accurate. There was no wind, and as a matter of course, therefore, they
were not chanting. I wiled away the quarter of an hour before the time
when George became due, with wondering at them, and in a way admiring
them, hideous though they were; but all the time I kept looking towards
the part from which George should come.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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