"You have been accustomed to lakes on the surface of the earth; water that is illuminated from above; now you see by a light that is developed from within and below, as well as from above. There is no outside point of illumination, for the light of this cavern, as you know, is neither transmitted through an overlying atmosphere nor radiated from a luminous center. It is an inherent quality, and as objects above us and within the lake are illuminated alike from all sides, there can be no shadows." Musingly, I said: "That which has occurred before in this journey to the unknown country of which I have been advised, seemed mysterious; but each succeeding step discovers to me another novelty that is more mysterious, with unlooked-for phenomena that are more obscure." "This phenomenon is not more of a mystery than is the fact that light radiates from the sun. Man can not explain that, and I shall not now attempt to explain this. Both conditions are attributes of force, but with this distinction--the crude light and heat of the sun, such as men experience on the surface of the earth, is here refined and softened, and the characteristic glare and harshness of the light that is known to those who live on the earth's surface is absent here. The solar ray, after penetrating the earth's crust, is tempered and refined by agencies which man will yet investigate understandingly, but which he can not now comprehend." [Illustration: "WE CAME TO A METAL BOAT."] "Am I destined to deal with these problems?" "Only in part." "Are still greater wonders before us?" "If your courage is sufficient to carry you onward, you have yet to enter the portal of the expanse we approach." "Lead on, my friend," I cried; "lead on to these undescribed scenes, the occult wonderland that--" He interrupted me almost rudely, and in a serious manner said: "Have you not learned that wonder is an exemplification of ignorance? The child wonders at a goblin story, the savage at a trinket, the man of science at an unexplained manifestation of a previously unperceived natural law; each wonders in ignorance, because of ignorance. Accept now that all you have seen from the day of your birth on the surface of the earth, to the present, and all that you will meet here are wonderful only because the finite mind of man is confused with fragments of evidence, that, from whatever direction we meet them, spring from an unreachable infinity. We will continue our journey."