Symzonia: Voyage of DiscoverySeaborn, Adam, Captain
Science
Symzonia: Voyage of Discovery
Seaborn, Adam, Captain
Science fiction; Voyages, Imaginary
I then walked slowly up the jettee. When I reached the head of it,
I took off my hat and made a low bow towards the building, to show
the Internals that I had some sense of politeness. No one appeared. I
walked slowly up the sloping lawn, stopped, looked about me, and
bowed, but still no one appeared to return my civilities. I walked
on, and had arrived within one hundred yards of the portico, when
I recollected, that when Captain Ross was impeded in his progress
northward by the northern 'icy hoop,' he met with some men on the
ice who told him they came from the north, where there was land and
an open sea. These men were swarthy, which Capt. Symmes attributes to
their being inhabitants of the hot regions within the internal polar
circle; in which opinion he was no doubt correct. I had frequently
reflected on this circumstance, and had settled the matter in my mind
that they were stragglers from the extreme north part of the internal
regions; and could not but consider Capt. Ross as a very unfit person
for an exploring expedition, or he would not have returned without
ascertaining where those men came from, or how a great sea could
exist to the northward of the 'icy hoop,' through fear of wintering
in a climate where he saw men in existence who had passed all their
lives there.
I remembered that these men so seen by Capt. Ross, saluted him
by pulling their noses; and surely it is not surprising that men,
inhabiting such different positions on this earth as the inside and
outside of it, should differ so much as to consider that a compliment
in the one place, which is deemed an insult in the other. Indeed it
seemed to me a small thing, when I considered how widely the most
enlightened of the externals differ in opinion upon the most simple
propositions of religion, politics, and political economy.
I was full in the faith that those men of Ross had been internals,
and that their mode of salutation was much more likely to be in
accordance with the manners of the Symzonians, than the rude fashion
of us externals. I therefore pulled my nose very gracefully, without
uncovering my head.
This was a happy thought. It arose from my having read much, seen a
great deal of the world, and observed with tolerable accuracy, for a
shipmaster, the important ceremonies and sublime rules of etiquette,
by which the distinguished and the noble, the enlightened and the
great, are implicitly governed; they being considered matters of more
consequence than religious forms, or mere regulations of convenience.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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