The Gilded Man: A Romance of the AndesSmyth, Clifford
Science
The Gilded Man: A Romance of the Andes
Smyth, Clifford
Andes Region -- Fiction; El Dorado -- Fiction; Science fiction
The interesting possibilities of this Color Theory in penology and
in the regulation of domestic affairs, did not escape Leighton. He
had himself believed that in the latest discoveries in physics there
might be found a connecting link between the science of matter and the
science of mind. His natural skepticism, however, did not allow him to
accept too readily all of Sajipona's amazing statements. He doubted
her real knowledge of these abstruse subjects. She spoke of these
matters, indeed, crudely, not with the familiarity as to detail of a
trained scientist. What she said had all the simplicity, and much of
the fantastic absurdity, of a fairy tale. But beneath its extravagance
there was enough substance to her story, and the theory upon which
it was based, to make it worthy a scientist's consideration. For one
thing, it changed completely the notion Leighton had already formed
of this subterranean world. The story, for instance, of the chastened
millionaire took into account a complex social system that was utterly
unthinkable in a region so confined territorially, so limited, by
reason of its peculiar situation, as regards human activity, as this
so-called Land of the Condor. The inhabitants of the cave, from what
he had seen of them--in the straggling village they had passed through
with Narva, and among the followers of Raoul--gave no indication of a
culture superior to that shown by people just emerging from savagery.
These cavemen, certainly, had not reached that stage of enlightenment
from which is developed the millionaire capitalist of whose interesting
ventures in monopoly Sajipona had told them. In the ill-fated Anitoo,
however, and his men, and in the people surrounding Sajipona, there was
evidence of social and mental superiority. The two men who served as
the queen's ambassadors in the garden, and who were distinguished from
the rest by their red robes, belonged either to a priesthood, or to
some order that placed them intellectually above the common rank. They
were undoubtedly learned far beyond the Indian average. One of them,
indeed, was with Sajipona in the court, and prompted her more than once
during her explanation of the Radium Sun and its uses. He spoke in a
low voice, and in a language unintelligible to the Americans. From his
bearing and fluency of speech, Leighton concluded that he was one of the
commonwealth's so-called "wise men," an investigator, possibly, in those
physical and psychological phenomena that held out such tantalizing
promise of new conquests in the domain of human knowledge.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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