Project Gutenberg's The Land That Time Forgot, by Edgar Rice Burroughs

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: The Land That Time Forgot

Author: Edgar Rice Burroughs

Posting Date: October 10, 2008 [EBook #551]
Release Date: June, 1996

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT ***

Produced by Judith Boss. HTML version by Al Haines.

The Land that Time Forgot

By

Edgar Rice Burroughs

Chapter 1

It must have been a little after three o'clock in the afternoon that it
happened--the afternoon of June 3rd, 1916. It seems incredible that
all that I have passed through--all those weird and terrifying
experiences--should have been encompassed within so short a span as
three brief months. Rather might I have experienced a cosmic cycle,
with all its changes and evolutions for that which I have seen with my
own eyes in this brief interval of time--things that no other mortal
eye had seen before, glimpses of a world past, a world dead, a world so
long dead that even in the lowest Cambrian stratum no trace of it
remains. Fused with the melting inner crust, it has passed forever
beyond the ken of man other than in that lost pocket of the earth
whither fate has borne me and where my doom is sealed. I am here and
here must remain.

After reading this far, my interest, which already had been stimulated
by the finding of the manuscript, was approaching the boiling-point. I
had come to Greenland for the summer, on the advice of my physician,
and was slowly being bored to extinction, as I had thoughtlessly
neglected to bring sufficient reading-matter. Being an indifferent
fisherman, my enthusiasm for this form of sport soon waned; yet in the
absence of other forms of recreation I was now risking my life in an
entirely inadequate boat off Cape Farewell at the southernmost
extremity of Greenland.

Greenland! As a descriptive appellation, it is a sorry joke--but my
story has nothing to do with Greenland, nothing to do with me; so I
shall get through with the one and the other as rapidly as possible.

The inadequate boat finally arrived at a precarious landing, the
natives, waist-deep in th