my own name for the instrument.--A.B.

"_Sire:_ I have the honor to report that I have made a startling
discovery. The primeval region into which I have penetrated, as I informed
you yesterday--the ichthyosaurus belt--was peopled by tribes considerably
advanced in some of the arts almost within historic times: in 1920. They
were exterminated by a glacial period not exceeding one hundred and
twenty-five years in duration. Your Majesty can conceive the magnitude and
violence of the natural forces which overwhelmed their country with moving
sheets of ice not less that 5,000 _coprets_ in thickness, grinding down
every eminence, destroying (of course) all animal and vegetable life and
leaving the region a fathomless bog of detritus. Out of this vast sea of
mud Nature has had to evolve another creation, beginning _de novo_, with
her lowest forms. It has long been known, your Majesty, that the region
east of the Ultimate Hills, betwen them and the Wintry Sea, was once the
seat of an ancient civilization, some scraps and shreds of whose history,
arts and literature have been wafted to us across the gulf of time; but it
was reserved for your gracious Majesty, through me, your humble and
unworthy instrument, to ascertain the astonishing fact that these were a
pre-glacial people--that between them and us stands, as it were, a wall of
impenetrable ice. That all local records of this unfortunate race have
perished your Majesty needs not to be told: we can supplement our present
imperfect knowledge of them by instrumental observation only."

To this message I received the following extraordinary reply:

"All right--another bottle of--ice goes: push on--this cheese is
too--spare no effort to--hand me those nuts--learn all you can--damn you!"

His most gracious Majesty was being served with dessert, and served badly.

I now resolved to go directly north toward the source of the ice-flow and
investigate its cause, but examining my barometer found that I was more
than 8,000 _coprets_ below the sea-level; the moving ice had not only
ground down the face of the country, planing off the eminences and filling
the depressions, but its enormous weight had caused the earth's crust to
sag, and with the lessening of the weight from evaporation it had not
recovered.

I had no desire to continue in this depression, as I should in going
north, for I should find nothing but lakes, marshes and ferneries,
infested with the same primitive and monst