midnight before
The preponderance of land in the northern hemisphere denotes the greater intensity there of the causes of elevation at a remote geologic epoch : that is all that one can say about it : but whence that greater intensity ? I have some knowledge of the earth for only ten miles down : but she has eight thousand miles : and whether through all that depth she is flame or fluid , hard or soft , I do not know , I do not know . Her method of forming coal , geysers and hot sulphur-springs , and the jewels , and the atols and coral reefs ; the metamorphic rocks of sedimentary origin , like gneiss , the plutonic and volcanic rocks , rocks of fusion , and the unstratified masses which constitute the basis of the crust ; and harvests , the burning flame of flowers , and the passage from the vegetable to the animal : I do not know them , but they are of her , and they are like me , molten in the same furnace of her fiery heart . She is dark and moody , sudden and ill-fated , and rends her young like a cannibal lioness ; and she is old and wise , and remembers Hur of the Chaldees which Uruk built , and that Temple of Bel which rose in seven pyramids to symbolise the planets , and Birs-i-Nimrud , and Haran , and she bears still , as a thing of yesterday , old Persepolis and the tomb of Cyrus , and those cloister-like vihârah-temples of the ancient Buddhists , cut from the Himalayan rock ; and returning from the Far East , I stopped at Ismailia , and so to Cairo , and saw where Memphis was , and stood one bright midnight before that great pyramid of Shafra , and that dumb Sphynx , and , seated at the well of one of the rock-tombs , looked till tears of pity streamed down my cheeks : for great is the earth , and her Ages , but man ` passeth away . ' These tombs have pillars extremely like the two palace-pillars , only that these are round , and mine are square : for I chose it so : but the same band near the top , then over this the closed lotus-flower , then the small square plinth , which separates them from the architrave , only mine have no architrave ; the tombs consist of a little outer temple or court , then comes a well , and inside another chamber , where , I suppose , the dead were , a ribbon-like astragal surrounding the walls , which are crowned with boldly-projecting cornices , surmounted by an abacus . And here , till the pressing want of food drove me back , I remained : for more and more the earth over-grows me , wooes me , assimilates me ; so that I ask myself this question : ` Must I not , in time , cease to be a man , and become a small earth , precisely her copy , extravagantly weird and fierce , half-demoniac , half-ferine , wholly mystic -- morose and turbulent -- fitful , and deranged , and sad -- like her ? ' * * * * * A whole month of that voyage , from May the 15th to June the 13th , I wasted at the Andaman Islands near Malay : for that any old Chinaman could be alive in Pekin began , after some time , to seem the most quixotic notion that ever entered a human brain ; and these jungled islands , to which I came after a shocking vast orgy one night at Calcutta , when I fired not only the city but the river , pleased my fancy to such an extent , that at one time I intended to abide there .