In regard to the "left or most northwardly" of the indentures in
figure 4, it is more than probable that the opinion of Peters was
correct, and that the hieroglyphical appearance was really the work
of art, and intended as the representation of a human form. The
delineation is before the reader, and he may, or may not, perceive
the resemblance suggested; but the rest of the indentures afford
strong confirmation of Peters' idea. The upper range is evidently the
Arabic verbal root {image}. "To be white," whence all the inflections
of brilliancy and whiteness. The lower range is not so immediately
perspicuous. The characters are somewhat broken and disjointed;
nevertheless, it can not be doubted that, in their perfect state,
they formed the full Egyptian word {image}. "The region of the
south.' It should be observed that these interpretations confirm the
opinion of Peters in regard to the "most northwardly" of the,
figures. The arm is outstretched toward the south.
Conclusions such as these open a wide field for speculation and
exciting conjecture. They should be regarded, perhaps, in connection
with some of the most faintly detailed incidents of the narrative;
although in no visible manner is this chain of connection complete.
Tekeli-li! was the cry of the affrighted natives of Tsalal upon
discovering the carcase of the _white _animal picked up at sea. This
also was the shuddering exclamatives of Tsalal upon discovering the
carcass of the _white _materials in possession of Mr. Pym. This also
was the shriek of the swift-flying, _white, _and gigantic birds which
issued from the vapory _white _curtain of the South. Nothing _white
_was to be found at Tsalal, and nothing otherwise in the subsequent
voyage to the region beyond. It is not impossible that "Tsalal," the
appellation of the island of the chasms, may be found, upon minute
philological scrutiny, to betray either some alliance with the chasms
themselves, or some reference to the Ethiopian characters so
mysteriously written in their windings.
_"I have graven it within the hills, and my vengeance upon the dust
within the rock."_
~~~ End of text Chapter 25 ~~~
Notes
{*1} Whaling vessels are usually fitted with iron oil-tanks- why the
_Grampus_ was not I have never been able to ascertain.
{*2} The case of the brig _Polly_, of Boston, is one so much in
point, and her fate, in many respects, so remarkably similar to our
own, that I cannot forbear alluding to it here. This vessel, of one
hundred and thirty tons burden, sailed from Boston, with a cargo of
lumber and provisions, for Santa Croix, on the twelfth of December,
1811, under the command of Captain Casneau. There were eight souls on
board besides the captain- the mate, four seamen, and the cook,
together with a Mr. Hunt, and a negro girl belonging to him. On the
fifteenth, having cleared the shoal of Georges, she sprung a leak in
a gale of wind from the southeast, and was finally capsized; but, the
masts going by the board, she afterward righted. They remained in
this situation, without fire, and with very little provision, for the
period of one hundred and ninety-one days (from December the
fifteenth to June the twentieth), when Captain Casneau and Samuel
Badger, the only survivors, were taken off the wreck by the Fame, of
Hull, Captain Featherstone, bound home from Rio Janeiro. When picked
up, they were in latitude 28 degrees N., longitude 13 degrees W.,
having drifted above two thousand miles! On the ninth of July the
Fame fell in with the brig Dromero, Captain Perkins, who landed the
two sufferers in Kennebeck. The narrative from which we gather these
details ends in the following words:
"It is natural to inquire how they could float such a vast
distance, upon the most frequented part of the Atlantic, and not be
discovered all this time. They were passed by more than a dozen sail,
one of which came so nigh them that they could distinctly see the
people on deck and on the rigging looking at them; but, to the
inexpressible disappointment of the starving and freezing men, they
stifled the dictates of compassion, hoisted sail, and cruelly
abandoned them to their fate."
{*3} Among the vessels which at various times have professed to meet
with the Auroras may be mentioned the ship San Miguel, in 1769; the
ship Aurora, in 1774; the brig Pearl, in 1779; and the ship Dolores,
in 1790. They all agree in giving the mean latitude fifty-three
degrees south.
{*4} The terms morning and evening, which I have made use of to avoid
confusion in my narrative, as far as possible, must not, of course,
be taken in their ordinary sense. For a long time past we had had no
night at all, the daylight being continual. The dates throughout are
according to nautical time, and the bearing must be understood as per
compass. I would also remark, in this place, that I cannot, in the
first portion of what is here written, pretend to strict accuracy in
respect to dates, or latitudes and longitudes, having kept no regular
journal until after the period of which this first portion treats. In
many instances I have relied altogether upon memory.
{*5} This day was rendered remarkable by our observing in the south
several huge wreaths of the grayish vapour I have spoken of.
{*6} The marl was also black; indeed, we noticed no light colored
substances of any kind upon the island.
{*7}For obvious reasons I cannot pretend to strict accuracy in these
dates. They are given principally with a view to perspicity of
naarrative, and as set down in my pencil memorandum..
~~~~~~ End of Text ~~~~~~ Narrative of A. Gordon Pym
======
LIGEIA
And the will therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the
mysteries of the will, with its vigor? For God is but a great will
pervading all things by nature of its intentness. Man doth not yield
himself to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the
weakness of his feeble will. --Joseph Glanvill.
I Cannot, for my soul, remember how, when, or even precisely where, I
first became acquainted with the lady Ligeia. Long years have since
elapsed, and my memory is feeble through much suffering. Or, perhaps,
I cannot now bring these points to mind, because, in truth, the
character of my beloved, her rare learning, her singular yet placid
cast of beauty, and the thrilling and enthralling eloquence of her
low musical language, made their way into my heart by paces so
steadily and stealthily progressive that they have been unnoticed and
unknown. Yet I believe that I met her first and most frequently in
some large, old, decaying city near the Rhine. Of her family -- I
have surely heard her speak. That it is of a remotely ancient date
cannot be doubted. Ligeia! Ligeia! in studies of a nature more than
all else adapted to deaden impressions of the outward world, it is by
that sweet word alone -- by Ligeia -- that I bring before mine eyes
in fancy the image of her who is no
more. And now, while I write, a
recollection flashes upon me that I have never known the paternal
name of her who was my friend and my betrothed, and who became the
partner of my studies, and finally the wife of my bosom. Was it a
playful charge on the part of my Ligeia? or was it a test of my
strength of affection, that I should institute no inquiries upon this
point? or was it rather a caprice of my own -- a wildly romantic
offering on the shrine of the most passionate devotion? I but
indistinctly recall the fact itself -- what wonder that I have
utterly forgotten the circumstances which originated or attended it?
And, indeed, if ever she, the wan and the misty-winged Ashtophet of
idolatrous Egypt, presided, as they tell, over marriages ill-omened,
then most surely she presided over mine.
There is one dear topic, however, on which my memory falls me not. It
is the person of Ligeia. In stature she was tall, somewhat slender,
and, in her latter days, even emaciated. I would in vain attempt to
portray the majesty, the quiet ease, of her demeanor, or the
incomprehensible lightness and elasticity of her footfall. She came
and departed as a shadow. I was never made aware of her entrance into
my closed study save by the dear music of her low sweet voice, as she
placed her marble hand upon my shoulder. In beauty of face no maiden
ever equalled her. It was the radiance of an opium-dream -- an airy
and spirit-lifting vision more wildly divine than the phantasies
which hovered vision about the slumbering souls of the daughters of
Delos. Yet her features were not of that regular mould which we have
been falsely taught to worship in the classical labors of the
heathen. "There is no exquisite beauty," says Bacon, Lord Verulam,
speaking truly of all the forms and genera of beauty, without some
strangeness in the proportion." Yet, although I saw that the features
of Ligeia were not of a classic regularity -- although I perceived
that her loveliness was indeed "exquisite," and felt that there was
much of "strangeness" pervading it, yet I have tried in vain to
detect the irregularity and to trace home my own perception of "the
strange." I examined the contour of the lofty and pale forehead -- it
was faultless -- how cold indeed that word when applied to a majesty
so divine! -- the skin rivalling the purest ivory, the commanding
extent and repose, the gentle prominence of the regions above the
temples; and then the raven-black, the glossy, the luxuriant and
naturally-curling tresses, setting forth the full force of the
Homeric epithet, "hyacinthine!" I looked at the delicate outlines of
the nose -- and nowhere but in the graceful medallions of the Hebrews
had I beheld a similar perfection. There were the same luxurious
smoothness of surface, the same scarcely perceptible tendency to the
aquiline, the same harmoniously curved nostrils speaking the free
spirit. I regarded the sweet mouth. Here was indeed the triumph of
all things heavenly -- the magnificent turn of the short upper lip --
the soft, voluptuous slumber of the under -- the dimples which
sported, and the color which spoke -- the teeth glancing back, with a
brilliancy almost startling, every ray of the holy light which fell
upon them in her serene and placid, yet most exultingly radiant of
all smiles. I scrutinized the formation of the chin -- and here, too,
I found the gentleness of breadth, the softness and the majesty, the
fullness and the spirituality, of the Greek -- the contour which the
god Apollo revealed but in a dream, to Cleomenes, the son of the
Athenian. And then I peered into the large eves of Ligeia.
For eyes we have no models in the remotely antique. It might have
been, too, that in these eves of my beloved lay the secret to which
Lord Verulam alludes. They were, I must believe, far larger than the
ordinary eyes of our own race. They were even fuller than the fullest
of the gazelle eyes of the tribe of the valley of Nourjahad. Yet it
was only at intervals -- in moments of intense excitement -- that
this peculiarity became more than slightly noticeable in Ligeia. And
at such moments was her beauty -- in my heated fancy thus it appeared
perhaps -- the beauty of beings either above or apart from the earth
-- the beauty of the fabulous Houri of the Turk. The hue of the orbs
was the most brilliant of black, and, far over them, hung jetty
lashes of great length. The brows, slightly irregular in outline, had
the same tint. The "strangeness," however, which I found in the eyes,
was of a nature distinct from the formation, or the color, or the
brilliancy of the features, and must, after all, be referred to the
expression. Ah, word of no meaning! behind whose vast latitude of
mere sound we intrench our ignorance of so much of the spiritual. The
expression of the eyes of Ligeia! How for long hours have I pondered
upon it! How have I, through the whole of a midsummer night,
struggled to fathom it! What was it -- that something more profound
than the well of Democritus -- which lay far within the pupils of my
beloved? What was it? I was possessed with a passion to discover.
Those eyes! those large, those shining, those divine orbs! they
became to me twin stars of Leda, and I to them devoutest of
astrologers.
There is no point, among the many incomprehensible anomalies of the
science of mind, more thrillingly exciting than the fact -- never, I
believe, noticed in the schools -- that, in our endeavors to recall
to memory something long forgotten, we often find ourselves upon the
very verge of remembrance, without being able, in the end, to
remember. And thus how frequently, in my intense scrutiny of Ligeia's
eyes, have I felt approaching the full knowledge of their expression
-- felt it approaching -- yet not quite be mine -- and so at length
entirely depart! And (strange, oh strangest mystery of all!) I found,
in the commonest objects of the universe, a circle of analogies to
theat expression. I mean to say that, subsequently to the period when
Ligeia's beauty passed into my spirit, there dwelling as in a shrine,
I derived, from many existences in the material world, a sentiment
such as I felt always aroused within me by her large and luminous
orbs. Yet not the more could I define that sentiment, or analyze, or
even steadily view it. I recognized it, let me repeat, sometimes in
the survey of a rapidly-growing vine -- in the contemplation of a
moth, a butterfly, a chrysalis, a stream of running water. I have
felt it in the ocean; in the falling of a meteor. I have felt it in
the glances of unusually aged people. And there are one or two stars
in heaven -- (one especially, a star of the sixth magnitude, double
and changeable, to be found near the large star in Lyra) in a
telescopic scrutiny of which I have been made aware of the feeling. I
have been filled with it by certain sounds from stringed instruments,
and not unfrequently by passages from books. Among innumerable other
instances, I well remember something in a volume of Jo
seph Glanvill,
which (perhaps merely from its quaintness -- who shall say?) never
failed to inspire me with the sentiment; -- "And the will therein
lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the mysteries of the will, with
its vigor? For God is but a great will pervading all things by nature
of its intentness. Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto
death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will."
Length of years, and subsequent reflection, have enabled me to trace,
indeed, some remote connection between this passage in the English
moralist and a portion of the character of Ligeia. An intensity in
thought, action, or speech, was possibly, in her, a result, or at
least an index, of that gigantic volition which, during our long
intercourse, failed to give other and more immediate evidence of its
existence. Of all the women whom I have ever known, she, the
outwardly calm, the ever-placid Ligeia, was the most violently a prey
to the tumultuous vultures of stern passion. And of such passion I
could form no estimate, save by the miraculous expansion of those
eyes which at once so delighted and appalled me -- by the almost
magical melody, modulation, distinctness and placidity of her very
low voice -- and by the fierce energy (rendered doubly effective by
contrast with her manner of utterance) of the wild words which she
habitually uttered.
I have spoken of the learning of Ligeia: it was immense -- such as I
have never known in woman. In the classical tongues was she deeply
proficient, and as far as my own acquaintance extended in regard to
the modern dialects of Europe, I have never known her at fault.
Indeed upon any theme of the most admired, because simply the most
abstruse of the boasted erudition of the academy, have I ever found
Ligeia at fault? How singularly -- how thrillingly, this one point in
the nature of my wife has forced itself, at this late period only,
upon my attention! I said her knowledge was such as I have never
known in woman -- but where breathes the man who has traversed, and
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