Page:Amazing Stories Volume 01 Number 07.djvu/20

creatures, as large as kids, such as the one I killed and devoured when I first gained the base of the mountains, and there are many small birds, but aside from these, no living creatures exist in a wild state. In zoos or museums are many most wonderful creatures, some of which bear a resemblance to those on the other side of the world, but most of which are wholly different and many of which are so astoundingly weird, gigantic or grotesque as to be horrifying, or to make me think I am dreaming or delirious when I look at them.

Some of these are gigantic reptiles with immense scaly bodies and with heads covered with great bony plates and armed with huge horns. They are ferocious looking creatures nearly fifty feet in length, but quite docile and harmless and very stupid. Others resemble giant seals, but instead of being: covered with fur, their bodies are smooth and slimy, like eels. There are also creatures with enormously long snake-like necks and great round bodies. These are water animals and should they be seen at sea they would be veritable sea-serpents. There are several great beasts too, which appear to be some sort of elephants, though vastly bigger than any I have ever seen, and there are a few rhinoceros-like animals, besides numbers of smaller things, such as deer, goats, beasts somewhat like ponies, and giant turtles. Of carnivorous beasts there are none and I find nothing that at all resembles an ox or sheep. All these I understand once roamed the country wild, but were destroyed by the strange inhabitants until only those in captivity remained. But perhaps the weirdest of all these creatures in the parks or zoos are the insects. There are butterflies whose wings spread a yard across, flies as big as turkeys, caterpillars with a girth greater than my body and immense spiders with six-foot, hairy legs and immense, staring, fiery red eyes. These always give me a feeling of dread and nausea as I look at them, and many a time I have awakened, screaming, from a nightmare wherein I thought myself being attacked by one of these horrible creatures. The natives, however, seem to have no fear of them and I have often seen the younger ones, or if I may so call them the children, feeding the monstrous spiders through the bars of their cages. These bars by the way are made of the transparent form of the sulphur metal, and looking at the creatures, the bars are all but invisible—as are the cages—so that one seems' to see a horrible beast unconfined and ready to spring at one. But of all the insects, those which interest me most are the giant-ants. These are as large as good-sized dogs and are kept in a vast pit-like enclosure. Here they hurry about, and labor ceaselessly, building huge mounds and digging tunnels, only to tear them down and start over again. They are the most ferocious of all the animals also, and if one of their number is injured or sick, the others, after carefully examining him, tear him to bits and devour his still moving body. On one occasion a great lizard-like beast died and his carcass was thrown into the ant pit and I fairly shook with terror as I watched the creatures, gnawing him to bits and with incredible strength dragging the immense body here and there. Often, too, the ants seem to be drilling and they seem to possess intelligences almost human. Often I think what terrible havoc they would play should they escape from their den, but I am assured that this is impossible, as the frail looking fence that borders the pit is made of a material that is certain death to any ant that touches it. Indeed, I heard, if I may use that term, the story of these ants. It seems that ages ago,—these beings have no means of recording time by the way,—the ants roamed at large and destroyed the inabitants everywhere. A constant war was waged between the two races and bloody battles were fought. In a way it was much like the Indian warfare at home, though far more merciless and cruel, for each side made slaves of their captives and gave no quarter.

Then the crustacean-like beings made a discovery. They found vast numbers of dead ants where an invading army had moved across a great pile of waste material from the sulphur works, and by testing this on captive ants they found that it was instant death to the creatures. This enabled them to exterminate their hereditary enemies, for the material was made in stupendous quantities and placed in a great wall or pile about the advancing host of the inhabitants. Thus guarded, the ants were powerless to harm them, and gradually all but a few of the ants were utterly destroyed. These few survivors were made prisoners and confined and it is the descendants of these that are in the pit today.

Since then, so I understand, there have been no wars or battles in the entire land and the soldiers or police are being done away with, as there is really no need for them. No more soldiers are bred and in a few years none of the old ones will remain alive.