Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Salient. Victoria University of Wellington Students' Newspaper. Volume 31, Number 17. July 23, 1968

At Home

At Home

Ocarina has been studying the chronicles and decided the coincidence is great enough to be true: we have therefore arrived; our journey is at an end.

It is a very pleasant place, full of trees, mainly cedar, with a few large clearings, in one of which the main camp has been made, The walls are about half a day's walk around —less than I expected—with three gates, towards the north. towards the southeast, and towards the southwest. A curious thing is that the ground, which is mostly grass, is sprinkled with heavy, pale, square stones with some sort of inscriptions on them. These were obviously not left by our forebears, since they are nol inscribed in our script. Also, the ancients (as is well known) had a pathological horror of square stones.

Ocarina thinks that we are in the presence of truly ancient works, left by the ancients that our own ancient Hexatriximenia refers to. Ocarina is thinking of knocking off the corners of these stones, and making a while memorial building to us all. A splendid idea! Work has already begun on this. in the central clearing.

Haranguertang and Anaxagoras have taken their wagons to look in the deserted city for objects that may be useful to us. Cagliostro and Geranium have returned from a similar journey, their wagon loaded with oddities and enditics but not much that could be of use. Soon we are to leave with Ottoman. to see if the water has yet dropped far enough for us to recover our wagon, and to see where the animals are, (Geranium has found a few elephant-giraffes wandering in The streets.)

I am sitting now in the highest clearing in our homeland, which I see to be on a hilltop, (See the map.)

The Homeland Of The Triboldies

The Key To The Map Of The Homeland Of The Triboldies

The Key To The Map Of The Homeland Of The Triboldies

1top clearing, where Whirligig proposes to settle
2main clearing
3lower clearing
4sight of hills
5wall of stone
6main encampment
7Ocarina's new building
8southeast gate
9north gate
10southwest gate
11wet city
12around here Whirligig's wagon is lost

A promising territory, except that there is a ridiculous pole projecting from the ground, thus

sketch of pole

—Obviously a sign that some form of totem worship has been taking place here. Not by my ancestors! Some intruders must have been while we were away, and indulged in their disgusting riles at this very spot. But we shall soon pull down this pole. I thing I shall settle here, if others agree. I shall build a dwelling in a treetop. Or underground might be better, if the ground is solid and dry. Or both. with an ingenious interconnecting device; I can live in the treetop, and work underground on my inventions.

I went with Ottoman to rescue our wagon. We reached our northern gales (which Noilly Prat was polishing), and saw Haranguertang and Anaxagoras arguing with a group of strange people dressed mostly in grey and black, very large and clumsy looking people with loud voices. I saw immediately that the argument was being carried on in two languages, our own (by Haranguertang and Anaxagoras). and a barbarian tongue (by the others) Even in our own language, the argument was totally unintelligible, but it seemed that these strangers were claiming the objects that Harangue rang and Anaxagoras had brought back with them. I saw that there were many hundreds of strangers, in dozens of flimsy wagons drawn by those archaic creatures, horses, and immediately guessed that these people were coming to occupy the deserted city, which we have more right to than they, since we were here earlier. But if we are to share the spoils equally with them, we should lake the useful objects, and they the town. since we have no use for it. We certainly do not care for the buildings. When Ocarina's building is made, the rest of us shall probably dig large caverns under this homeland, and live in there. While the gates were opened after our exit. Harang and Anax rushed in, leaving the grey people watching. The grey ones made no attempt to chase them, but began to travel along the street which We were about to. So we waited for the grey people lo pass. They were contained in several hundreds of wagons that I counted before I reached a higher number than I knew. There are obviously many more of them than there are of us. We shall have to be careful when dealing with them. Some looked at us curiously—perhaps at our wornlooking wagon as much as at ourselves—and others shouted something that was unintelligible but seemed hostile. We ignored them, and after several hours of wailing for them to stop passing, we spat publicly on the roadway, and went to tell Ocarina what we have seen.

Photo by Greg Arnold

Photo by Greg Arnold