Symzonia: Voyage of Discovery

CHAPTER IX. The Author arrives at the seat of government.--Description of the Auditory.--Symzonian manner of assembling for devotion and public business.--Etiquette of the Symzonian Court.--He is admitted to an audience by the Best Man.--Account of the interview, and of his unfortunate efforts to exalt the character of the externals, by describing some of their splendid follies. We were three days in passing from the ship to the place of assembly. Surui uniformly ordered a halt, when the light was so faint as not to permit me to have a distinct view of the country. Wherever we stopped, we were visited by great numbers of people, many of whom, to my extreme mortification, looked upon me with evident pity, if not with disgust. Yet they were very kind, and brought a profusion of the choicest fruits, vegetables, milk, and honey, and great quantities of beautiful flowers.--The face of the country became more and more beautiful as we approached the place of assemblage, which is in the most perfect part of this delightful region. The most elegant specimens of ornamental gardening on the external world, give but a faint idea of the appearance of this whole district. The principal object that attracted my notice on arriving at the seat of government, was the Auditory, which towered above all surrounding objects, and struck me with awe and admiration. I could not conceive how so stupendous an edifice could have been reared by such a people. I had indeed observed, that notwithstanding their inferiority in size, they were much stronger, and more active than the Externals. The tallest men were about five feet high, but they leaped twenty or thirty feet at a bound without much apparent exertion, and easily lifted burthens which three of our men would find it difficult to move; still the vast fabric before me appeared out of all proportion to the ability even of mortals as highly gifted as these. It was a single dome of one arch, supported by a peristyle of huge columns, and covering at least eight acres of ground. The extreme elevation of the centre was seven hundred and fifty feet. The whole was formed of stone, in massy blocks, cemented with a paste of the same material, so as to appear to be all of one solid piece.