Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 August 1884 — The World of a Thousand Tears Ago. [ARTICLE]

The World of a Thousand Tears Ago.

A thousand years ago, and for a long time after, the world was not at all the geologized, botanized, zoologized, and mapped-out earthly ball it is now. There it lay, according to the imagination of the men. and women of those days (or rather, according to the ideas of the monks; for the men, and far less the women, of those distant times troubled themselves verydittle about matters of this kind, but left it to the churchmen to meddle with such dangerous book-learning) a flat plain, full of things mysterious and unknown; and out of the four - comers, through the gaps of four mountain ranges, which were placed there to keep it steady, blew the four winds of heaven! Of course, the centre of it all was the little town, and county, parish, manor, barony or kingdom where they dwelt; but outside of that was no man’s land. It was looked upon by our remote forefather s in much the same lightjas it is — by the Chinese, who, while making maps of the Flowery Land on a scale so large as to show the ground plan of every town and village, mark all the countries outside of that magic boundary of theirs, as “inhabited by barbarians.” “It was the land of the infidel,” the people said, as the piously crossed themselves at the thought. All was mysterious to the travelers of that age. Tile unknown lands were full of dragons and giants, rocs, orcs, witchwhales, griffins, chimseras, enchanters, Paynims, Saracens, Emirs, and Sultans, Kaisers of Constantinople, of Ind and Cathay and Cipango. What a choice was there then for a young traveler, a good knight, and a proper man withall If he bad a mind, he could steer his way to Lapland, where (as all the world knew) dwarfs forged chain-armor of magic links, and where witch-v hales and ice-mountains roamed about the chilly sea; or go south, and join the Varangiad Guard in Constantinople, or beard the Turk in Palestine; or into Egypt, and win the Prince’s daughter by killing a great dragon, as did St, George; or down to Cordova, where there were dire magicians; or into the forests of Brittany, where beauteous fairies sported—kindly immortals who loved to be s wedded to mortality—who emptied his water-jars at night and filled them wi’h good Rhine wine ere dawn of day. He might even marry one, as did 8 it Thomas, and pass a few years in Fairyland.—Countries of the World. ■ v - . V The ruins of friendship are * more melancholy spectacle to me than«those of desolate palaces. They exhibit the heart that was once lighted with joy all damp deserted, and haunted by thos>' birds of ill omen that only nestle in ruins.— Campbell.