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The
toughness
of
the
things
was
almost
incredible
.
Even
the
terrific
pressure
of
the
deepest
sea
bottoms
appeared
powerless
to
harm
them
.
Very
few
seemed
to
die
at
all
except
by
violence
,
and
their
burial
places
were
very
limited
.
The
fact
that
they
covered
their
vertically
inhumed
dead
with
five-pointed
inscribed
mounds
set
up
thoughts
in
Danforth
and
me
which
made
a
fresh
pause
and
recuperation
necessary
after
the
sculptures
revealed
it
.
The
beings
multiplied
by
means
of
spores
--
like
vegetable
pteridophytes
,
as
Lake
had
suspected
--
but
,
owing
to
their
prodigious
toughness
and
longevity
,
and
consequent
lack
of
replacement
needs
,
they
did
not
encourage
the
large-scale
development
of
new
prothallia
except
when
they
had
new
regions
to
colonize
.
The
young
matured
swiftly
,
and
received
an
education
evidently
beyond
any
standard
we
can
imagine
.
The
prevailing
intellectual
and
aesthetic
life
was
highly
evolved
,
and
produced
a
tenaciously
enduring
set
of
customs
and
institutions
which
I
shall
describe
more
fully
in
my
coming
monograph
.
These
varied
slightly
according
to
sea
or
land
residence
,
but
had
the
same
foundations
and
essentials
.
Though
able
,
like
vegetables
,
to
derive
nourishment
from
inorganic
substances
,
they
vastly
preferred
organic
and
especially
animal
food
.
They
ate
uncooked
marine
life
under
the
sea
,
but
cooked
their
viands
on
land
.
They
hunted
game
and
raised
meat
herds
--
slaughtering
with
sharp
weapons
whose
odd
marks
on
certain
fossil
bones
our
expedition
had
noted
.
They
resisted
all
ordinary
temperatures
marvelously
,
and
in
their
natural
state
could
live
in
water
down
to
freezing
.
When
the
great
chill
of
the
Pleistocene
drew
on
,
however
--
nearly
a
million
years
ago
--
the
land
dwellers
had
to
resort
to
special
measures
,
including
artificial
heating
--
until
at
last
the
deadly
cold
appears
to
have
driven
them
back
into
the
sea
.
For
their
prehistoric
flights
through
cosmic
space
,
legend
said
,
they
absorbed
certain
chemicals
and
became
almost
independent
of
eating
,
breathing
,
or
heat
conditions
--
but
by
the
time
of
the
great
cold
they
had
lost
track
of
the
method
.
In
any
case
they
could
not
have
prolonged
the
artificial
state
indefinitely
without
harm
.
Being
nonpairing
and
semivegetable
in
structure
,
the
Old
Ones
had
no
biological
basis
for
the
family
phase
of
mammal
life
,
but
seemed
to
organize
large
households
on
the
principles
of
comfortable
space-utility
and
--
as
we
deduced
from
the
pictured
occupations
and
diversions
of
co-dwellers
--
congenial
mental
association
.
In
furnishing
their
homes
they
kept
everything
in
the
center
of
the
huge
rooms
,
leaving
all
the
wall
spaces
free
for
decorative
treatment
.
Lighting
,
in
the
case
of
the
land
inhabitants
,
was
accomplished
by
a
device
probably
electro-chemical
in
nature
.
Both
on
land
and
under
water
they
used
curious
tables
,
chairs
and
couches
like
cylindrical
frames
--
for
they
rested
and
slept
upright
with
folded-down
tentacles
--
and
racks
for
hinged
sets
of
dotted
surfaces
forming
their
books
.
Government
was
evidently
complex
and
probably
socialistic
,
though
no
certainties
in
this
regard
could
be
deduced
from
the
sculptures
we
saw
.
There
was
extensive
commerce
,
both
local
and
between
different
cities
--
certain
small
,
flat
counters
,
five-pointed
and
inscribed
,
serving
as
money
.
Probably
the
smaller
of
the
various
greenish
soapstones
found
by
our
expedition
were
pieces
of
such
currency
.
Though
the
culture
was
mainly
urban
,
some
agriculture
and
much
stock
raising
existed
.
Mining
and
a
limited
amount
of
manufacturing
were
also
practiced
.
Travel
was
very
frequent
,
but
permanent
migration
seemed
relatively
rare
except
for
the
vast
colonizing
movements
by
which
the
race
expanded
.
For
personal
locomotion
no
external
aid
was
used
,
since
in
land
,
air
,
and
water
movement
alike
the
Old
Ones
seemed
to
possess
excessively
vast
capacities
for
speed
.
Loads
,
however
,
were
drawn
by
beasts
of
burden
--
Shoggoths
under
the
sea
,
and
a
curious
variety
of
primitive
vertebrates
in
the
later
years
of
land
existence
.
These
vertebrates
,
as
well
as
an
infinity
of
other
life
forms
--
animal
and
vegetable
,
marine
,
terrestrial
,
and
aerial
--
were
the
products
of
unguided
evolution
acting
on
life
cells
made
by
the
Old
Ones
,
but
escaping
beyond
their
radius
of
attention
.
They
had
been
suffered
to
develop
unchecked
because
they
had
not
come
in
conflict
with
the
dominant
beings
.
Bothersome
forms
,
of
course
,
were
mechanically
exterminated
.
It
interested
us
to
see
in
some
of
the
very
last
and
most
decadent
sculptures
a
shambling
,
primitive
mammal
,
used
sometimes
for
food
and
sometimes
as
an
amusing
buffoon
by
the
land
dwellers
,
whose
vaguely
simian
and
human
foreshadowings
were
unmistakable
.
In
the
building
of
land
cities
the
huge
stone
blocks
of
the
high
towers
were
generally
lifted
by
vast-winged
pterodactyls
of
a
species
heretofore
unknown
to
paleontology
.
The
persistence
with
which
the
Old
Ones
survived
various
geologic
changes
and
convulsions
of
the
earth
's
crust
was
little
short
of
miraculous
.
Though
few
or
none
of
their
first
cities
seem
to
have
remained
beyond
the
Archaean
Age
,
there
was
no
interruption
in
their
civilization
or
in
the
transmission
of
their
records
.
Their
original
place
of
advent
to
the
planet
was
the
Antarctic
Ocean
,
and
it
is
likely
that
they
came
not
long
after
the
matter
forming
the
moon
was
wrenched
from
the
neighboring
South
Pacific
.
According
to
one
of
the
sculptured
maps
the
whole
globe
was
then
under
water
,
with
stone
cities
scattered
farther
and
farther
from
the
antarctic
as
aeons
passed
.
Another
map
shows
a
vast
bulk
of
dry
land
around
the
south
pole
,
where
it
is
evident
that
some
of
the
beings
made
experimental
settlements
,
though
their
main
centers
were
transferred
to
the
nearest
sea
bottom
.
Later
maps
,
which
display
the
land
mass
as
cracking
and
drifting
,
and
sending
certain
detached
parts
northward
,
uphold
in
a
striking
way
the
theories
of
continental
drift
lately
advanced
by
Taylor
,
Wegener
,
and
Joly
.
