At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft. Pdf book download - boipaw.com

At the Mountains of Madness
by H. P. Lovecraft. Pdf book download
- boipaw.com

🔍On an expedition to Antarctica, Professor William Dyer and his colleagues discover the remains of ancient half-vegetable, half-animal life-forms. The extremely early date in the geological strata is surprising because of the highly-evolved features found in these previously unkown life-forms. Through a series of dark revelations, violent episodes, and misunderstandings, the group learns of Earth's secret history and legacy.

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nt to the west, but somewhat different from the parts lying eastward below South America - which we then thought to form a separate and smaller continent divided from the larger one by a frozen junction of Ross and Weddell Seas, though Byrd has since disproved the hypothesis.

In certain of the sandstones, dynamited and chiseled after boring revealed their nature, we found some highly interesting fossil markings and fragments; notably ferns, seaweeds, trilobites, crinoids, and such mollusks as linguellae and gastropods - all of which seemed of real significance in 

connection with the region's primordial history. There was also a queer triangular, striated marking, about a foot in greatest diameter, which Lake pieced together from three fragments of slate brought up from a deep-blasted aperture. These fragments came from a point to the westward, near the Queen Alexandra Range; and Lake, as a biologist, seemed to find their curious marking unusually puzzling and provocative, though to my geological eye it

🧾IN This Book_______________________

I am forced into speech because men of science have refused to follow my

advice without knowing why. It is altogether against my will that I tell my

reasons for opposing this contemplated invasion of the antarctic - with its vast

fossil hunt and its wholesale boring and melting of the ancient ice caps. And I

am the more reluctant because my warning 

may be in vain.

Doubt of the real facts, as I must reveal them, is inevitable; yet, if I suppressed

what will seem extravagant and incredible, there would be nothing left. The

hitherto withheld photographs, both ordinary and aerial, will count in my favor,

for they are damnably vivid and graphic. Still, they will be doubted because of

the great lengths to which clever fakery can be carried. The ink drawings, of

course, will be jeered at as obvious impostures, notwithstanding a strangeness of

technique which art experts ought to remark and puzzle over.

In the end I must rely on the judgment and standing of the few scientific leaders

who have, on the one hand, sufficient independence of thought to weigh my data

on its own hideously convincing merits or in the light of certain primordial and

highly baffling myth cycles; and on the other hand, sufficient influence to deter

the exploring world in general from any rash and over-ambitious program in the

region of those mountains of madness. It is an unfortunate fact that relatively

obscure men like myself and my associates, connected only with a small

university, have little chance of making an impression where matters of a wildly

bizarre or highly controversial nature are concerned.

It is further against us that we are not, in the strictest sense, specialists in the

fields which came primarily to be concerned. As a geologist, my object in

leading the Miskatonic University Expedition was wholly that of securing deep-

level specimens of rock and soil from various parts of the antarctic continent,

aided by the remarkable drill devised by Professor Frank H. Pabodie of our

engineering department. I had no wish to be a pioneer in any other field than

this, but I did hope that the use of this new mechanical appliance at different

points along previously explored paths would bring to light materials of a sort

hitherto unreached by the ordinary methods of collection.

Pabodie’s drilling apparatus, as the public already knows from our reports, was

unique and radical in its lightness, portability, and capacity to combine the.

ordinary artesian drill principle with the principle of the small circular rock drill

in such a way as to cope quickly with strata of varying hardness. Steel head,

jointed rods, gasoline motor, collapsible wooden derrick, dynamiting

paraphernalia, cording, rubbish-removal auger, and sectional piping for bores

five inches wide and up to one thousand feet deep all formed, with needed

accessories, no greater load than three seven-dog sledges could carry. This was

made possible by the clever aluminum alloy of which most of the metal objects

were fashioned. Four large Dornier aeroplanes, designed especially for the

tremendous altitude flying necessary on the antarctic plateau and with added

fuel-warming and quick-starting devices worked out by Pabodie, could transport

our entire expedition from a base at the edge of the great ice barrier to various

suitable inland points, and from these points a sufficient quota of dogs would

serve us..

We planned to cover as great an area as one antarctic season - or longer, if

absolutely necessary - would permit, operating mostly in the mountain ranges

and on the plateau south of Ross Sea; regions explored in varying degree by

Shackleton, Amundsen, Scott, and Byrd. With frequent changes of camp, made

by aeroplane and involving distances great enough to be of geological

significance, we expected to unearth a quite unprecedented amount of material -

especially in the pre-Cambrian strata of which so narrow a range of antarctic

specimens had previously been secured. We wished also to obtain as great as

possible a variety of the upper fossiliferous rocks, since the primal life history of

this bleak realm of ice and death is of the highest importance to our knowledge

of the earth’s past. That the antarctic continent was once temperate and even

tropical, with a teeming vegetable and animal life of which the lichens, marine

fauna, arachnida, and penguins of the northern edge are the only survivals, is a

matter of common information; and we hoped to expand that information in

variety, accuracy, and detail. When a simple boring revealed fossiliferous signs,

we would enlarge the aperture by blasting, in order to get specimens of suitable

size and condition.

Our borings, of varying depth according to the promise held out by the upper

soil or rock, were to be confined to exposed, or nearly exposed, land surfaces -

these inevitably being slopes and ridges because of the mile or two-mile

thickness of solid ice overlying the lower levels. We could not afford to waste

drilling the depth of any considerable amount of mere glaciation, though Pabodie

had worked out a plan for sinking copper electrodes in thick clusters of borings

and melting off limited areas of ice with current from a gasoline-driven dynamo.