The Iron
Crown

At this juncture we were accosted by one of the inhabitants of the settlement who seemed by his gesticulations to be offering to show us round the large building we had observed from the tree-tops on the previous day.

We agreed, with a little trepidation, and strode in silent and single file between the dismal rock-faces until the pinnacles of the hall were once more in sight.

What we had taken to be a stone edifice of considerable pro-portions turned out in fact to be a rather smaller building, apparently of oak and other woods that could be culled from the surrounding forests.

We passed through the arch at the front, which was so low that even the natives had to stoop to enter, and there before us lay the most magnificent spectacle a man could hope to see.

I'm afraid I can hardly say what it was, so foreign was it to the experience of any in the party that we could not find the words to describe it, but long after that first glorious view of it I retained in my mind an amalgam, a potch of hotch; for this wonder, which all the natives and all the animals about revered mightily, had something of the grandeur of the Citadel of Bastergew, tempered with the mellow lines of the Spice Jars of Amphidion, and with an overall self-effacing quality of the pygmies of Tarazacka.

To those who will read these lines (if ever we should return) my description will seem vague, but the whole concept of the construction was so foreign to anything which our own architectural science is capable of that I am quite unable, then as now, to explain it to my readers.

One expects in an edifice of such economic and ritual importance as this Basenjoria that one should enter through a portal to be greeted with vistas and perspectives which recall the grandeur of Man and the splendour of the royal person; but no, here we entered through a low undecorated arch, only to crawl on our bellies through a narrow passage into the central chamber, as bare as the rest of the building, lit but dimly by a single shaft of light from the side.

Cats and half-formed monkeys crawled at our feet, grovelling for crumbs.

Strange beasts like ghosts of unborn weasels came and went, and I am sure that no one in our party was entirely free from the suspicion that this was a cruel and cunning trap.

But lo!

A glimmer appeared on the western wall, and we saw, through the wood of the hull, the rising of the moon and the beginning of the transcendental ritual.

It was as though the world had come to roost before our eyes, in our minds, and coated with the succulence of former years, recalling the grandeur of both animal, vegetable and minstrel.

As one the voices of our party cried, "Magnificent!" and the echoes were unstinting in their reply.