 
IV. A TOUR OF SIGHT-SEEING. What a wonderful land is Intermere, and what a wonderful people live and enjoy life in it to the full! Twenty days of visiting ten of the interior provinces, bordering on the mere, was more like a dream of happiness, sight-seeing and indescribable enjoyment to me than a reality. For reasons not explained to me I was not carried into the fourteen remaining provinces, which evidently lay in all directions toward the exterior borders of the land. I rather suspect that this was because it might have enabled me to form some definite idea of the geographical location of Intermere. What I saw and experienced I still retain The delightful journey was under the direction of Karmas, the Custodian of Works and Polity, accompanied by other chief officers, and the officials of the provinces, the title and character of which had already been given me by Xamas. They have three modes of travel: by Medocar, by Aerocar, and by Merocar. By the first you travel on land; by the second through the air; by the third on the water. While these vehicles of transportation are divided into three general classes as designated, they comprise thousands of beautiful and curious designs, upon which individual names are bestowed, as we bestow names upon our horses and our ships. There is no preference as to the mode and method of journeying. Each of them seems absolutely perfect. There is no physical sense of motion in either, as we realize it. They glide over the broad, smooth and perfectly kept roadways, through the depths of the ether, or along the waters, with the same imperceptible motion, and can be put to a rate of speed that makes our limited railway trains seem like lumbering farm wagons. All resistance of the elements seems absolutely overcome. The power of propulsion was wholly incomprehensible at first, and later I was only able to learn as to its principle, and left wholly to conjecture as to its application. Roadways, or, perhaps more properly, boulevards, interlace the whole country. They are the perfection of road-building—smooth, even-crowned, and free from dust, water or other offensive substance. The surface is like a The purpose of each of them is self-evident. Every rod of it is for use and to meet some requirement that presents itself. They are bordered, wherever they extend, with beautiful homes, monuments and temples, commemorative of some great achievement in civilization and progress. The residential grounds, farms and gardens are marvels of exquisite taste without an exception, so far as I was able to note, modeled after countless designs, which give the earth's surface a versatility of beauty that is enchanting. There are farms and gardens everywhere except in a limited number of the compact squares of cities, small and perfectly kept, and productive in a sense and to a degree absolutely incredible to the dwellers of any other land. As to these roadways: They are of the uniform width of two hundred feet wherever you find them, whether skirting sea, lake or river, penetrating valleys or clambering around and around the ascent of the mountains from base to apex, where some monument or temple, or both, are perched, overlooking hundreds of square miles. As already stated, they are everywhere as smooth and kept as clean as a tiled floor, with a sense or quality of elasticity, and seemingly indestructible. I would have regarded them as natural phenomena had I not seen a mountain being terraced and a roadway being graded and finished without any of the paraphernalia Earth and rock seemed to melt and become mobile under the influence of some unseen power, and gangs of men, following with levelers of light machinery, modulated the grades and contours of the crumbled rock and soil. Others followed these, compounding, expanding and laying down a plastic and rapidly hardening envelope, thus finishing the surface like the roads over which we were gliding, some of which, I was told, had been in use for many centuries without the slightest change of condition. I expressed a doubt as to their longevity. Karmas smiled and said: "You judge by experience. In your cities you import material from some distant country or island, and by mechanical manipulation and chemical combination and processes fit it to be laid down as a pavement. When finished "Your chemists and engineers and constructors have only the crudest ideas of landway or terraneous works. The asphalt is a suggestion, but the builder's compound turns it in the direction of deterioration. Instead of going forward, they go backward. They know little of the character of the materials they seek to utilize, and nothing of the true principles of chemical combination. "Our material is at hand, as it is at hand everywhere, containing the elements which need only to be properly combined and assimilated to become practically indestructible. "You take a clay, and by machinery, crude perhaps, reduce it to dust, then moisten it back into pliable clay, fashion it, subject it to an intense but unrefined heat, and you have what "Your people never go beyond the point of discovery. They stop short of the possibilities. They lose these possibilities in material and commercial utilization. Ego stands between the discoverer and the world, and progress ends. "While the rest of the world has thus, again and again, stood still on the threshold, or moved backward or forward intermittently, for obvious and selfish reasons, we have steadily moved forward in scientific discovery and research, and the application of great principles. "The example is before you. Without any of your crude and cumbersome machinery, the "All that you see or will see is the result of knowledge and wisdom turned to noble and unselfish ends for the common betterment and elevation of the race. "Your progenitors learned to dig the hard and soft ores from the earth and produce iron, then took a step forward and converted it into steel, of greater strength and durability, capable of light forms and high polish, and there you have stopped at the very beginning. You "You have denuded your lands of forests to use as a cumbersome material for building, and furniture and other purposes, the wood, which decays and is soon destroyed. You have, without understanding the process, macerated and reduced woods to a pulp and fashioned it into paper, which in several forms you utilize, but you have stopped at the beginning of the journey. "We have carried it forward, and a large proportion of the material used in the construction of our houses and furniture and bridges and cars are the product of our forests in a new and better and more enduring form—light I had already noticed the fact that but little of the woodwork was in the natural form, and that while it was incredulously light, it was incredibly strong. The same was true of the wrought metals, all of which differed from our own forms. In my examinations of the bridges across streams, both large and small, I noted the fact that they were constructed in about equal parts of wood, or a substance I took therefor, and metal, differing greatly from the metals we use, yet not wholly unlike them. Both materials were of tubular construction, appearing almost fragile in their lightness, but strong and firm, and showing none of the ravages of time and the elements. So far as I was able to judge no paints were used, but everything was perfectly polished. The bridges were light, airy constructions, I also noticed that in their construction of cars, furniture, houses, and the like, the woods and metals were indiscriminately used, more for beauty and ornamentation, perhaps, than for strengthening purposes or utility. Lightness and gracefulness were in evidence everywhere. There were panels and inlays of wood in its natural state, highly wrought and polished, as hard and impervious as the metals. "You seem to be able to make everything indestructible," I said to Karmas. "It is your privilege to draw your own conclusions," was his reply. The people I met and mingled with, both men and women, were superb specimens of the human race, full of life, full of hope, full of high ambitions, and capable of infinite enjoyments. Games, sports and social amenities were the order of their daily life, albeit every one of them engaged in some laborious or business occupation during a part of each day. I learned that under their system of economy less than four hours out of the twenty-four were necessary for the comfort, sustenance and requirements of each adult, so that labor did not degenerate into slavery. Every fifth day was a holiday, during which no labor was performed, except such as was necessary for the enjoyments of the day. Manufacturing and business of different kinds were diffused in proportion to the population. There were no great factories or business houses, but innumerable small ones. No manufacturer employed more than ten persons, usually but five, and two or three employes were sufficient for the business houses. The remarkable discoveries and inventions of the land revolutionized all our ideas of manual There were no smoking furnaces, no clangor of machinery. The factory was as neat and practically as noiseless as the private home. Useful and necessary devices and machinery were turned out as quietly as a housewife disposes of her routine labors. Science had apparently solved the rough and knotty problem of labor and production. Nowhere did I see a furnace; in fact, fire was visible nowhere; and yet I could see its offices performed everywhere. I asked Karmas to explain the phenomena. "That," he replied, "will be explained to you by Remo, Custodian of Useful Mechanical Devices. That is his official sphere." Another incredible phenomenon presented itself during the journey. We passed through one province early in that journey, and my attention was called to the fact that the farmers Ten days later we repassed the same spot, and they were harvesting the ripened grain. "In my country," I said to Karmas, "from eight to ten months, dependent upon the season, elapses between the sowing and the harvesting of wheat. Here the period is reduced to from eight to ten days. I can not understand the discrepancy." "But it is an absolute mystery to you?" "It is." "And yet your own people have approached the twilight of its solution. By selection of seeds and combination of soils, and other perfectly natural processes, they have been able to change the nature of vegetation and produce new vegetable being. The period for the growth and maturing of nearly all your grains "Your floriculturists and horticulturists have carried the evolution the furthest, and yet they do not even faintly comprehend the real principle which produces results. We understand and intelligently apply it. Hence with us but ten days elapse between seedtime and harvest, and shorter periods in the production of our common vegetables. "We are able to produce flowers of all shapes and colors at will, and with the absolute certainty of the operation of fixed and immutable laws, while your florists, groping in the dark, occasionally stumble on a result, knowing nothing of the law that produces it, and give their fellows a nine-days' wonder. "Yesterday you asked me why all the farms were so diminutive—'merely a ten-acre field,' "There is no need to put these farms to the full test of their productiveness. The twentieth part suffices. We have a population of 50,000,000, increasing at the rate of scarcely one per cent each year, and two-thirds of the Commonwealth is public domain, for the benefit of the countless generations yet unborn. Each year and each day brings their immediate needs, and they are met with plenteous fullness." Karmas later gave me a fuller idea of the general polity of the Commonwealth. All men become voters at 25, if they are There are no armies, no warships, no police, no peace or distress officers, and no courts and no lawyers. Sometimes citizens may differ, as they differ in other lands, as to their respective rights or obligations. In such case they repair to the Municipal Custodian and state the respective sides of their case. The Custodian decides at once, and that ends forever the controversy, The educational period continues from birth to 20 years of age, in what may be called a common school, held in the temples, which all enter at the age of ten. The spheres of the two sexes are clearly marked, and both live within them, that of the female being regarded as the highest and most sacred. The men make the homes and the women care for and beautify them, and receive the homage universally accorded them. Neither sex looks upon necessary labor as a drudgery or in any manner degrading. They all receive a like education, and the superior mental equipment invariably asserts itself in Almost invariably the children of the household marry in the order of their birth, being absolutely free to choose their mates. There are no marriages for convenience and no second marriages. All are the result of affection and natural affinity. The last child to marry inherits the homestead at the death of the father. The surviving mother becomes the Preferred Guest of her child during the remainder of her life, and is treated as such. If the father survives, he retains his position as head of the household. The personal estate of a deceased parent is divided equally among the children. "In short," said Karmas, "We aim to dispose the burdens and distribute the enjoyments of life equally and justly among all. "Tomorrow we will be accompanied by Alpaz, the Curator of Learning and Progress, who will answer the other questions in your mind." |
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