the country of the blind by h.g wells 300 miles and more from chimborazo 100 from the snows of kotopaksi in the wildest wastes of ecuador's andes there lies that mysterious mountain valley cut off from all the world of men the country of the blind long years ago that valley lay so far open to the world that men might come at last through frightful gorges and over an icy pass into its equivalent meadows and thither indeed men came a family or so of peruvian half-breeds fleeing from the lust and tyranny of an evil spanish ruler then came the stupendous outbreak of mindobamba when it was night in quito for 17 days and the water was boiling at yaguachi and all the fish floating dying even as far as everywhere along the pacific slopes there were land slips and swift thawings and sudden floods and one whole side of the old arawaka crest slipped and came down in thunder and cut off the country of the blind forever from the exploring feet of men but one of these early settlers had chance to be on the hither side of the gorges when the world had so terribly shaken itself and he perforce had to forget his wife and his child and all the friends and possessions he had left up there and start life over again in the lower world he started it again but hill blindness overtook him and he died of punishment in the minds but the story he told begot a legend that lingers along the length of the corded errors of the andes to this day he told of his reason for venturing back from that fastness into which he had first been carried lashed to a llama beside a vast bale of gear when he was a child the valley he said had in it all that the heart of man could desire sweet water pasture and even climate slopes of rich brown soil with tangles of a shrub that bore an excellent fruit and on one side great hanging forests of pine that held the avalanches high far overhead on three sides vast cliffs of grey-green rock were capped by clips of ice but the glacier stream came not to them but flowed away by the farther slopes and only now and then huge ice masses fell on the valley side in this valley it neither rained nor snowed but the abundant springs gave a rich green pasture that irrigation would spread over all the valley space the settlers did well indeed there their beast did well and multiplied and but one thing marred their happiness yet it was enough to mar it greatly a strange disease had come upon them and had made all the children born to them there and indeed several older children also blind it was to seek some charm or antidote against this plague of blindness that he had with fatigue and danger and difficulty returned down the gorge in those days in such cases men did not think of germs and infections but of sins and it seemed to him that the reason of this affliction must be in the negligence of these priestless immigrants to set up a shrine so soon as they entered the valley he wanted a shrine a handsome cheap effectual shrine to be erected in the valley he wanted relics and such like potent things of faith blessed objects and mysterious medals and prayers in his wallet he had a bar of native silver for which he would not account he insisted there was none in the valley with something of the insistence of an expert liar they had all clubbed their money and ornaments together having little need for such treasure up there he said to buy them holy help against their ill i figured this dimide young mountaineer sunburned gaunt and anxious hat brim clutched feverishly a man all unused to the ways of the lower world telling this story to some keen-eyed attentive priest before the great convulsion i can picture him presently seeking to return with pious and infallible remedies against that trouble and the infinite dismay with which he must have faced the tumbled vastness where the gorge had once come out but the rest of his story of mischances is lost to me save that i know of his evil death after several years pour stray from that remoteness the stream that had once made the gorge now burst from the mouth of a rocky cave and the legend his poor ill-told story set going developed into the legend of a race of blind men somewhere over there one may still hear today and amidst the little population of that now isolated and forgotten valley the disease ran its course the old became groping the young saw but dimly and the children that were born to them never saw at all but life was very easy in that snow-rimmed basin lost to all the world with neither thorns nor brides with no evil insects nor any beasts save the gentle breed of llamas they had lugged and thrust and followed up the beds of the shrunken rivers in the gorges at which they had come the seeing had become per blind so gradually that they scarcely noticed their loss they guided the sightless youngsters hither and dither until they knew the whole valley marvelously and when at last sight died out among them the race lived on they had even time to adapt themselves to the blind control of fire which they made carefully in stoves of stone they were a simple strain of people at first unlettered only slightly touched with the spanish civilization but with something of a tradition of the arts of old peru and of its lost philosophy generation followed generation they forgot many things they devised many things their tradition of the greater world they came from became mythical in color and uncertain in all things save sight they were strong and able and presently chant sent one who had an original mind and who could talk and persuade among them and then afterwards another these two passed leaving their effects and the little community grew in numbers and in understanding and met and settled social and economic problems that arose generation followed generation generation followed generation there came a time when a child was born who was 15 generations from that ancestor who went out of the valley with a bar of silver to seek god's aid and who never returned their about it chanced that a man came into this community from the outer world and this is the story of that man he was a mountaineer from the country near quito a man who had been down to the sea and had seen the world a reader of books in an original way an acute and enterprising man and he was taken on by a party of englishmen who had come out to ecuador to climb mountains to replace one of their three swiss guides who had fallen ill he climbed here and he climbed there and then came the attempt on the matterhorn of the andes in which he was lost to the outer world the story of that accident has been written a dozen times poynter's narrative is the best he tells how the little party worked their difficult and almost vertical way up to the very foot of the last and greatest precipice and how they built a night shelter amidst the snow upon a little shelf of rock and with a touch of real dramatic power how presently they found nunes had gone from them they shouted and there was no reply shouted and whistled and for the rest of that night they slept no more as the morning broke they saw the traces of his fall it seems impossible he could have uttered a sound he had slipped eastward towards the unknown side of the mountain far below he had struck a steep slope of snow and plowed his way down it in the midst of a snow avalanche his track went straight to the edge of a frightful precipice and beyond that everything was hidden far far below and hazy with distance they could see trees rising out of a narrow shut-in valley the lost country of the blind but they did not know it was the lost country of the blind nor distinguish it in any way from any other narrow streak of upland valley unnerved by this disaster they abandoned their attempt in the afternoon and poynter was called away to the war before he could make another attack to this day paris got optel lifts an unconquered crest and pointers shelter crumbles unvisited amidst the snows and the man who fell survived at the end of the slope he fell a thousand feet and came down in the midst of a cloud of snow upon a snow slope even steeper than the one above down this he was world stunned and insensible but without a bone broken in his body and then at last came to gentler slopes and at last rolled out and lay still buried amidst the softening heap of the white masses that had accompanied and saved him he came to himself with a dim fancy that he was still in bed then realized his position with the mountain is intelligence and worked himself loose and after a rest or so out until he saw the stars he rested flat upon his chest for his face wondering where he was and what had happened to him he explored his limbs and discovered that several of his buttons were gone and his coat turned over his head his knife had gone from his pocket and his hat was lost though he had tied it under his chin he recalled that he had been looking for loose stones to raise his piece of shelter wall his ice axe had disappeared he decided he must have fallen and looked up to sea exaggerated by the ghastly light of the rising moon the tremendous flight he had taken for a while he lay gazing blankly at the vast pale cliff towering above rising moment by moment out of a subsiding tide of darkness its phantasmal mysterious beauty held him for a space and then he was seized with a paroxysm of sobbing laughter after a great interval of time he became aware that he was near the lower edge of the snow below down what was now a moonlit and practical slope he saw the dark and broken appearance of rock strewn turf he struggled to his feet aching in every joint and limb got down painfully from the heap loose snow about him went downward until he was on the turf and there dropped rather than lay beside a boulder drank deep from the flask in his inner pocket and instantly fell asleep he was awakened by the singing of birds in the trees far below he sat up and perceived he was on a little alp at the foot of a vast precipice that sloped only a little in the gully down which he and his snow had come over against him another wall of rock reared itself against the sky the gorge between these precipices ran east and west and was full of the morning sunlight which lit to the westwood the mass of fallen mountain that closed the descending gorge below him it seemed there was a precipice equally steep but behind the snow in the gully he found a sort of chimney cleft dripping with snow water down which a desperate man might venture he found it easier than it seemed and came at last to another desolate alp and then after a rock climb of no particular difficulty to a steep slope of trees he took his bearings and turned his face up the gorge for he saw it opened out above upon green meadows among which he now glimpsed quite distinctly a cluster of stone huts of unfamiliar fashion at times his progress was like clambering along the face of a wall and after a time the rising sun ceased to strike along the gorge the voices of the singing birds died away and the air grew cold and dark about him but the distant valley with its houses was all the brighter for that he came presently to talus and among the rocks he noted for he was an observant man an unfamiliar fern that seemed to clutch out of the crevices with intense green hands he picked a frond or so and gnawed its stalk and found it helpful about midday he came at last out of the throat of the gorge into the plain and the sunlight he was stiff and weary he sat down in the shadow of a rock filled up his flask with water from a spring and drank it down and remained for a time resting before he went on to the houses they were very strange to his eyes and indeed the whole aspect of that valley became as he regarded it queerer and more unfamiliar the greater part of its surface was lush green meadow starred with many beautiful flowers irrigated with extraordinary care and bearing evidence of systematic cropping piece by piece high up and ringing the valley about was a wall and what appeared to be a circumferential water channel from which the little trickles of water that fed the meadow plants came and on the higher slopes above this flocks of llamas cropped the scanty herbage sheds apparently shelters or feeding places for the llamas stood against the boundary wall here and there the irrigation streams ran together into a main channel down the center of the valley and this was enclosed on either side by a wall breast high this gave a singularly urban quality to the secluded place a quality that was greatly enhanced by the fact that a number of paths paved with black and white stones and each with a curious little curb at the side ran hither and dither in an orderly manner the houses of the central village were quite unlike the casual and higgledy-piggledy agglomeration of the mountain villages he knew they stood in a continuous row on either side of a central street of astonishing cleanness here and there their party-colored facade was pierced by a door and not a solitary window broke their even frontage they were party colored with extraordinary irregularity smeared with a sort of plaster that was sometimes gray sometimes drab sometimes slate coloured or dark brown and it was the sight of this wild plastering first brought the word blind into the thoughts of the explorer the good man who did that he thought must have been as blind as a bat he descended a steep place and so came to the wall and channel that ran about the valley near where the latter spouted out its surplus contents into the deeps of the gorge in a thin and wavering thread of cascade he could now see a number of men and women resting on piled heaps of grass as if taken a siesta in the remoter part of the meadow and nearer the village a number of recumbent children and then near at hand three men carrying pails on yokes along a little path that ran from the encircling wall towards the houses these latter were clad in garments of llama cloth and boots and belts of leather and they wore caps of cloth with black and earflaps they followed one another in single file walking slowly and yawning as they walked like men who have been up all night there was something so reassuringly prosperous and respectable in their bearing that after a moment's hesitation nunes stepped forward as conspicuously as possible upon his rock and gave vent to a mighty shout that echoed round the valley the three men stopped and moved their heads as though they were looking about them they turned their faces this way and that and nunes gesticulated with freedom but they did not appear to see him for all his gestures and after a time directing themselves towards the mountains far away to the right they shouted as if an answer nunes bald again and then once more and as he gestured ineffectually the word blind came up to the top of his thoughts the fools must be blind he said when at last after much shouting and wrath lunas crossed the stream by a little bridge came through a gate in the wall and approached them he was sure that they were blind he was sure that this was the country of the blind of which the legends told conviction had sprung upon him and a sense of great and rather enviable adventure the three stood side by side not looking at him but with their ears directed towards him judging him by his unfamiliar steps they stood close together like men a little afraid and he could see their eyelids closed and sunken as though the very balls beneath had shrunk away there was an expression near or on their faces a man once said in hardly recognizable spanish a man it is a man or a spirit coming down from the rocks but nunes advance with the confident steps of a youth who enters upon life all the old stories of the lost valley and the country of the blind had come back to his mind and through his thoughts ran this old proverb as if it were a refrain in the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king in the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king and very civilly he gave them greeting he talked to them and used his eyes where does he come from brother pedro asked one down out of the rocks over the mountains i come said nunes out of the country beyond there where men can see from near bogota where there are a hundred thousand of people and where the city passes out of sight sight muttered pedro sight he comes said the second blind man out of the rocks the cloth of their coats nunes saw was curious fashioned each with a different sort of stitching they startled him by a simultaneous movement towards him each with the hand outstretched he stepped back from the advance of these spread fingers come hither said the third blind man following his motion and clutching him neatly and they held nunes and felt him over saying no word further until they had done so carefully he cried with a finger in his eye and found they thought that organ with its fluttering lids a queer thing in him they went over it again a strange creature correa said the one called pedro feel the coarseness of his hair like a llama's hair rough he is as the rocks that begot him said correa investigate in nunes unshaven chin with a soft and slightly moist hand perhaps he will grow finer nunes struggled a little under their examination but they gripped him firm carefully he said again he speaks said the third man certainly he is a man said pedro of the roughness of his coat and you have come into the world asked pedro out of the world over mountains and glaciers right over above there half way to the sun out of the great big world that goes down 12 days journey to the sea they scarcely seem to heed him our father told us men may be made by the forces of nature said korea it is the warmth of things and moisture and rottenness rottenness let us lead him to the elders said pedro shout first said korea lest the children be afraid this is a marvelous occasion so they shouted and pedro went first and took nunes by the hand and led him to the houses he drew his hand away i can see he said see said korea yes si said nunes turning towards him and stumbled against pedro's pale his senses are still imperfect said the third blind man he stumbles and talks unmeaning words lead him by the hand as you will said nunes and was led along laughing it seemed they knew nothing of sight well all in good time he would teach them he heard people shouting and saw a number of figures gathering together in the middle roadway of the village he found it taxed his nerve and patience more than he anticipated that first encounter with the population of the country of the blind the place seemed larger as he drew near to it and the smeared plasterings queer and a crowd of children and men and women the women and girls he was pleased to note had some of them quite sweet faces fraud that their eyes were shut and sunken came about him holding on to him touching him with soft sensitive hands smelling at him and listening at every word he spoke some of the maidens and children however kept aloof as if afraid and indeed his voice seemed coarse and rude beside their softer notes they mobbed him his three guides kept close to him with an effect of proprietorship and said again and again a wild man out of the rocks bogata he said bogata over the mountain crests a wild man using wild words said pedro did you hear that bogata his mind has hardly formed yet he has only the beginnings of speech a little boy nipped his hand bogata he said mockingly i a city to your village i come from the great world where men have eyes and sea his names bogged her they said he stumbled said korea stumbled twice as we came hither bring him into the elders and they thrust him suddenly through a doorway into a room as black as pitch save at the end their faintly glowed a fire the crowd closed in behind him and shut out all but the faintest glimmer of day and before he could arrest himself he had fallen headlong over the feet of a seated man his arm out flung struck the face of someone else as he went down he felt the soft impact of features and heard a cry of anger and for a moment he struggled against the number of hands that clutched him it was a one-sided fight an inkling of the situation came to him and he lay quiet i fell down he said i couldn't see in this pitchy darkness there was a pause as if the unseen persons about him tried to understand his words then a voice of correa said he is but newly formed he stumbles as he walks and mingles words that mean nothing with his speech others also said things about him that he heard or understood him perfectly may i sit up he asked in a pause i will not struggle against you again they consulted and let him rise the voice of an older man began to question him and nunes found himself trying to explain the great world out of which he had fallen and the sky and mountains and such like marvels to these elders who sat in darkness in the country of the blind and they would believe and understand nothing whatever that he told them a thing quite outside his expectation they would not even understand many of his words for fourteen generations these people had been blind and cut off from all the seeing world the names through the things of sight had faded and changed the story of the outer world was faded and changed to a child's story and they had ceased to concern themselves with anything beyond the rocky slopes above their circling wall blind men of genius had arisen among them and questioned the shreds of belief in tradition they had brought with them from their seeing days and had dismissed all these things as idol fancies and replaced them with new insane explanations much of their imagination had shriveled with their eyes and they had made for themselves new imaginations with their ever more sensitive ears and fingertips slowly nunez realized this that his expectation of wonder and reverence at his origin and his gifts was not to be borne out and after his poor attempt to explain sight to them had been set aside as the confused version of a new made being describing the marvels of his incoherent sensations he subsided a little dashed into listening to their instructions and the eldest of the blind men explained to him life and philosophy and religion how that the world meaning their valley had been first an empty hollow in the rocks and then had come first inanimate things without the gift of touch and llamas and a few other creatures had little sense and then men and at last angels whom one could hear singing and making fluttering sounds but whom no one could touch at all which puzzled nunes greatly until he thought of the birds he went on to tell nunes how this time had been divided into the warm and the cold which are the blind equivalents of day and night and how it was good to sleep in the warm and work during the cold so that now but for his advent the whole town of the blind would have been asleep he said nunes must have been specially created to learn and serve the wisdom they had acquired and that for all his mental incoherency and stumbling behavior he must have courage and do his best to learn and at that all the people in the doorway murmured encouragingly he said the night for the blind called their day night was now far gone and it behooved everyone to go back to sleep he asked nunes if he knew how to sleep and nunes said he did but that before sleep he wanted food they brought him food llamas milk in a bowl and rough salted bread and led him into a lonely place to eat out of their hearing and afterwards the slumber until the chill of the mountain evening roused them to begin their day again but nunes slumbered not at all instead he sat up in the place where they had left him resting his limbs and turning the unanticipated circumstances of his arrival over and over in his mind every now and then he laughed sometimes with amusement and sometimes with indignation unformed mind he said got no senses yet they little know they've been insulting their heaven sent king and master i see i must bring them to reason let me think let me think he was still thinking when the sun set nunes had an eye for all beautiful things and it seemed to him that the glow upon the snow fields and glaciers that rose above the valley on every side was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen his eyes went from that inaccessible glory to the village and irrigated fields far sinking into the twilight and suddenly a wave of emotion took him and he thanked god from the bottom of his heart that the power of sight had been given him he heard a voice calling to him from out of the village you hold there bogged her come hither at that he stood up smiling he would show these people once and for all what sight would do for a man they would seek him but not find him you move not bogata said the voice he laughed noiselessly and made two stealthy steps aside from the path trample not on the grass bogata that is not allowed nunes had scarcely heard the sound he made himself he stopped amazed the owner of the voice came running up the piebald path towards him he stepped back into the pathway here i am he said why did you not come when i called you said the blind man must you be led like a child cannot you hear the path as you walk noon has laughed i can see it he said there is no such word as see said the blind man after a pause cease this folly and follow the sound of my feet nunes followed a little annoyed my time will come he said you'll learn the blind man answered there is much to learn in the world has no one told you in the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king what is blind ask the blind man carelessly over his shoulder four days passed and the fifth found the king of the blind still incognito as a clumsy and useless stranger among his subjects it was he found much more difficult to proclaim himself than he had supposed and in the meantime while he meditated his coup d'etat he did what he was told and learnt the manners and customs of the country of the blind he found working and going about at night a particularly irksome thing and he decided that that should be the first thing he would change they led a simple laborious life these people with all the elements of virtue and happiness as these things can be understood by men they tall but not oppressively they had food and clothing sufficient for their needs they had days and seasons of rest they made much of music and singing and there was love among them and little children it was marvelous with what confidence and precision they went about their ordered world everything you see had been made to fit their needs each of the radiating paths of the valley area had a constant angle to the others and was distinguished by a special notch upon its curbing all obstacles and irregularities of path or meadow had long since been cleared away all their methods and procedure arose naturally from their special needs their senses had become marvelously acute they could hear and judge the slightest gesture of a man a dozen paces away could hear the very beating of his heart intonation had long replaced expression with them and touches gesture and their work with hoe and spade and fork was as free and confident as garden work can be their sense of smell was extraordinarily fine they could distinguish individual differences as readily as a dog camp and they went about the tending of llamas who lived among the rocks above and came to the wall for food and shelter with ease and confidence it was only when at last nunes sought to assert himself that he found how easy and confident their movements could be he rebelled only after he had tried persuasion he tried at first on several occasions to tell them of sight look you hear you people he said there are things you do not understand in me once or twice one or two of them attended to him they sat with faces down cast and ears turned intelligently towards him and he did his best to tell them what it was to see among his hearers was a girl with eyelids less red and sunken than the others so that one could almost fancy she was hiding eyes whom especially he hoped to persuade he spoke of the beauties of sight of watching the mountains of the sky and the sunrise and they heard him with amused incredulity that presently became condemnatory they told him there were indeed no mountains at all but at the end of the rocks where the llamas grazed was indeed the end of the world scents sprang a cavernous roof of the universe from which the dew and the avalanches fell and when he maintained stoutly the world had neither end or roof such as they supposed they said his thoughts were wicked so far as he could describe sky and clouds and stars to them it seemed to them a hideous void a terrible blankness in the place of the smooth roof to things in which they believed it was an article of faith with them that the cavern roof was exquisitely smooth to the touch he saw that in some manner he shocked them and gave up that aspect of the matter altogether and tried to show them the practical value of sight one morning he saw pedro in the path called 17 and coming towards the central houses but still too far off for hearing or sent and he told them as much in a little while he prophesied pedro will be here an old man remarked that pedro had no business on path 17 and then as if in confirmation that individual as he drew near turned and went transversely into path 10 and so back with nimble paces towards the outer wall they mocked nunes when pedro did not arrive and afterwards when he asked pedro questions to clear his character pedro denied and outfaced him and was afterwards hostile to him then he induced them to let him go a long way up the sloping meadows towards the wall with one complacent individual and to him he promised to describe all that happened among the houses he noted certain goings and comings but the things that really seemed to signify to these people happened inside of or behind the windowless houses the only things they took note of to test him by and of those he could see or tell nothing and it was after the failure of this attempt and the ridicule they could not repress that he resorted to force he thought of seizing a spade and suddenly smiting one or two of them to earth and so in fair combat showing the advantage of eyes he went so far with that resolution as to seize his spade and then he discovered a new thing about himself and that was that it was impossible for him to hit a blind man in cold blood he hesitated and found them all aware that he had snatched up the spade they stood all alert with their heads on one side and bent ears towards him for what he would do next put that spade down said one and he felt a sort of helpless horror he came near obedience then he had thrust one backwards against a house wall and fled past him and out of the village he went to thwart one of their meadows leaving a track of trampled grass behind his feet and presently sat down by the side of one of their ways he felt something of the buoyancy that comes to all men in the beginning of a fight but more perplexity he began to realize that you cannot even fight happily with creatures who stand upon a different mental basis to yourself far away he saw a number of men carrying spades and sticks some out of the street of houses and advance in a spreading line along the several paths towards him they advanced slowly speaking frequently to one another and ever and again the whole cordon would hold and sniff the air and listen the first time they did this nunes laughed but afterwards he did not laugh one struck his trail in the meadow grass and came stooping and feeling his way along it for five minutes he watched the slow extension of the cordon and then his vague disposition to do something forth with became frantic he stood up went to pace or so towards the circumferential wall turned and went back a little way there they all stood in a crescent still and listening he also stood still gripping his spade very tightly in both hands should he charge them the pulse in his ears ran into the rhythm of in the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king should he charge them he looked back at the high and unclimbable wall behind unclimbable because of its smooth plastering but with all pierced with many little doors and at the approaching line of seekers behind these others were now coming out of the streets of houses should he charge them bogata called one bogota where are you he gripped his spade still tighter and advanced down the meadows towards the place of habitations and directly he moved they converged upon him i'll hit them if they touch me he swore by heaven i will i'll hit he called aloud look here i'm going to do what i like in this valley do you hear i'm going to do what i like and go where i like they were moving in upon him quickly groping yet moving rapidly it was like playing blind man's buff with everyone blindfolded except one get hold of him cried one he found himself in the ark of a loose curve of pursuers he felt suddenly he must be active and resolute you don't understand he cried in a voice that was meant to be great and resolute and which broke you are blind and i can see leave me alone bogata put down that spade and come off the grass the last order grotesque in its urban familiarity produced a gust of anger i'll hurt you he said sobbing with emotion by heaven i'll hurt you leave me alone he began to run not knowing clearly where to run he ran from the nearest blind man because it was a horror to hit him he stopped and then made a dash to escape from their closing ranks he made for where a gap was wide and the men on either side with a quick perception of the approach of his paces rushed in on one another he sprang forward and then saw he must be called and swish the spade had struck he felt the soft thud of a hand and arm and the man was down with a yellow of pain and he was through through and then he was close to the street of houses again and blind men whirling spades and stakes were running with a reasoned swiftness hither and dither he heard steps behind him just in time and found a tall man rushing forward and swiping at the sound of him he lost his nerve hurled his spader yard wide of this antagonist and whirled about and fled fairly yelling as he dodged another he was panic stricken he ran furiously to and fro dodging when there was no need to dodge and in his anxiety to see on every side of him at once stumbling for a moment he was down and they heard his fall far away in the circumferential wall a little doorway looked like heaven and he set off in a wild rush for it he did not even look around at his pursuers until it was gained and he had stumbled across the bridge clambered a little way among the rocks to the surprise and dismay of a young llama who went leaping out of sight and lay down sobbing for breath and so his coup d'etat came to an end he stayed outside the wall of the valley of the blind for two nights and days without food or shelter and meditated upon the unexpected during these meditations he repeated very frequently and always with a profound note of derision the exploded proverb in the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king he thought chiefly of ways of fighting and conquering these people and it grew clear that for him no practicable way was possible he had no weapons and now it would be hard to get one the canker of civilization had got to him even in bogata and he could not find it in himself to go down and assassinate a blind man of course if he did that he might then dictate terms on the threat of assassinating them all but sooner or later he must sleep he tried also to find food among the pine trees to be comfortable under pine boughs while the frost fell at night and with less confidence to catch a llama by artifice in order to try to kill it perhaps by hammering it with a stone and so finally perhaps to eat some of it but the llamas had a doubt of him and regarded him with distrustful brown eyes and spat when he drew near fear came on him the second day and fits of shivering finally he crawled down to the wall of the country of the blind and tried to make his terms he crawled along by the stream shouting until two blind men came out of the gate and talked to him i was mad he said but i was only newly made they said that was better he told them he was wiser now and repented of all he had done then he wept without intention for he was very weak and ill now and they took that as a favorable sign they asked him if he still thought he could see no he said that was folly the word means nothing less than nothing they asked him what was overhead about 10 times 10 the height of a man there is a roof above the world of rock and very very smooth so smooth so beautifully smooth he burst again into hysterical tears before you ask me any more give me some food or i shall die he expected dire punishments but these blind people were capable of toleration they regarded his rebellion as but one more proof of his general idiocy and inferiority and after they had whipped him they appointed him to do the simplest and heaviest work they had for anyone to do and he seeing no other way of living did submissively what he was told he was ill for some ten days and they nursed him kindly that refined his submission but they insisted on his lying in the dark and that was a great misery and blind philosophers came and talked to him of the wicked levity of his mind and reproved him so impressively for his doubts about the lid of rock that covered their cosmic casserole that he almost doubted whether indeed he was not the victim of hallucination and not seeing it overhead so nunes became a citizen of the country of the blind and these people ceased to be a generalized people and become individualities to him and familiar to him while the world beyond the mountains became more and more remote and unreal there was jacob his master a kindly man when not annoyed there was pedro jacob's nephew and there was medina sarote who was the youngest daughter of yahoo she was little esteemed in the world of the blind because she had a clear-cut face and lacked that satisfying glossy smoothness that is the blind man's ideal of feminine beauty but nunes thought her beautiful at first and presently the most beautiful thing in the whole creation her closed eyelids were not sunken in red after the common way of the valley but lay as though they might open again at any moment and she had long eyelashes which were considered a grave disfigurement and her voice was weak and did not satisfy the acute hearing of the valley swains so that she had no lover there came a time when nunes thought that could he win her he would be resigned to live in the valley for all the rest of his days he watched her he sought opportunities of doing her little services and presently he found that she observed him once at a rest day gathering they sat side by side in the dim starlight and the music was sweet his hand came upon hers and he dared to clasp it then very tenderly she returned his pressure and one day as they were at a meal in the darkness he felt her hand very softly seeking him and as it chanced the fire left then and he saw the tenderness of her face he sought to speak to her he went to her one day when she was sitting in the summer moonlight spinning the light made her a thing of silver and mystery he sat down at her feet and told her he loved her and told her how beautiful she seemed to him he had a lover's voice he spoke with a tender reverence that came near to or and she had never before been touched by adoration she made him no definitive answer but it was clear his words pleased her after that he talked to her whenever he could take an opportunity the valley became the world for him and the world beyond the mountains where men lived by day seemed no more than a fairy tale he would someday pour into her ears very tentatively and timidly he spoke to her of sight sight seemed to her the most poetical of fancies and she listened to his description of the stars and the mountains and her own sweet white-lit beauty as though it was a guilty indulgence she did not believe she could only half understand but she was mysteriously delighted and it seemed to him that she completely understood his love lost its aura and took courage presently he was for demanding her of jacob and the elders in marriage but sheesh became fearful and delayed and it was one of her elder sisters who first told jakob that medina sorote and lunes were in love there was from the first very great opposition to the marriage of nunes and medina sarote not so much because they valued her as because they held him as being a part an idiot incompetent thing below the permissible level of a man her sisters opposed it bitterly as bringing discredit on them all and old jacob though he had formed a sort of liking for his clumsy obedient serf shook his head and said the thing could not be the young men were all angry at the idea of corrupting the race and one went so far as to revile and strike nunes he struck back then for the first time he found an advantage in seeing even by twilight and after that fight was over no one was disposed to raise the hand against him but they still found his marriage impossible old jacob had a tenderness for his last little daughter and was grieved to have her weep upon his shoulder you see my dear he's an idiot he has delusions he can't do anything right i know wept madina sarote but he's better than he was he's getting better and he's strong dear father and kind stronger and kinder than any other man in the world and he loves me and father i love him old jacob was greatly distressed to find her inconsolable and besides what made it more distressing he liked nunes for many things so he went and sat in the windowless council chamber with the elders and watched the trend of the talk and said at the proper time he's better than he was very likely someday we shall find him as sane as ourselves then afterwards one of the elders who thought deeply had an idea he was a great doctor among these people their medicine man and he had a very philosophical and inventive mind and the idea of curing newness of his peculiarities appealed to him one day when jacob was present he returned to the topic of newness i have examined newness he said and the case is clearer to me i think very probably he might be cured this is what i have always hoped said old jacob his brain is affected said the blind doctor the elders murmured ascent now what affects it ah said old jacob this said the doctor answering his own question those queer things that are called the eyes and which exists to make an agreeable depression in the face are diseased in the case of newness in such a way as to affect his brain they are greatly distended he has eyelashes and his eyelids move and consequently his brain is in a state of constant irritation and distraction yes said old jacob yes and i think i may say with reasonable certainty that in order to cure him complete all that we need to do is a simple and easy surgical operation namely to remove these irritant bodies and then he will be sane then he will be perfectly sane and a quite admirable citizen thank heaven for science said old jacob and went forth at once to tell nunes of his happy hopes but known as his manner of receiving the good news struck him as being cold and disappointing one might think he said from the tone you take that you did not care for my daughter it was madina sarote who persuaded nunes to face the blind surgeons you do want me he said to lose my gift of sight she shook her head my world is sight her head drooped lower there are the beautiful things the beautiful little things the flowers the lynchings amid the rocks the light and softness on a piece of fur the far sky with its drifting dawn of clouds the sunsets and the stars and there is you for you alone it is good to have sight to see your sweet serene face your kindly lips your dear beautiful hands folded together it is these eyes of mine you one these eyes that hold me to you that these idiots seek instead i must touch you hear you and never see you again i must come under that roof of rock and stone and darkness that horrible roof under which your imagination stoop no you would not have me do that a disagreeable doubt had arisen in him he stopped and left the thing a question i wish she said sometimes she paused yes he said a little apprehensively i wish sometimes you would not talk like that like what i know it's pretty it's your imagination i love it but now he felt cold now he said faintly she sat quite still you mean you think i should be better better perhaps he was realizing things very swiftly he felt anger perhaps anger at the dull course of fate but also sympathy for her lack of understanding a sympathy near akin to pity dear he said and he could see by her whiteness how tensely her spirit pressed against the things she could not say he put his arms about her he kissed her ear and they sat for a time in silence if i were to consent to this he said at last in a voice that was very gentle she flung her arms about him weeping wildly oh if you would she sobbed if only you would for a week before the operation that was to raise him from his servitude and inferiority to the level of a blind citizen nunes knew nothing of sleep and all through the warm sunlit hours while the others slumbered happily he sat brooding or wondered aimlessly trying to bring his mind to bear on his dilemma he had given his answer he had given his consent and still he was not sure and at last work time was over the sun rose in splendor over the golden crests and his last day of vision began for him he had a few minutes with medina sarote before she went apart to sleep tomorrow he said i shall see no more dear heart she answered and pressed his hands with all her strength they will hurt you but little she said and you are going through this pain you are going through it dear lover for me dear if a woman's heart and life can do it i will repay you my dearest one my dearest with the tender voice i will repay he was drenched in pity for himself and her he held her in his arms and pressed his lips to hers and looked on her sweet face for the last time goodbye he whispered to that dear sight goodbye and then in silence he turned away from her she could hear his slow retreating footsteps and something in the rhythm of them threw her into a passion of weeping he walked away he had fully meant to go to a lonely place where the meadows were beautiful with white narcissus and there remained until the hour of his sacrifice should come but as he walked he lifted up his eyes and saw the morning the morning like an angel in golden armor marching down the steeps it seemed to him that before this splendor he in this blind world in the valley and his love and all were no more than a pit of sin he did not turn aside as he had meant to do but went on and passed through the wall of the circumference and out upon the rocks and his eyes were always upon the sunlit ice and snow he saw their infinite beauty and his imagination soared over them to the things beyond he was now to resign forever he thought of that great free world that he was parted from the world that was his own and he had a vision of those further slopes distance beyond distance with bogota a place of multitudinous stirring beauty a glory by day a luminous mystery by night a place of palaces and fountains and statues and white houses lying beautifully in the middle distance he thought how for a day or so one might come down through passes drawing ever nearer and nearer to its busy streets and ways he thought of the river journey day by day from great bogata to the still vast the world beyond through towns and villages forests and desert places the rushing river day by day until its banks receded and the big steamers came splashing by and one had reached the sea the limitless sea with its thousand islands its thousands of islands and its ships seem dimly far away in their incessant journeyings round and about that greater world and there unpinned by mountains once saw the sky the sky not such a disc as one saw it there but an arch of immeasurable blue a deep of deeps in which the circling stars were floating his eyes began to scrutinize the great curtain of the mountains with akina inquiry for example if one went so up that gully into that chimney there then one might come out high among those stunted pines that ran round in a sort of shelf and rose still higher and higher as it passed above the gorge and then that talus might be managed since perhaps a climb might be found to take him up to the precipice that came below the snow and if that chimney failed then another father to the east might serve his purpose better and then then one would be out upon the amber lit snow there and halfway up to the crest of those beautiful desolations and suppose one had good fortune he glanced back at the village then turned right round and regarded it with folded arms he thought of madina sarote and she had become small and remote he turned again towards the mountain wall down which the day had come to him then very circumspectly he began his climb when sunset came he was no longer climbing but he was far and high his clothes were torn his limbs were blood-stained he was bruised in many places but he lay as if he were at his ease and there was a smile on his face from where he rested the valley seemed as if it were in a pit and nearly a mile below already it was dim with haze and shadow though the mountain summits around him were things of light and fire the mountain summits around him were things of light and fire and the little things in the rocks near at hand were drenched with light and beauty a vein of green mineral piercing the grey a flash of small crystal here and there a minute minutely beautiful orange lyncheon close beside his face there were deep mysterious shadows in the gorge blue deeping in to purple and purple into a luminous darkness and overhead was the illimitable vastness of the sky but he heeded these things no longer but lay quite still there smiling as if he were content now merely to have escaped from the valley of the blind in which he had thought to be king and the glow of the sunset passed and the night came and still he lay there under the cold clear stars the end