CHAPTER II.
"ABOUT nine thousand years ago, when it had been decided to build larger instruction galleries for giving increased facilities to parents during their morning lectures, there arose some difficulty as to a site, for the far-seeing ones objected to its being central. Future generations would, they said, be incommoded, and that is never the policy of such minds. At last they succeeded in obtaining for the required purpose what was named 'The Battlefield,' a tongue of land at the western end of Alethia. Nearly two million years ago our country only formed the bottom to a tempestuous sea, often exceedingly dangerous to navigators bound from Australia to a group of islands (N.Z.) long since disappeared. 'Vulcan's Forge,' the little volcanic islet you are so fond of watching, is believed to be the top of one of their loftiest mountains, which was once covered with ice and snow. Then the earth's orbit became gradually more elliptical, and the consequent precession of the equinoxes changed the seasons. The Southern Hemisphere slipped out of the world's strife, and, as if weary of perverse ignorance, lay mourning and resting under a long glacial period, similar to the present state of the Northern Hemisphere. In due time the earth returned to its more spherical route. Again the seasons changed; but ancient Australia had sunk and this country, our magnificent Alethia had risen. As the ages rolled on, it became colonized by people who had made huge advance in civilization. Many were ascendants of persons who had gained wealth on the engulfed land of
