Hyperboreans

“ Borea, a town taken by Sextus Pompey. Cicero, bk. 16, Letters to Atticus, ltr. 4.
Boreădes, the descendants of Boreas, who long possessed the supreme power and the priesthood in the island of the Hyperboreans. Diodorus, bks. 1 & 2.
Boreas, the name of the north wind blowing from the Hyperborean mountains. According to the poets, he was son of Astræus and Aurora, but others make him son of the Strymon. He was passionately fond of Hyacinthus [See: Hyacinthus] , and carried away Orithyia, who refused to receive his addresses, and by her he had Zetes and Calais, Cleopatra and Chione. ”

“ Of others the Monommatoi, who have the 77 ears of a dog, their one eye set in the middle of their forehead, the hair standing erect, and their breasts shaggy ; % of the Amnktdres also, a people without nostrils, who devour everything, eat raw meat, and are short-lived, and die before old age supervenes.* The upper part of the mouth protrudes far over the lower lip. ® With regard to the Hyperboreans, wHo live a thousand years, they give the same account as Simonid^s, Pindaros, and other mythological writers. ”

“ Although the Hyperborean legends are mainly connected with Delphi and Delos, traces of them are found in Argos (the stories of Heracles, Perseus, Io) , Attica, Macedonia, Thrace, Sicily and Italy (which Niebuhr indeed considers their original home) . In modern times the name has been applied to a group of races, which includes the Chukchis, Koryaks, Yukaghirs, Ainus, Gilyaks and Kamchadales, inhabiting the arctic regions of Asia and America. But if ever ethnically one, the Asiatic and American branches are now as far apart from each other as they both are from the Mongolo-Tatar stock. ”

“ Another factor has added to the impetus of Hyborian drift. A tribe of that race has discovered the use of stone in building, and the first Hyborian kingdom has come into being — the rude and barbaric kingdom of Hyperborea, which had its beginning in a crude fortress of boulders heaped to repel tribal attack. The people of this tribe soon abandoned their horse-hide tents for stone houses, crudely but mightily built, and thus protected, they grew strong. ”

“ The ancient kingdom of Hyperborea is more aloof than the others, yet there is alien blood in plenty in its veins, from the capture of foreign women — Hyrkanians, Æsir and Zamorians. Only in the province of Gunderland, where the people keep no slaves, is the pure Hyborian stock found unblemished. But the barbarians have kept their bloodstream pure; the Cimmerians are tall and powerful, with dark hair and blue or grey eyes. ”

“ This Boreas is a kind of ogre who feeds not only on fat babies, but on any mortal thing that he can turn into dust. Not satisfied with his legitimate prey, the autumn leaves, he explores every nook and corner seeking whom he may devour. He found me out one evening after a day of unusual heat, as soon after sunset he suddenly came sweeping across the mountains that lie to the north-east of Munich. For months to come he laid me low, very low, and thus all the fine plans that Claude and I had made for a regular correspondence, that would keep us linked together at least mentally, came to naught. ”

“ The experiments with the dynamometer in order to measure their strength, the anthropometric measurements with a calliper, and the printing of the thumb-marks, caused the Bororos first of all great anxiety, then boisterous amusement. They looked upon it all as utter nonsense—in a way I did not blame them—and repeatedly asked why I did it. I told them that I did it to find out where they came from.
"We are not monkeys," said they; "we do not walk on our hands. ”

“ Tribes of tawny-haired Hyborians have moved southward and westward, conquering and destroying many of the small unclassified clans. Absorbing the blood of conquered races, already the descendants of the older drifts have begun to show modified racial traits, and these mixed races are attacked fiercely by new, purer-blooded drifts, and swept before them, as a broom sweeps debris impartially, to become even more mixed and mingled in the tangled debris of races and tag-ends of races. ”

“ In Scotland they occur on most of the higher hills from Arran northwards, though no longer in Dumfries and Galloway; while abroad they occupy Northern Europe, with the Pyrenees and the Alps, and possibly Northern Asia. In the lighter L. rupestris the adult male never has a black breast or a grey back in autumn. This form occurs in North Asia and North America, with Greenland, Iceland, and Japan, many local races having been described as distinct species or sub-species; while the larger L. hyperboreus (hemileucurus) , with a white base to the tail, inhabits Spitsbergen ”

“ We've nothing to fear. Bohr was entirely on his own. The people of his planetary system—Canopus—are so far advanced they live on a completely co-operative basis, every one instinctively working for the common good of all. Bohr was an atavism—they caught him trying to 'take over' there, and banished him. He came here, for his restless mind and savage urge to dominate others would not let him rest until he was absolute ruler of some world or system—the bigger the better from his viewpoint. ”

“ There the poor creatures must defend themselves, as well as they can against the merciless Boreas, who comes to them unchecked in his course all the way from the pole. To a stranger it is quite harrowing to see the noble animals, in severe weather, in one of these unprotected enclosures. ”

“ And already the more northern tribes are beginning to be harried by gigantic blond savages, not much more advanced than ape-men.
The tale of the next thousand years is the tale of the rise of the Hyborians, whose warlike tribes dominate the western world. Rude kingdoms are taking shape. The tawny-haired invaders have encountered the Picts, driving them into the barren lands of the west. To the northwest, the descendants of the Atlanteans, climbing unaided from apedom into primitive savagery, have not yet met the conquerors. ”

“ The lower classes are a down-trodden, mongrel horde, a mixture of negroid, Stygian, Shemitish, even Hyborian bloods. South of Stygia are the vast black kingdoms of the Amazons, the Kushites, the Atlaians and the hybrid empire of Zembabwei.
Between Aquilonia and the Pictish wilderness lie the Bossonian marches, peopled by descendants of an aboriginal race, conquered by a tribe of Hyborians, early in the first ages of the Hyborian drift. This mixed people never attained the civilization of the purer Hyborians, and was pushed by them to the very fringe of the civilized world. ”

“ North of Aquilonia, the western-most Hyborian kingdom, are the Cimmerians, ferocious savages, untamed by the invaders, but advancing rapidly because of contact with them; they are the descendants of the Atlanteans, now progressing more steadily than their old enemies the Picts, who dwell in the wilderness west of Aquilonia.
Another five centuries and the Hybori peoples are the possessors of a civilization so virile that contact with it virtually snatched out of the wallow of savagery such tribes as it touched. ”

“ In the far south, Stygia, shaken by the Hyrkanian invasion, is being encroached upon by the great black kingdoms. And in the far north, the Nordic tribes are restless, warring continually with the Cimmerians, and sweeping the Hyperborean frontiers. ”

“ Borlase as the works of man: on the contrary, they are evidently the results of the operation of time and the elements, the usual agents employed by Nature in the decomposition of mountain masses: but the age of antiquarian illusion is past; the light of geological science has dispelled the phantoms created by the wizard Fancy, just as the rising sun dissolves the mystic forms which the most common object assumes in twilight, when viewed through the medium of credulity and superstition. ”

“ Monsters out of earth's dawn, thundering through a Twentieth Century city! Mighty dinosaurs of the Mesozoic age, the most terrible creatures ever to appear on this planet, bridging the gap of millions of years to crash through the little town! Rowan stood rigid as they thundered on toward him, heard their mighty, throaty bellows as they overtook the fleeing mob, and then saw them trampling over that mob as bulls might trample ants, smashing them beneath gigantic feet, annihilating them with sweeps of the huge tails, thundering, crashing on. ”

“ We have seen that a parallel with the conditions of the fauna of the European Seas during the Glacial epoch is now to be met with on the coasts of Boreal America—that on the eastern shores of the New World between the 40th and 60th parallels of north latitude a Boreal fauna, corresponding to that of the Scandinavian and Arctic Seas of Europe meets, without an intervening assemblage of animals comparable with that of our Celtic province, a fauna equivalent to that of the southern European Seas. ”

“ In the winter, no matter how old Boreas may bluster, he is one of the most cheerful denizens of the woods in our central latitudes, calling his nasal "yank, yank, yank," and sometimes indulging in a loud, half-merry outburst that goes echoing through the woodlands. No sound of the sylvan solitudes has a more woodsy flavor or is more suggestive of vernal cheer and good will. Sometimes he chatters to his human visitors in the most cordial tones as he glides up and down his arboreal promenade, or holds himself almost straight out. ”

“ It was peopled with only one race, the Orbiwah, who lived much as the Indians in America did before the arrival of the white man. Recently spaceships from another planet in the same solar system had landed on the Orbiwah world. These newcomers were friendly, had no thought of conquest, and possessed a science and culture of amazing proportions.
From them the Orbiwah learned of a planet on which were men of their own kind. Lo-as-ro, fired by the thought of establishing contact with people like himself, had borrowed spaceships manned by robots and crossed the void to Earth. ”

“ As it flicked across their faces the six Hairy Ones came to an abrupt halt, standing stiffly as though turned to stone.
Urb sniffed in short rapid inhalations, his unkempt visage twisted in a ferocious scowl.
"Men!" he grunted. "The hairless ones! It has been long since we have found such. Hide!"
With a degree of soundlessness surprising in such clumsy bodies, the six Neanderthals faded into the mazes of undergrowth at either side of the path.
Hardly were they hidden, when Alurna and her five companions came into sight. ”

“ Many of the Boreal species occur on both sides of the Atlantic, and thus support the theory of a more continuous fringe of continental land once existing along the north of the Atlantic. Among the prominent genera, besides several of those mentioned under the Arctic Sub-region, are Purpura, Chenopus, Littorina, Gibbula, Natica, Patella, Tectura, Chiton, Doris, Aeolis, Tellina, Thracia. ”

“ Without the great secret this maleless race must eventually become extinct. For ages they had fertilized their eggs by an artificial process, the secret of which lay hidden in the little cave of a far-off valley where Dian and I had spent our honeymoon. I was none too sure that I could find the valley again, nor that I cared to. So long as the powerful reptilian race of Pellucidar continued to propagate, just so long would the position of man within the inner world be jeopardized. There could not be two dominant races. ”

“ Not a single relic of early man is in its immediate neighbourhood. We can hardly doubt that prehistoric man was not as big a fool as we suppose him, and that he was quite able to see that Bowerman's Nose and Vixen Tor were natural objects as truly as the tors on the hilltops.
The logan stones on the moor are numerous, and these, also, are natural formations. The granite weathers irregularly; a hard bed alternates with one that is soft, and the wind and rain eat into the more crumbling layer and gnaw it away, till the harder superincumbent mass rests on one or two points. ”

“ Here they are the dominant race—we are the ‘monsters’—the lower orders. In Pellucidar evolution has progressed along different lines than upon the outer earth. These terrible convulsions of nature time and time again wiped out the existing species—but for this fact some monster of the Saurozoic epoch might rule today upon our own world. We see here what might well have occurred in our own history had conditions been what they have been here.
“Life within Pellucidar is far younger than upon the outer crust. ”

“ As we turned to retrace our steps a chorus of hoarse shouts arose upon all sides of us—half human, half bestial, like the growls and roars of animals blending with the voices of men; and then, suddenly, from behind the boles of trees a score of hairy, man-like creatures sprang toward us.
Instantly I recognized them—nobargans—the same hairy, man-like creatures that had attacked the abductors of Duare, whom I had rescued from them. They were armed with crude bows and arrows and with slings from which they hurled rocks ”

“ Thereupon distilled from the neck of the alembic a white oil incombustible, and the King dipped his rod in that oil and described round the seven-pointed star on the floor the56 figure of the worm Ouroboros, that eateth his own tail. And he wrote the formula of the crab below the circle, and spake his second spell.
When that was done, yet more biting seemed the night air and yet more like the grave the stillness of the chamber. The King’s hand shook as with an ague as he turned the pages of the mighty book. Gro’s teeth chattered in his head. He gritted them together and waited. ”