howard phillips lovecraft at the mountains of madness

Steel head, jointed rods, gasoline motor, collapsible wooden derrick, dynamiting paraphernalia, cording, rubbish–removal auger, and sectional piping for bores five inches wide and up to one thousand feet deep all formed, with needed accessories, no greater load than three seven–dog sledges could carry. Pabodie’s drilling apparatus, as the public already knows from our reports, was unique and radical in its lightness, portability, and capacity to combine the ordinary artesian drill principle with the principle of the small circular rock drill in such a way as to cope quickly with strata of varying hardness. I had no wish to be a pioneer in any other field than this, but I did hope that the use of this new mechanical appliance at different points along previously explored paths would bring to light materials of a sort hitherto unreached by the ordinary methods of collection. As a geologist, my object in leading the Miskatonic University Expedition was wholly that of securing deep–level specimens of rock and soil from various parts of the antarctic continent, aided by the remarkable drill devised by Professor Frank H.

It is further against us that we are not, in the strictest sense, specialists in the fields which came primarily to be concerned. It is an unfortunate fact that relatively obscure men like myself and my associates, connected only with a small university, have little chance of making an impression where matters of a wildly bizarre or highly controversial nature are concerned. In the end I must rely on the judgment and standing of the few scientific leaders who have, on the one hand, sufficient independence of thought to weigh my data on its own hideously convincing merits or in the light of certain primordial and highly baffling myth cycles and on the other hand, sufficient influence to deter the exploring world in general from any rash and over– ambitious program in the region of those mountains of madness. The ink drawings, of course, will be jeered at as obvious impostures, notwithstanding a strangeness of technique which art experts ought to remark and puzzle over. Still, they will be doubted because of the great lengths to which clever fakery can be carried.

The hitherto withheld photographs, both ordinary and aerial, will count in my favor, for they are damnably vivid and graphic. And I am the more reluctant because my warning may be in vain.ĭoubt of the real facts, as I must reveal them, is inevitable yet, if I suppressed what will seem extravagant and incredible, there would be nothing left. It is altogether against my will that I tell my reasons for opposing this contemplated invasion of the antarctic-with its vast fossil hunt and its wholesale boring and melting of the ancient ice caps. I am forced into speech because men of science have refused to follow my advice without knowing why.

Howard phillips lovecraft at the mountains of madness