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CHAPTER V.
THE TREE OF HUMAN INVENTION.
It might be about seven o'clock in the evening. The wind was now
diminishing--a sign, however, of a violent recurrence impending. The
child was on the table-land at the extreme south point of Portland.
Portland is a peninsula; but the child did not know what a peninsula
is, and was ignorant even of the name of Portland. He knew but one
thing, which is, that one can walk until one drops down. An idea is a
guide; he had no idea. They had brought him there and left him there.
They and there--these two enigmas represented his doom. They were
humankind. There was the universe. For him in all creation there was
absolutely no other basis to rest on but the little piece of ground
where he placed his heel, ground hard and cold to his naked feet. In the
great twilight world, open on all sides, what was there for the child?
Nothing.
He walked towards this Nothing. Around him was the vastness of human
desertion.
He crossed the first plateau diagonally, then a second, then a third. At
the extremity of each plateau the child came upon a break in the ground.
The slope was sometimes steep, but always short; the high, bare plains
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