The Country of the Blind - H.G. Wells

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Country of the Blind, three hundred miles and more
from Chimborado, one hundred from the snows of Cotopaxi, in
the wildest wastes of Ecuadors Andes, there lies that mysterious
mountain valley cut off from the world of men, the
country of the Blind. Long years ago, that valley lay

(00:20):
so far open to the world that men might come
at last through frightful gorges and over an icy pass
into its equable 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

(00:44):
Quito for seventeen days, and the water was boiling at Theaguachi,
and all the fish floating dying, even as far as Guayakill.
Everywhere along the Pacific slopes there were land slips and
swift thawings and sudden floods. And one whole side of
the old Arauca crest slipped and came down in thunder
and cut off the Country of the Blind forever from

(01:06):
the exploring feet of men. But one of these early
settlers had chanced 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

(01:28):
started it again, but ill blindness overtook him, and he
died of punishment in the mines. But the story he
told begot a legend that lingers along the length of
the Cordilleras 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 Alama beside

(01:51):
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.

(02:15):
On three sides, vast cliffs of gray green rock were
capped by cliffs of ice. But the glaciers 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

(02:38):
irrigation would spread over all the valley space. The settlers
did well. Indeed there their beasts 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 ch children also blind.

(03:02):
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 lie in the negligence of

(03:22):
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

(03:43):
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 inexpert liar, they had all
clubbed their money and ornaments together, having little need for
such treasure. Up there, he said, to buy them wholly
help against their ill. I figure this dim ndy young mountaineer, sunburnt,

(04:07):
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

(04:27):
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 poor
astray from that remoteness. The stream that had once made
the gorge now bursts from the mouth of a rocky cave,

(04:49):
and the legend his poor ill told stories at going
developed into the legend of a race of blind men
somewhere over there one may still hear to day, And
amidst a little population of that now isolated and forgotten valley,
the disease ran its course. The old became groping and purblind.

(05:10):
The young saw but dimly, and the children that were
born to them saw never at all. But life was
very easy in that snow rimmed basin, lost to old world,
with neither thorns nor briars, with no evil insects nor
any beasts save the gentle breed of Lamas they had
lugged and thrust and followed up the beds of the

(05:30):
shrunken rivers in the gorges up which they had come,
the seeing had become purblind, so gradually that they scarcely
noted their loss. They guided the sightless youngsters hither and
thither until they knew the whole valley marvelously, And when
at last sight died out among them, the race lived on.

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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 the first unlettered,
only slightly touched with the Spanish civilization, but with something
of a tradition of the arts of the old Peru
and of its lost philosophy. Generation followed generation. They forgot

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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 the chance of birth and heredity sent one
who had an original mind and who could talk and
persuade among them, and then afterwards another. These two passed,

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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. There came a time
when a child was born who was fifteen generations from them,
ancestor who went out of the valley with a bar

(07:03):
of silver to seek God's aid, and who never returned thereabouts.
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

(07:23):
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 Parascotopital,

(07:45):
the matter horn of the Andes, in which he was
lost to the outer world. The story of the accident
has been written a dozen times. Pointer's narrative is the best.
He tells how the 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

(08:06):
amidst the snow, upon a little shelf of rock, and
with a touch of real dramatic power, how presently they
found Nunez 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

(08:29):
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.

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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 the disaster,
they abandoned their attempt in the afternoon, and Pointer was

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called away to the war before he could make another attack.
To this day, Parascotopital lifts an unconquered crest and pointed
shelter crumbles and visited 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

(09:34):
of a cloud of snow, upon the snow slope even
steeper than the one above. Down this he was whirled,
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 a softening
heap of the white masses that had accompanied and saved him.

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He came to himself with a dim fancy that he
he was ill in bed, then realized his position with
the mountaineer's intelligence, and worked himself loose, and, after a
rest or so out until he saw the stars. He
rested flat upon his chest for a space, wondering where
he was and what had happened to him. He explored

(10:19):
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 the shelter wall. His ice axe had disappeared.

(10:41):
He decided he must have fallen, and looked up to see,
exaggerated by the ghastly light of the rising moon, the
tremendous flight he had taken. For a while, he lay
gazing blankly at that 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

(11:05):
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 practicable slope, he
saw the dark and broken appearance of rock strewn turf.

(11:25):
He struggled to his feet, aching in every joint and limb,
got down painfully from the heaped 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

(11:46):
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 was grooved by 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

(12:07):
precipices ran east and west and was full of the
morning sunlight, which lit to the westward, and 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.

(12:31):
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

(12:52):
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

(13:15):
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 front 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

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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

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he regarded it, queerer and more or 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

(14:18):
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 lamas cropped. The
scanty herbage sheds, apparently shelters or feeding places for the alamas,
stood against the boundary wall. Here and there The irrigation

(14:38):
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 this 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

(14:59):
little curb. The side ran hither and thither in an
orderly manner. The houses of the central village were quite
unlike the casual and higgeldy piggledy agglomeration of the mountain village.
He knew. They stood in a continuous row on either
side of a central street of astonishing cleanness. Here and

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there their parti colored facade was pierced by a door,
and not a solitary window broke their even frontage. They
were parti colored with extraordinary irregularity, smeared with a sort
of plaster that was sometimes gray, sometimes drab, sometimes slate colored,
or dark brown. And it was the sight of this

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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
sprouted out its surplus contents into the deeps of the

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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 taking a siesta,
in the remoter part of the meadow, and nearer the
village a number of recumbent children, and then nearer at hand,
three men carrying pails and yokes along a little path

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that run from the encircling wall towards the houses. These
latter were clad in garments of larmer clothes and boots
and belts of leather, and they wore caps of cloth
with back and ear flaps. They followed one another in
single file, walking slowly and yawning as they walked, like

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men who have been up all night. There was something
so reassuringly prosperous and respectable in their bearing, that, after
a moment's hesitation, Nu Needs stood forward as conspicuously as
possible upon his rock, and gave vent to a mighty
shout that echoed round the valley. The three men stopped

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and moved their heads as though they were looking about them.
They turned their faces this way and that, and Nunev
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 in answer. Nuns bawled again, and then once more,

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and as he gestured ineffectually, the word blind came up
to the top of his thoughts. The fool must be blind,
he said. When at last, after much shouting and wrath,
Nuns 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

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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,

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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 awe on
their faces. A man, one said, in hardly recognizable Spanish,
A man. It is a man or a spirit coming
down from the rocks. But Nunes advanced with the confident

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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 and very civilly. He gave them greeting.

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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 Nunees, out
of the country beyond there, where men can see from
near Bogota, where there are a hundred thousands of people,
and where the city passes out of sight. Sight, muttered Pedro. Sight,

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he comes, said the second blind man, out of the rocks.
The cloth of their coats, nunet saw, was curiously fashioned,
each with a different sort of stitching. They startled him
by a simultaneous movement towards him, each with a hand outstretched.
He stepped back from the advance of these spread fingers,

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come hither, said the third blind man, following his motion
and clutching him neatly. And they held nune 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,

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a strange creature, Coria, said the one called Pedro. Feel
the coarseness of his hair like a lama's hair. Rough.
He is as the rocks that begot him, said Corea,
investigating Nunas's and shaven chin with a soft and slightly
moist hand. Perhaps he will grow finer. Nunez struggled a

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little under their examination, but they gripped him firm carefully.
He said again, he speaks, said the third man. Certainly
he is a man, ah, said Pedro, at the roughness
of his coat. And you have come into the world,
asked Pedro. Out of the world, over mountains and glaciers,

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right over above there, half way to the sun, out
of the great big world that goes down twelve days
journey to the sea. They scarcely seemed to heed him.
Our fathers have told us men may be made by
the forces of nature, said Coreer. It is the warmth
of things, and moisture and rottenness, rottenness. Let us lead

(21:14):
him to the elders, said Pedro. Shout first, Shout first,
said Coreer. Lest the children be afraid. This is a
marvelous occasion. So they shouted, and Pedro went first and
took nuns by the hand to lead him to the houses.
He drew his hand away. I can see, he said, See,

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said Coreer. Yes see, said Nunez, 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 Nunas,
and was led along, laughing. It seemed they knew nothing

(21:59):
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 its nerve and patience more than he
had anticipated that first encounter with the population of the
country of the blind. The place seemed larger as he

(22:23):
drew near to it, and the smeared plasterings queerer, 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, for all that their eyes were
shut and sunken. Came about him, holding on to him,
touching him with soft, sensitive hands, smelling at him, and

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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 active proprietorship, and said, again and again,
a wild man out of the rocks, Bogota, he said,

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Bogota over the mountain crests. A wild man, using wild words,
said Piero, did you hear that Bogota. His mind is
hardly formed, yet he has only the beginnings of speech.
A little boy nipped his hand. Bogota, he said, mockingly. Aye,
a city, to your village. I come from the great

(23:28):
world where men have eyes and sea. His name's Bogota,
they said. He stumbled, said Coreer stumbled twice as we
came hither. Bring him to the elders, and they thrust
him suddenly through a doorway into a room as black
as pitch, save at the end there faintly glowed a fire.

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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 outflung struck the face of
some one else. As he went down, he felt the
soft impact of features and heard a cry of anger.

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And for a moment he struggled against a 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.

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Then the voice of career 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 of understanding imperfectly. May I sit up,
he asked, in a pause. I will not struggle against
you again. They consulted and let him rise. The voice

(24:58):
of an older man began to question him, and Nunez
found himself trying to explain the great world out of
which he had fallen, and the sky in the mountains,
and sight 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 he told them,

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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 for all the things of sight had faded
and changed. The story of the outer world had faded

(25:38):
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 and tradition they
had brought with them from their seeing days, and had
dismissed all these things as idle fancies and replaced them

(26:00):
with new and saner 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 finger tips. Slowly,
Nunez realized this that his expectation of wonder and reverence
at his origin and his gifts was not to be

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borne out. And after his poor attempt to explain sight
to them had been set aside as the confused version
of a new mate being describing the marvels of his
incoherent sensations, he subsided a little dashed into listening to
their instruction, and the eldest of the blind men explained
to him life and philosophy and religion, how that the world,

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meaning their valley, had been first an empty hollow in
the rocks, and then had come first to inanimate things
without the gift of touch, and Lamis, and a few
other creatures that had little sense, and then men, and
at last Angel, whom one could hear singing and making
fluttering sounds, but whom no one could touch at all,

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which puzzled Nunes greatly until he thought of the birds.
He went on to tell Nunness how this time had
been divided into the warm and 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

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of the blind would have been asleep. He said, nuns
must have been specially created to learn and serve the
wisdom they had acquired, and for that, 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

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the blind calder day night was now far gone, and
it behooved everyone to go back to sleep. He asked
Nuness if he knew how to sleep, and Nunees said
he did, but that before sleep he wanted food. They
brought him food, lama's milk in a bowl and rough
salted bread, and led him into a lonely place to

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eat out of their hearing, and afterwards to slumber until
the chill of the mountain evening roused them to begin
their day again. But Nunez 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

(28:35):
then he laughed, sometimes with amusement and sometimes with indignation.
Unformed mine, he said, got no sense. As yet they
little know they've been insulting their heaven sent king and
the Master. I see. I must bring them to reason.
Let me think, Let me think. He was still thinking

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when the sun set. Nuns had an eye for all
all beautiful things, and it seemed to him that the
glow upon the snow fields and glaciers that rose about
the valley on every side was the most beautiful thing
he had ever seen. His eyes went from the inaccessible
glory to the village and irrigated fields fast sinking into

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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. Yaho, there, Bogota,
come hither. At that, he stood up, smiling. He would

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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, Bogota, said the voice. He
laughed noiselessly, and made two stealthy steps aside from the
path trumpele not on the grass, Bogota, that is not allowed.
Nunet had scarcely heard the sound, he made himself. He stopped. Amazed.

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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? Nunees laughed, I can see it, he said.

(30:23):
There is no such word at sea, said the blind man.
After a pause, seized 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

(30:44):
one eyed man is king? What is blind? Asked 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

(31:05):
he had supposed, and in the meantime, while he meditated
his coupdettar, he did what he was told and learned
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 the simple, laborious life,

(31:27):
these people, with all the elements of virtue and happiness,
as these things can be understood by men. They toiled,
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

(31:49):
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 constant
angle to the others, and was distinguished by a special
notch upon its curving. All obstacles and irregularities of path
or meadow had long since been cleared away. All their

(32:12):
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

(32:32):
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 can, and they went about the
tending of the lamas who lived among the rocks above
and came to the wall for food and shelter, with

(32:54):
ease and confidence. It was only when at last Nuness
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.

(33:17):
Once or twice one or two of them attended to him.
They sat with faces downcast 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

(33:39):
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 that the end of the rocks where the lamas
grazed was indeed the end of the world. Thence sprung

(34:01):
a cavernous roof of the universe, from which the dew
and the avalanches fell. And when he maintained stoutly the
world had neither end nor roof such as they supposed,
they said his thoughts were wicked, so far as he
could describe sky and clouds and starts. To them, it
seemed to them a hideous void, a terrible blankness in

(34:21):
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

(34:42):
he saw Piedro in the path called seventeen, and coming
towards the central houses, but still too far off for
hearing or assent, and he told them as much. In
a little while, he prophesied Piero will be here. An
old man remarked that Piedro had no business on Path seventeen,
and then, as if in confirmation, that individual, as he

(35:04):
drew near, turned and went transversely into Path ten, and
so back with nimble paces toward the outer wall. They
mocked ne nesse 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.

(35:26):
Then he induced them to let him go a long
way up the sloping meadows towards the wall with one
complaisant individual, and to him he promised to describe all
that happened among the houses. He noted certain goings and cummings,
but the things that really seemed to signify to these
people happened inside of or behind the windowless houses. The

(35:47):
only things they took note of to test him by,
and of these 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 the force.
He thought of seizing a spade and suddenly smiting one
or two of them to earth, and so in fair combat,

(36:08):
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 the blind man
in cold blood. He hesitated and found them all aware
that he snatched up the spade. They stood alert, with

(36:29):
their heads on one side, and bent tears 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 thrust one backwards against
a house wall, and fled past him and out of
the village. He went athwart one of their meadows, leaving

(36:50):
a track of trumpled grass behind his feet, and presently
sat down by the side of one of their ways.
He felt something of a buoyancy that came 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.

(37:12):
Far away, he saw a number of men carrying spades
and sticks, come 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 halt and sniff the
air and listen. The first time they did this, Nunez laughed,

(37:35):
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 forthwith became frantic. He stood up, went a
pace or so toward the circumferential wall, turned and went

(37:59):
back a little way. There they all stood in the 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

(38:23):
and unclimbable wall behind, unclimbable because of its smooth plastering,
but withal pierced with many little doors and at the
approaching line of seekers behind These others were now coming
out of the street of houses. Should he charge them?
Bogota called one, Bogota, where are you? He gripped its

(38:45):
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 touched me, he swore, By Heaven,
I will I'll hit. He called a 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,

(39:10):
yet moving rapidly. It was like playing blind Man's buff
with every unblindfolded 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

(39:32):
are blind and I can see. Leave me alone. Bogota
put down that spade. 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.

(39:52):
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

(40:15):
and then saw he must be caught, and swish the
spade had struck. He felt the soft thud of hand
and arm, and the man was down with a yell
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 sort of
reasoned swiftness hither and thither. He heard steps behind him

(40:38):
just in time, and found a tall man rushing forward
and swiping. At the sound of him, he lost his nerve,
hurled his spade a yard wide at his 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

(40:59):
his anza 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 round
at his pursuers until it was gained, and he had
stumbled across the bridge, clambered a little way among the rocks,

(41:22):
to the surprise and dismay of a young lama, who
went leaping out of sight and lay down sobbing for breath.
And so his Gudettar 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,

(41:46):
and always with a profounder note of derision, the exploded
proverb in the country of the Blind, the one night
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

(42:09):
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,

(42:30):
to be comfortable under pine boughs while the frost fell
at night, and with less confidence, to catch a lama
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

(42:54):
the second day, and fits of shivering. Finally he crawled
down to the wall of the country of the blind
and tried to make terms. He crawled along by the stream, shouting,
until two blind men came out to the gate and
talked to him. I was mad, he said, but I
was only newly made. They said that was better. He

(43:16):
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,

(43:40):
what was overhead about ten times ten the height of
a man. There is a roof about the world of rock,
and very very 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

(44:04):
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 days, and they nursed him kindly. That refined his submission.

(44:28):
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 the rock that covered the cosmic casseerole, that
he almost doubted whether indeed he was not the victim
of hallucination in not seeing it overhead. So Nuns became

(44:52):
a citizen of the country of the blind, and these
people ceased to be a generalized people and became individualities
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,

(45:12):
Jacob's nephew. And there was Medina Sarotte, who was the
youngest daughter of Jacob. 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

(45:34):
the whole creation. Her closed eyelids were not sunken and
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 strong and did not satisfy the
acute hearing of the valley swains, so that she had

(45:56):
no lover. There came a time when Nune 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

(46:18):
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 their meal in the darkness, he felt
her hand very softly seeking him, And as it chanced,
the fire leapt then, and he saw the tenderness of

(46:40):
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 the lover's voice. He spoke

(47:01):
with a tender reverence that came near to awe, and
she had never before been touched by adoration. She made
him no definite 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 in sunlight,

(47:23):
seemed no more than a fairy tale. He would some
day 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.

(47:45):
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 awe and took courage.
Presently he was for demanding her of Jacob and the
elders in marriage, but she became fearful and delayed, and
it was one of her elder sisters who first told

(48:07):
Jacob that Meddina, Sarotte and Nunez were in love. There
was from the first very great opposition to the marriage
of Nunez and Medina Sarotte, not so much because they
valued her, as because they held him as a being
a part, an idiot, incompetent thing below the permissive level
of a man. Her sisters opposed it bitterly as bringing

(48:31):
discredit on them all, and Old Yacob, though he had
formed a sort of liking for this 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 Nunez. He struck back then for the

(48:51):
first time he found an advantage in seeing even by twilight,
and after that fight was over, no one was disposed
to raise a hand against him, But they still found
his marriage impossible. Old Acub 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.

(49:14):
He has delusions. He can't do anything right. I know,
wept Medina Srotti. 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 Yacob
was greatly distressed to find her inconsolable, and besides, what

(49:38):
made it more distressing, he liked the ness for many things.
So he went and sat in the windowless council chamber
with the other elders and watched the trend of the
walk and said, at the proper time, he's better than
he was. Very likely some day we shall find him
as sane as ourselves. Then afterwards, one of the elders,

(50:00):
who thought deeply, had an idea. He was the great
doctor among these people, their medicine man, and he had
a very philosophical and inventive mind, and the idea of
curing Nunez of his peculiarities appealed to him. One day,
when Yacob was present, he returned to the topic of Nuness.

(50:20):
I have examined Bogota, he said, and the case is
clearer to me. I think very probably he might be cured.
That is what I have always hoped, said Old Jacob.
His brain is affected, said the blind doctor. The elder's
murmured assent, Now what affects it, ah, said Old Jacob.

(50:42):
This said the doctor, answering his own question. Those queer
things that are called the eyes, and which exist to
make an agreeable soft depression in the face, are diseased,
in the case of Bogota, 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

(51:03):
a state of constant irritation and destruction. Yes, said Old
the Acob. Yes, and I think I may say with
reasonable certainty that in order to cure him completely, all
that we need to do is a simple and easy
surgical operation, namely to remove these irritant bodies, and then

(51:23):
he will be sane. Then he will be perfectly sane,
and a quite admirable citizen. Thank Heaven for science, said
Old the Acob, and went forth at once to tell
Nunez of his happy hopes. But Nunet's manner of receiving
the good nudes struck him as being cold and disappointing,
one might think, he said, from the tone you take

(51:44):
that you did not care for my daughter. It was
Medina Sarotte who persuaded nun to face the blind surgeons.
You do not 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 lichens, among the rocks,

(52:08):
the lightness and softness on the peace of fir the
far sky with its drifting down 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

(52:30):
that told me to you that these idiots seek. Instead.
I must touch you, hear you, and never see you again.
I must come under the roof of rock and stone
and darkness, that horrible roof under which your imagination stoops. No,
you would not have me do that. A disagreeable doubt
had arisen in him. He stopped and left the thing.

(52:54):
A question. I wish she said, sometimes, she paused, Yes,
said he 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.

(53:15):
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, indeed, anger at
the dull course of fate, but also sympathy for her
lack of understanding, a sympathy near akin to pity. Dear,

(53:39):
he said, and he could see by her whiteness how
intensely 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

(54:00):
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, Nuns knew nothing
of sleep, and all through the warm, sunny towers, while
the others slumbered happily, he sat, brooding or wondered aimlessly,

(54:24):
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 Heratta before she

(54:46):
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

(55:07):
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. Good Bye, he whispered at that
dear sight, good bye, and then in silence, he turned

(55:31):
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 had fully meant to go
to a lonely place where the meadows were beautiful with
white narcissus, and there remain until the hour of his
sacrifice should come. But as he went, he lifted up

(55:52):
his eyes and saw the morning, the morning like an
angel in golden armor, marching down the steeps. It's seemed
to him that before this splendor, he and this blind
world in the valley, and his love and all were
no more than the pit of sin. He did not
turn aside, as he had meant to do, but went

(56:12):
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 he was parted from the world that

(56:34):
was his own, And he heard 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

(56:56):
for a day or so one might come down through passes,
drawing ever nearer and nearer to its busy street and ways.
He thought of the river journey day by day from
great Bogata to the still vaster world beyond, through towns
and villages, forests and desert places, the rushing river day
by day, until its banks receded and the big steamers

(57:19):
came splashing by, And one had reached the sea, the
limitless sea, with its thousands islands, its thousands of islands,
and its ships seen dimly far away in their incessant
journeyings round and about that greater world. And there, unpent
by mountains, one saw the sky. The sky, not such

(57:39):
a disk as one saw it here, but an arch
of immeasurable blue, a deep of deeps in which the
circling stars were floating. His eyes scrutinized the great curtain
of the mountains with a keener inquiry. For example, if
one went so up that gully and to that chimney there,
then one might come out high among those stunted pines

(58:02):
that ran round in a sort of shelf, and roads
still higher and higher as it passed above the gorge,
and then that tailors might be managed. Thence, 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 farther to the east might serve his purpose better,

(58:24):
and then then one would be out upon the amberlet
snow there, and half way up to the crest of
those beautiful desolations. He glanced back at the village, then
turned right round and regarded it steadfastly. He thought of
Medina Serote, and she had become small and remote. He
turned again towards the mountain wall, down which the day

(58:47):
had come to him. Then, very circumspectly, he began to climb.
When sunset came, he was no longer climbing, but he
was far and high. He had been higher, but he
was still very high. His clothes were torn, his limbs
were blood stained, he was bruised in many places, but

(59:07):
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, and the little details of
the rocks near at hand were drenched with subtle beauty,

(59:31):
a vein of green mineral piercing the gray the flash
of crystal faces, here and there a minute, minutely beautiful
orange lichen. Close beside his face. There were deep, mysterious
shadows in the gorge, blue deepening into purple, and purple
into a luminous darkness. And overhead was the limitable vastness

(59:53):
of the sky. But he heeded these things no longer,
but lay quite inactive there, smiling as if he were
satisfied merely to have escaped from the Valley of the
Blind in which he had thought to be king. The
glow of the sunset passed, and the night came, and
still he lay, peacefully contented under the cold stars. End

(01:00:20):
of the Country of the Blind by H. G. Wells