did instead build a road.

Yet it may be that the air of the upper world had grown thin a great
age, so that they had truly forgot that once man did have power to fly.
But even if that they did have proper machines to this purpose, surely
it were a wondrous and fearful thing to fly downward an hundred great
miles; for they surely to have a dread that they never to rise again
through so huge a deep.

And, moreover, the downward world that was the bottom of the Great
Valley, was full of monsters, as was told in the little metal book. And
the monsters were very strange and unknown; and foreign to the whole
world, that had never come unto the deep of the Valley. And the Valley
had come, as you shall mind, when the earth did split; and this thing
was, in truth, like to be thought that same Ending of the World, which
all Nations have been taught to believe shall come. For in verity, when
the world did split and burst, and the oceans rushed downward into the
earth, and there was fire, and storms, and a mighty chaos, surely it was
proper to think that the End had come. Yet was it, in truth, but the
beginning of hope of a new Eternity of Life; so that out of the End came
the Beginning, and Life out of Death, and Good out of that which did
seem a dire matter. And so is it always.

Yet doth this go past my first wonder, which did concern the wherefore
that they made not to descend in Things of Flight. Yet, maybe, shall my
reasons stand to show why this was not.

And again, mayhap it did chance that some were wild adventurers, and did
leap over the edge of the upper world, having to ease their flight
certain contrivings, like to parachutes. And these you shall picture, as
that you watched them to leap; and so shall you see them go downward
into the gloom; and you shall see them for maybe ten miles, and maybe
for twenty miles; and afterward shall they be lost utterly in that Great
Deep, and seen no more of any man for ever.

But when the Nations became Road-Makers, and came downward slowly to the
monstrous Deep of the Mighty Valley that did split the World, then were
they come there by millions, and with power sufficient to fight against
the Beasts; and afterward to grow back again to an ancient Civilizing;
and so to the building of the great airships that were yet shown in the
Great Museum of the Pyramid. And here shall I cease from these my
thinkings on this matter; for indeed, who shall say what did be truly a
Reason for tho