test the civilisation of races which flourished before
the age of Noah, and are not to be classified with those genera to which
philosophy ascribes the use of flint and the ignorance of iron.

The fugitives had carried with them the knowledge of the arts they had
practised above ground--arts of culture and civilisation. Their earliest
want must have been that of supplying below the earth the light they had
lost above it; and at no time, even in the traditional period, do the
races, of which the one I now sojourned with formed a tribe, seem to
have been unacquainted with the art of extracting light from gases, or
manganese, or petroleum. They had been accustomed in their former state
to contend with the rude forces of nature; and indeed the lengthened
battle they had fought with their conqueror Ocean, which had taken
centuries in its spread, had quickened their skill in curbing waters
into dikes and channels. To this skill they owed their preservation in
their new abode. "For many generations," said my host, with a sort
of contempt and horror, "these primitive forefathers are said to have
degraded their rank and shortened their lives by eating the flesh of
animals, many varieties of which had, like themselves, escaped the
Deluge, and sought shelter in the hollows of the earth; other animals,
supposed to be unknown to the upper world, those hollows themselves
produced."

When what we should term the historical age emerged from the twilight
of tradition, the Ana were already established in different communities,
and had attained to a degree of civilisation very analogous to that
which the more advanced nations above the earth now enjoy. They
were familiar with most of our mechanical inventions, including the
application of steam as well as gas. The communities were in fierce
competition with each other. They had their rich and their poor; they
had orators and conquerors; they made war either for a domain or
an idea. Though the various states acknowledged various forms of
government, free institutions were beginning to preponderate; popular
assemblies increased in power; republics soon became general; the
democracy to which the most enlightened European politicians look
forward as the extreme goal of political advancement, and which
still prevailed among other subterranean races, whom they despised as
barbarians, the loftier family of Ana, to which belonged the tribe I was
visiting, looked back to as one of the crude and i