The Book of the Damned - Charles Fort-pages

Page 200 of 376

Page 200 of 376
The Book of the Damned - Charles Fort-pages

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[p. 164] Nothing in our own times--perhaps--because | am thinking of certain notes | have--has ever appeared upon this earth, from somewhere else, so openly as Columbus landed upon San Salvador, or as Hudson sailed up his river. But as to surreptitious visits to this earth, in recent times, or as to emissaries, perhaps, from other worlds, or voyagers who have shown every indication of intent to evade and avoid, we Shall have data as convincing as our data of oil or coal-burning aerial super-constructions. But, in this vast subject, | shall have to do considerable neglecting or disregarding, myself. | don't see how | can, in this book, take up at all the subject of possible use of humanity to some other mode of existence, or the flattering notion that we can possibly be worth something. Pigs, geese, and cattle. First find out that they are owned. Then find out the whyness of it. | suspect that, after all, we're useful--that among contesting claimants, adjustment has occurred, or that something now has a legal right to us, by force, or by having paid out analogues of beads for us to former, more primitive, owners of us--all others warned off--that all this has been known, perhaps for ages, to certain ones upon this earth, a cult or order, members of which function like bellwethers to the rest of us, or as superior slaves or overseers, directing us in accordance with instructions received--from Somewhere else--in our mysterious usefulness. But | accept that, in the past, before proprietorship was established, inhabitants of a host of other worlds have--dropped here, hopped here, wafted, sailed, flown, motored-- walked here, for all | know--been pulled here, been pushed; have come singly, have come in enormous numbers; have visited occasionally, have visited periodically for hunting, trading, replenishing harems, mining: have been unable to stay here, have established colonies here, have been lost here; far-