At the MOUNTAINS of MADNESS

By H. P. LOVECRAFT

[Transcriber’s Note: This etext was produced from
Astounding Stories February, March, April 1936.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

I am forced into speech because men of science have refused to follow
my advice without knowing why. It is altogether against my will that
I tell my reasons for opposing this contemplated invasion of the
antarctic–with its vast fossil hunt and its wholesale boring and
melting of the ancient ice caps. And I am the more reluctant because my
warning may be in vain.

Doubt of the real facts, as I must reveal them, is inevitable; yet,
if I suppressed what will seem extravagant and incredible there would
be nothing left. The hitherto withheld photographs, both ordinary
and aërial, will count in my favor, for they are damnably vivid and
graphic. Still, they will be doubted because of the great lengths to
which clever fakery can be carried. The ink drawings, of course, will
be jeered at as obvious impostures; notwithstanding a strangeness and
technique which art experts ought to remark and puzzle over.

In the end I must rely on the judgment and standing of the few
scientific leaders who have, on the one hand, sufficient independence
of thought to weigh my data on its own hideously convincing merits or
in the light of certain primordial and highly baffling myth cycles;
and on the other hand, sufficient influence to deter the exploring
world in general from any rash and over-ambitious program in the region
of those mountains of madness.

It is an unfortunate fact that relatively obscure men like myself and
my associates, connected only with a small university, have little
chance of making an impression where matters of a wildly bizarre or
highly controversial natures are concerned.

It is further against us that we are not, in the strictest sense,
specialists in the fields which came primarily to be concerned. As a
geologist, my object in leading the Miskatonic University Expedition
was wholly that of securing deep-level specimens of rock and soil from
various parts of the antarctic continent, aided by the remarkable drill
devised by Professor Frank H. Pabodie of our engineering department.

I had no wish to be a pioneer in any other field than this, but I did
hope that the use of this new mechanical appliance at different points
along previously explored paths would bring to light materials of a
sort hitherto unreached by the ordinary methods of collection.

Pabodie’s drilling apparatus, as the public already knows from our
reports, was unique and radical in its lightness, portability, and
capacity to combine the ordinary Artesian drill principle with the
principle of the small circular rock drill in such a way as to cope
quickly with strata of varying hardness.

Steel head, jointed rods, gasoline motor, collapsible wooden derrick,
dynamiting paraphernalia, cording, rubbish-removal auger, and sectional
piping for bores five inches wide and up to one thousand feet deep all
formed, with needed accessories, no greater load than three seven-dog
sledges could carry. This was made possible by the clever aluminum
alloy of which most of the metal objects were fashioned.

Four large Dornier aëroplanes, designed especially for the tremendous
altitude flying necessary on the antarctic plateau and with added
fuel-warming and quick-starting devices worked out by Pabodie, could
transport our entire expedition from a base at the edge of the great
ice barrier to various suitable inland points, and from these points a
sufficient quota of dogs would serve us.

We planned to cover as great an area as one antarctic season–or
longer, if absolutely necessary–would permit, operating mostly in the
mountain ranges and on the plateau south of Ross Sea; regions explored
in varying degree by Shackleton, Amundsen, Scott, and Byrd. With
frequent changes of camp, made by aëroplane and involving distances
great enough to be of geological significance, we expected to unearth a
quite unprecedented amount of material–especially in the pre-Cambrian
strata of which so narrow a range of antarctic specimens had previously
been secured.

We wished also to obtain as great as possible a variety of the upper
fossiliferous rocks, since the primal life history of this bleak realm
of ice and death is of the highest importance to our knowledge of the
earth’s past. That the antarctic continent was once temperate and
even tropical, with a teeming vegetable and animal life of which the
lichens, marine fauna, arachnida, and penguins of the northern edge are
the only survivors, is a matter of common information; and we hoped to
expand that information in variety, accuracy, and detail. When a simple
boring revealed fossiliferous signs, we would enlarge the aperture by
blasting, in order to get specimens of suitable size and condition.

Our borings, of varying depth according to the promise held out by the
upper soil or rock, were to be confined to exposed, or nearly exposed,
land surfaces–these inevitably being slopes and ridges because of the
mile or two-mile thickness of solid ice overlying the lower levels.

We could not afford to waste drilling depth on any considerable amount
of more glaciation, though Pabodie had worked out a plan for sinking
copper electrodes in thick clusters of borings and melting off limited
areas of ice with current from a gasoline-driven dynamo.

It is this plan–which we could not put into effect except
experimentally on an expedition such as ours–that the coming
Starkweather-Moore Expedition proposes to follow, despite the warnings
I have issued since our return from the antarctic.

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