I told the princeling that in any case I had more opportunities to discuss such matters on Earth’s surface than I made use of. But there was something else I needed to know: would he please explain why it was that a massive storm blew up whenever stones were thrown into such lakes? Much the same was said of Lake Pilatus in Switzerland, I recalled hearing, and I’d read something similar about Lake Camarina in Sicily – whence the Latin tag Camarinam movere. He replied, ‘It’s because when anything heavy is thrown into a body of water, it doesn’t stop falling towards the Earth’s centre until it reaches a bed (a bottom of some kind) on which it comes to rest. However, these lakes go down to the Earth’s centre; they have no bottom. So any stones thrown into them naturally and inevitably sink down to where we live. There they’ll lie unless we carry them back up to where they came from – and promptly, too, in order to discourage the malice of those who make a habit of chucking them in. That’s a major part of what we do, in fact; it’s what we were created for. You see, if we allowed stones to be thrown in and brought up again without marking the occasion with sudden storms, the end result would be that we spent all our time dealing with the idle mischief-makers who daily, the world over, have nothing better to do than send us stones. From this single task that we’re required to perform you see how essential we are as a race. If we didn’t remove said stones, with so many similar lakes dotted around the world and descending to the centrum terrae, down where we live, and with so much stuff being tossed into them day after day, the very ties that bind the ocean to the Earth would eventually be destroyed. The passages through which the springs make their way from the deepest depths to the surface of the earth would become blocked, causing damaging confusion and bringing about the ruin of the entire world.’
I thanked him for this information and said, ‘So your kind, you say, uses such lakes to supply water to springs and rivers all over the world? In that case you can presumably tell me why not everyone experiences such bodies of water in the same way – not only as to their smell, taste, etc., but also in terms of their power and effect, since they all (as you say) come back up from the deepest depths of the Great Ocean, into which they all ultimately pour. The fact is, certain springs are life-giving acidic mineral springs, beneficial to health; others are acidic but in a non-beneficial way (i.e. they’re harmful to drink). There are springs that are even fatally toxic, like the one in Arcadia that Iollas used to poison Alexander the Great. Some are tepid, others boiling hot, yet others ice cold. Some eat through iron like aqua fortis (one in Zepusio, for instance; another in Zips county in Hungary); conversely, other springs heal any kind of wound – there’s said to be one of these in Thessaly. Some turn to stone, others to salt or vitriol. The lake at Zircknitz in Carinthia has water only in winter; in summer it’s dry. The spring at Engstlen flows only in the summer months, and then only at certain times, like when cattle come down to drink. The Schändlebach, a stream near Ober-Nähenheim, flows only when some disaster threatens the district. And the Fluvius Sabbaticus in Syria dries up every seventh day. All of which, when I think about it and can’t work out the cause, really makes me wonder.’
Again, the prince supplied the answer. All these things had their natural causes, he told me, which from the different odours, tastes, forces and effects of such liquids humanity’s natural historians had, severally and in detail, deduced, worked out, and made widely known up on the Earth’s surface. If, between where the water sprites live and the spot where a watercourse emerges at the surface (what we call sources), the water itself flows through rock of any kind – all right, it may remain cool and soft, but if on its way it passes through or between metallic strata (the vast belly of the Earth was by no means uniformly constituted, he stressed), whether containing gold, silver, copper, tin, lead, iron, mercury, etc., or semi-minerals such as sulphur, the various salts: plain salt, sal gemmae, sal nativum, sal radicum, sal nitrum, sal ammoniac, saltpetre, etc., which come in white, red, yellow or green forms, vitriol, marchasita aurea, argentea, plumbea, ferrea, lapis lazuli, alum, arsenic, antimony, risigallum, electrum naturale, chrysocolla, sublimatum, and so on, then such water takes on the taste, odour, type, power and effect of those materials, making it either beneficial or harmful to humans. That’s why we have all those different salts, he told me – some good and some bad. I remember his words: ‘At Cervia and Commachio the water tends to be dark, while at Memphis it’s reddish; in Sicily, bright white. At Centuripe it’s purple in colour; in Cappadocia it has a yellow tinge.’ He went on: ‘Hot springs, on the other hand, take their heat from the actual fire that burns inside the Earth. As well as our lake, the Earth has its air holes and chimneys here and there. Examples are the famous Mount Etna in Sicily, Hekla in Iceland, Gumapi in Banda, and others. You were wondering about Lake Zircknitz: well, in summer this body of water is found at the Carinthian antipodes, while the Engstlen can be seen at certain times of day and seasons of the year elsewhere on Earth’s surface, doing the same job as it does for the Swiss. The Schändlebach at Ober-Nähenheim likewise. All these sources are controlled and managed in this way by us water sprites according to the will and express dictates of God, the purpose being to bolster his praise among you. As for Syria’s Fluvius Sabbaticus, we who live below are in the habit of celebrating the seventh day by taking our rest in its channel as being the loveliest spot in our entire equatorial region. That’s why said river cannot flow on that day: we’re honouring the Creator by lying in its bed.’
When the prince had finished I asked him: might it also be possible for him to take me back via a different lake than Lake Mummel, coming out somewhere else on Earth’s surface? ‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘Why not – if that’s God’s will? It’s how in the distant past our ancestors escorted a bunch of Canaanites to America after they’d escaped Joshua’s sword and in desperation jumped into just such a lake. To this day their descendants can point to it and say, “Our forebears emerged from there originally.” ’ I was struck by his surprise at my surprise – quite as if his story had not been surprising enough in itself. So I asked him: didn’t he and his kind themselves receive a surprise when they learnt something strange and unusual about us humans? He replied, ‘What we find most surprising about you is that, created as you are for eternal salvation and everlasting celestial bliss, you nevertheless allow yourselves to be so bewitched by temporal, earthly delights – which are as rarely unaccompanied by listlessness and pain as roses come without thorns. As a result, you forfeit heaven’s promise, lose all chance of gazing in joy on God’s all-holy countenance, and along with the fallen angels plunge headlong into eternal damnation. Ah, if we sprites were only in your place! How earnestly we’d strive, each one of us, in the split second of your temporal existence, to pass the test with a higher grade than you have obtained! The life you have is not your own. Your life, your death, only become yours with the passing of your experience of temporality. What you call life is a mere instant, loaned to you in order that in it you may acknowledge and come closer to God and he draw you into his embrace. That is why we look upon the world as a divine touchstone, enabling God, as the rich man assays his gold and silver (what shade is the mark the stone makes, or can the object be refined by fire?) for their value, to assay you and place the good and fine varieties of precious metal among his celestial hoard while consigning the evil and false to eternal flame. Your Saviour and our Creator gave you sufficient foreknowledge of this in the parable of the wheat and the tares.’