Contents: preface

A Hollow Earth

One of the first recorded disappearances in this hostile sea was of a fleet captained by John Cabot. He discovered Newfoundland in 1497 and claimed it was close to Zipangu, the mythical land where all the spices of the Earth are grown. He returned to the Arctic with five ships, commissioned by King Henry, to seek the elusive north-west passage to the ‘Spice Islands,’ but only one came back. The others were never heard of again, presumed to have reached 'that undiscover'd country from whose bourn no ordinary mortal returns'.

a pyrotechnic display of auroral lights and colours, believed by the northern tribes of Canada to be the spirits of the dead, guiding travellers on their way. They found themselves in temperate climes with warm winds, tranquil fresh waters and a hazy, reddish sun illuminating an unfamiliar landscape. Jen Jansen believed in the gods who came from a land more beautiful than any mortal man had known, beyond the 'North Wind' which took Odin's horse, Sleipnir, nine days and nine nights to reach.

Trusting in Odin's protection, the mariners progressed for several months, over the 'Hyperborean Ocean.' They passed through lands with limpid streams, thick forests and larger than normal vegetation, trees were enormous and the bird life was prolific. With the compass still pivoting north, they observed how the orb of the gods was fiery red by day and a luminous white at night. It was stationary and obscured by cloud for twelve hours and appeared to reflect a greater light from afar (Aurora Borealis.) Held by the immutable law of gravitation at the geometric centre of the Earth, it is said this glowing ball of plasma is about six hundred miles in diameter and warms the inner surface.
Jen and Olaf then met the gentle 'Hyperboreans,' fair people, twelve feet tall, with a lifespan of centuries, who lived in this Rainbow Country and called the central sun, the 'smoky god.' They were taken to a city called Eden and the homes and utensils were on a huge scale, even grapes were the size of plums. The people used a puzzling device to communicate over long distances, on air currents.

Pliny the Elder, a natural historian, who vividly described dragons, wrote in the 1st. Century that the four main rivers of Hyperborea (a paradise in the far north beyond Scythia) are stocked with fish, the skies are swarming with butterflies, bees and an assortment of insects, and in the ancient forests, herds of unicorns roam amidst gnarled trees shaped like monsters. Olaf confirmed that there are indeed four main rivers in the inner-world, the Euphrates, the Pison, the Gihon and the Hiddekel (Genesis,2,10-14) which converge at the polar opening, about 1,400 miles in diameter. Cedar wood, animal bones and mammoth tusks carried there on the tide from the inner-sea, become frozen in ice and are washed up onto the Siberian shore, providing an abundance of fresh ivory.

The Jansen's incredible journey was eventually brought to an abrupt halt amidst icebergs. Olaf was thrown onto an ice-pack and knocked unconscious. When he came too, he searched the frozen waters frantically for the boat but it had sunk and Jen had sadly drowned. Olaf Janson was rescued by a Scottish trawler called the Arlington and the fishermen informed him he was in the Antarctic. When he mentioned the giants who had given them gold nuggets and been so hospitable for two years, they put him in irons!

Back in Stockholm, Olaf's mother was dead so he related his story of the inner-world to his Uncle Gustaf, expecting him to finance a return trip, instead he was incarcerated in a sanatorium where he remained for ''twenty-eight years - long, tedious, frightful years of suffering'' amongst the mentally insane.
Despite this ordeal, he never recanted his story but he never spoke of it again either. However on his death-bed, by then an old man of ninety-five with nothing to fear from repercussions, he summoned the author Willis George Emmerson, a friend, to confide his life-long secret and collaborate in a book, called 'The Smoky God.' Emmerson was entrusted with Olaf's notes, maps and sketches and he found this old Norseman's eloquent madness appealed to his imagination and promised to deliver his story to the World. He kept his promise and the book was published in 1908, just after Olaf's death.
As one travels northwards approaching the polar opening, the temperature unexpectedly warms up and open seas appear, and then you reach the Iron Mountains, which circle the misty passage to the centre of the Earth.
Olaf Janson was not alone in making this discovery. In 1914, Professor Nikolai Trukanov, a Russian who was an exponent of the Hollow Earth theory, confirmed his beliefs when he too ventured deep inside the bowels of Gaea. His expedition gained access in the Sea of Beaufort, north of Nansen Land and they soon saw the dull red, central sun, which never sets. The professor named it Pluto. The creatures they found are all extinct in the upper world, ichthyosaurs, mammoths, huge cave bears and dinosaurs! But the residents of 'Plutonia' that Trukanov and his team encountered were primates, living in the semi-tropical jungles and swamps. Since then, other explorers of Plutonia have described the inhabitants as less than half the size of average humans, with it's ecology in miniature too.

The Rainbow City was also visited by a man named Emery in 1942, beneath the South Polar region. His expedition found living quarters, shops, hospitals and museums, but everything was on a larger scale than usual, designed for subterrestrials over eight feet tall. There was a central pyramidal temple which contained a 'learning chair' and one could acquire knowledge of the 'Venusian' language rapidly by this method and read from a colossal library full of books, that also spoke their contents. Obviously intended for more evolved beings than the 'Plutonians.'

a tunnel in Australia, while fossil-hunting in the company of his nephews. However, they found it to be mostly dark and barren, and harbouring prehistoric monsters, but a small inhabited area on the banks of a large sea, was brightly lit by electric power and had parks full of butterflies and bees. The technology was highly developed and the people utilised atomic energy to power a craft which could fly, as well as travel speedily underwater.

1938 off the coast of East Africa.

Even more recently, a Professor Percival Potter (no relation to Harry) discovered an entrance to the inner-world in the 1960's, through the crater of an extinct volcano in the Ahaggar massif of North Africa. He described this land as being bathed permanently in an unnatural light, with areas covered in dense jungle, comprised of foliage found in each of the prehistoric periods, Cretaceous, Jurassic and Devonian, growing together. There was a Great Sea, teeming with sea-serpents and a small inland sea, which washed up onto rolling hills. Rising above that, the mountainous Peaks of Peril were the home of dangerous pterodactyls, saber-toothed tigers and woolly mammoths!

This world was known as Zanthodon, and believed by some travellers to be an oasis of the lost Atlantean Empire. The people were beautiful and un-selfconscious, tall, blonde, blue-eyed Cro Magnons, but they coexisted with Neanderthal types and an other, little known race, who were highly civilized. The common dialect spoken by all (except the grunting ape-men) was a proto-Aryan, which gave rise to Sanskrit, the root of all Indo-European languages.

While some of these accounts are fictitious, they may contain subtle truths. Clearly many individuals are aware of this strange territory and it's topography bears a marked resemblance to the Dragon Islands, but a notable figure alleged to have found this place...and stayed, was the intrepid explorer Colonel Percy H. Fawcett. He was awarded a gold medal by The Royal Geographical Society in 1916, for his contribution to mapping South America and disappeared while on an expedition in the Amazon.

Exploring with his son Jack and a friend Raleigh Rimmel, Colonel Fawcett said he found 'bat people' with telepathic powers living in caves (even more outlandish than Nathaniel's claims.) Although this may be the 'Mothman' who is witnessed by Americans. The locals on the Indonesian island of Seram speak of the 'Orang Bati' who live in the interior of extinct volcanoes. They are man-shaped creatures with large bat-like wings and a long thin tail.

In the rainforest of Mulu in Borneo, there are the most awesome and extensive cave systems with underground passages, like the tunnel into Deer Cave, which defies comprehension, and contains a million bats! During a field trip sailing through these islands with their unique wildlife, the 19^th.Century naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace formulated his evolutionary theory on 'survival of the fittest' which he graciously accredited to Charles Darwin.
Colonel Fawcett also reported an encounter with a giant snake in 1907. He was sailing on the Rio Negro with a crew of Indians when it’s huge triangular head rose up above the bow of the boat. He shot at the creature and it thrashed around in the water. Fawcett estimated the total length of the serpent to be sixty-two feet. Its diameter was only twelve inches, but the Colonel was unable to bring the specimen back to authenticate his finding.

He was searching for a lost city in the virgin rainforest (now being destroyed at a rate of 3,000 acres per hour) using a map from the 1700's, which he believed would provide the answer to the enigma of the prehistoric World. The Society scorned his beliefs but the 'mythos' of Colonel Fawcett is, that he met a strange race, unlike the tribes of the Mato Grosso, who showed him a tunnel that led to a hidden lower-world and there he remained. The last known contact with the group was from the banks of the River Xingu.