Excerpt from In the Morning of Time The water at this point was almost fresh, because the estuary, though fully two miles wide, was filled with the tide of the great river rolling slowly down from the heart Of the continent. The further shore was so flat that nothing could be Seen Of it but an endless, pale green forest Of giant reeds. But the nearer shore was skirted, at a distance Of perhaps half a mile from the water, by a rampart Of abrupt, bright, rust-red cliffs. The flat land between the waterside and the cliffs, except for the wide strip of beach, was clothed with an enormous and riotous growth Of calamaries, tree - ferns, cane and palm, which rocked and crashed in places as if some colossal wayfarers were pushing through them. Here and there along the edge of the cliffs sat tall beings with prodigious, saw-toothed beaks, like some Species Of bird conceived in a nightmare. Far out across the water one Of these creatures was flapping slowly in from the sea. Its wings eighteen feet across from tip to tip - were not the wings Of a bird, but Of a bat or a hobgoblin. It had dreadful hand-like claws on its wing-elbows; and its feet were those Of a lizard. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.