The electric agencies in our world are very powerful; and it is supposed that at an early age of our world’s history the mountain-foot covered with cities extended considerably beyond the land on which stand the present lower cities, and for many miles beyond the actual point to which the sea now recedes at low water, and that through a great electric disturbance, the upheaving seas of mighty waters rolled on, and, rising to an immense height—­some think above the summit of the great mountain—­with resistless force carried away miles of intermediate rock-land, which had till then formed the heart of the mountain.

When after some time the waters receded the mountain mass above the point of their ravages was left suspended, deprived of the support of the intermediate and nether strata, which before the upheavings of the waters had connected the plateaus and peaks of the mountain with the land beneath.

The suspended or aerial mountain stretches from the high lands of the continent horizontally through the air, just as one of your largest continents stretches into the sea.  Between it and the sea below, however, is a space to be measured by miles.

The sea in subsiding did not recede to its old limits; for a part only of the miles of the lower lands between the scooped-out mountain heart and the sea was restored to the world by the retiring waters, and the heart of the mountain having been carried away and engulfed for ever, the projecting mountain mass was left suspended not only over the land now covered by the lower cities, but for miles over the sea.  Neither can be approached except by proceeding first for a long distance in an opposite direction inland, until the extreme point is reached where the sea stopped its ravages on the mountain’s heart; the road then leads by circuitous bendings to the land below.

On the rocky ridges of the heart or indent of the mountain, and on the part of the mountain foot restored by the sea, now stand the middle and lower cities of Montalluyah.

The hanging mountain mass, with its promontories and high hills, presents all varieties of shape and outline, and is itself intersected by rocks, ravines, cataracts, and torrents.

One great torrent runs on for many miles, and having been swelled by tributaries into an immense gathering of mighty waters, rushes impetuously seaward, to the extreme point of the suspended mountain, whence from its aerial height it falls into the sea beneath, the spray bringing refreshment to the parched atmosphere of the lower and intervening cities, built on the ridges and peaks of the sea-worn heart of the mountain.  This torrent, called the Great Cataract, forms a feature of great grandeur and beauty.

On the suspended mountain itself is built a city larger than your largest capitals, called the Upper city of Montalluyah.  The Lower city, nearer the sea-level, is distant vertically about three miles from the nearest under part of the projecting mountain-arm above.  The cities swarm with human beings, whilst the wealth of the districts is incalculable.