Explorers of Gor Read Free

Priest-Kings?” asked Samos.
    “I suppose not,” I said. “Why?” I asked. I did not understand the question.
    “How little we know of our world,” sighed Samos.
    “I do not understand,” I said.
    “Tell me what you know of the Cartius,” he said.
    “It is an important subequatorial waterway,” I said. “It flows west by northwest, entering the rain forests and emptying into Lake Ushindi, which lake is drained by the Kamba and the Nyoka rivers. The Kamba flows directly into Thassa. The Nyoka flows into Schendi harbor, which is the harbor of the port of Schendi, and moves thence to Thassa.” Schendi was an equatorial free port, well known on Gor. It is also the home port of the League of Black Slavers.
    “It was, at one time, conjectured,” said Samos, “that the Cartius proper was a tributary of the Vosk.”
    “I had been taught that,” I said.
    “We now know that the Thassa Cartius and the subequatorial Cartius are not the same river.”
    “It had been thought, and shown on many maps,” I said, “that the subequatorial Cartius not only flowed into Lake Ushindi, but emerged northward, traversing the sloping western flatlands to join the Vosk at Turmus.” Turmus was the last major river port on the Vosk before the almost impassable marshes of the delta.
    “Calculations performed by the black geographer, Ramani, of the island of Anango, suggested that given the elevations involved the two rivers could not be the same. His pupil, Shaba, was the first civilized man to circumnavigate Lake Ushindi. He discovered that the Cartius, as was known, enters Lake Ushindi, but that only two rivers flow out of Ushindi, the Kamba and Nyoka. The actual source of the tributary to the Vosk, now called the Thassa Cartius, as you know, was found five years later by the. explorer, Ramus of Tabor, who, with a small expedition, over a period of nine months, fought and bartered his way through the river tribes, beyond the six cataracts, to the Ven highlands. The Thassa Cartius, with its own tributaries, drains the highlands and the descending plains.”
    “That has been known to me for over a year,” I said. “Why do you speak of it now?”
    “We are ignorant of so many things,” mused Samos.
    I shrugged. Much of Gor was terra incognita. Few knew well the lands on the east of the Voltai and Thentis ranges, for example, or what lay west of the farther islands, near Cos and Tyros. It was more irritating, of course, to realize that even considerable areas of territory above Schendi, south of the Vosk, and west of Ar, were unknown. “There was good reason to speculate that the Cartius entered the Vosk, by way of Lake Ushindi,” I said.
    “I know,” said Samos, “tradition, and the directions and flow of the rivers. Who would have understood, of the cities, that they were not the same?”
    “Even the bargemen of the Cartius proper, the subequatorial Cartius, and those of the Thassa Cartius, far to the north, thought the rivers to be but one waterway.”
    “Yes,” said Samos. “And until the calculations of Ramani, and the expeditions of Shaba and Ramus, who had reason to believe otherwise?”
    “The rain forests closed the Cartius proper for most civilized persons from the south,” I said, “and what trading took place tended to be confined to the ubarates of the southern shore of Lake Ushindi. It was convenient then, for trading purposes, to make use of either the Kamba or the Nyoka to reach Thassa.”
    “That precluded the need to find a northwest passage from Ushindi,” said Samos.
    “Particularly since it was known of the hostility of the river tribes on what is now called the Thassa Cartius.”
    “Yes,” said Samos.
    “But surely, before the expedition of Shaba,” I said, “others must have searched for the exit of the Cartius from Ushindi.”
    “It seems likely they were slain by the tribes of the northern shores of Ushindi,” said Samos.
    “How is it that the expedition of Shaba was successful?”