From their hotel suite, Manse Everard and Wanda Tamberly are able to see:
light streaming through the Golden Gate;
cable cars;
the waterfront;
the bay;
sails;
islands;
the farther shore.
"They had hoped to be out there themselves." (p. 746)
They can be. After spending, e.g., a day in their suite, they can time travel a day into the past and have the same day on the bay.
When Everard is in Harfleur, France, in 1307, he reflects that:
"From harbors like this, a few lifetimes hence, men would set sail for the New World." (p. 754)
Only time travellers in Harfleur know that, a few generations hence, trans-Atlantic travel begins. History is full of beginnings and endings. Time travellers can knowingly visit, revisit and appreciate any such periods. It is hard to imagine how that would affect their perception of time and change.
8 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Scripture says a man's lifespan is seventy, or if strong, eighty. By 1367 (two times 80), the Portuguese and other Europeans were making voyages of discovery.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: yes, though only to the Atlantic islands by then. And probing down the coast of Africa a bit.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, places like the Canary Islands and cautiously going down the west coast of Africa a fairly short distance.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: the Age of Exploration built up slowly, then exploded in the late 15th century as they passed the threshold of knowledge of deep-ocean wind and current patterns and capable ships that could sail around the world. There were still threats -- scurvy, and so forth -- but they were hard people to deter.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
In many ways tougher and stronger than our degenerate, lunatic, woke, Politically Correct age.
Ad astra! Sean
!
Sean: well, they were tougher. When i came back from Kenya to Canada, I remember vividly after a few months looking around at my contemporaries (I was in my late teens) and thinking:
"What a bunch of wimps!"
I'd seen things like famine and the aftermath of people slashing each other to death with pangas (machetes) and crippled beggars being taken and dumped in the middle of Nairobi National Park and almost certainly eaten by hyenas.
People seemed... shall we say, "over-sensitive".
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, too many in our disgusting PC times are "over-sensitive" about piffles.
But that does not mean the horrors you listed are good things, they are not. I'm reminded again, of how it's the Catholic Church (and some Protestants) who at least try to ameliorate such things. And it was the Church which built up a system of leper houses and hospitals in Medieval Europe, trying to ameliorate human suffering.
Ad astra! Sean
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