We walked seven miles along the mournful Susquehanna. It is a terrifying river. It has bushy cliffs on both sides that lean like hairy ghosts over the unknown waters. Inky night covers all. Sometimes from the railyards across the river rises a great red locomotive flare that illuminates the horrid cliffs [J. Kerouac, On the Road (New York: Penguin Books, 1976), p. 104]. I - viii - The Parallel Nation of Ossian. The Emperor Frederick, arrived in Hades, joins the others in listening as Ahem describes his youth in Ossian. While tictuses continue narrating their own tale of captivity, three Nicean principles: ‘scrapmon, an historian (all too busy), and the Ambassador an An Indocile, reach the Sunrise Cage and hot wash their recent expedition at Mount Period. A tictic takes the lumine to visit a discoverer (all too busy), marooned in the Forgotten Tents, and tries to explain the structure of the Nicean races. The Nicean Grand Fleet, the omega wave, arrives, distorting the boundaries between time and space. ~ page 101 ~ James Macpherson (Scottish Gaelic: Seumas Mac a' Phearsain or Seumas MacMhuirich; 27 October 1736 – 17 February 1796) was a Scottish poet, known as the "translator" of the Ossian cycle of poems.* Ossian Act I, Signature viii - (1) Gaelic Oisín. Irish warrior-poet of the Fenian cycle of hero tales. The name Ossian became known throughout Europe in 1762–63 when the Scottish poet James Macpherson (1736–96) published the epics Fingal and Temora, which he represented as translations of works by the 3rd-century Gaelic poet Ossian. The poems were widely acclaimed and influential in the Romantic movement, but their authorship was later doubted, notably by Samuel Johnson (1775), and they were eventually determined to have been written largely by Macpherson. *[Image & caption credit and following text courtesy of Wikipedia]: In 1761 he announced the discovery of an epic on the subject of Fingal (related to the Irish mythological character Fionn mac Cumhaill/Finn McCool) written by Ossian (based on Fionn's son Oisín), and in December he published Fingal: An Ancient Epic Poem in Six Books , together with Several Other Poems Composed by Ossian, the Son of Fingal , translated from the Gaelic Language, written in the musical measured prose of which he had made use in his earlier volume. Temora followed in 1763, and a collected edition, The Works of Ossian , in 1765. The name Fingal or Fionnghall means "white stranger [Mike Campbell (2008), "Name: Fingal," Behindthename. com ( http:// www.behindthename.com/php/view.php?name=fingal)]," and it is suggested that the name was rendered as Fingal through a derivation of the name which in old Gaelic would appear as Finn [(Mary Ann Dobratz, "The Works of ‘Fiona MacLeod,’" Notes to First Edition (Sundown Shores, 2000), http://www.sundown.pair.com/ SundownShores/Volume_IV/notes.htm). MacPherson was himself a Gaelic speaker]. The authenticity of these so-called translations from the works of a 3rd century bard was immediately challenged by Irish historians, who noted its technical errors in chronology, its technical errors in the forming of Gaelic names, and commented on the implausibility of many of MacPherson's claims, none of which MacPherson was able to refute. More forceful denunciations were later made by Dr. Samuel Johnson, who asserted (in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland , 1775) that MacPherson had found fragments of poems and stories, and then woven them into a romance of his own composition. Further challenges and defences were made well into the nineteenth century, but the issue was moot by then. Macpherson never produced the originals that he claimed existed. Physical map of the supercontinent Pangaea (~230 million years ago); http://www.synthlog.com/dinosauriax/triasico.htm.* Panthalassa/Pangea Act I, Signature viii - (2) Or Pangaea. Hypothetical proto-continent proposed by Alfred Wegener in 1912 as part of his theory of continental drift. Pangea (from Greek: pangaia, “all earth”) supposedly covered about half the Earth and was completely surrounded by a world ocean called Panthalassa. Late in the Triassic Period (248–206 million years ago), Pangea began to break apart. Its segments, Laurasia (composed of all the present-day northern continents) and Gondwana (the present-day southern continents) gradually receded, resulting in the formation of the Atlantic Ocean. *[Image & caption credit and following text courtesy of Wikipedia]: Rodinia, which formed 1.3 billion years ago during the Proterozoic, was the supercontinent from which all subseQuent continents, sub or super, derived. Rodinia does not preclude the possibility of prior supercontinents as the breakup and formation of supercontinents appears to be cyclical through Earth's 4.6 billion years. Gondwana followed with several iterations before the formation of Pangaea, which succeeded Pannotia, before the beginning of the Paleozoic Era (545 Ma) and the Phanerozoic Eon. The minor supercontinent of Proto-Laurasia drifted away from Gondwana and moved across the Panthalassic Ocean. A new ocean was forming between the two continents, the Proto-Tethys Ocean. Soon, Proto-Laurasia drifted apart itself to create Laurentia, Siberia and Baltica. The rifting also spawned two new oceans, the Iapetus and Khanty Oceans. Baltica remained east of Laurentia, and Siberia sat northeast of Laurentia. In the Cambrian the independent continent of Laurentia on what would become North America sat on the eQuator, with three bordering oceans: the Panthalassic Ocean to the north and west, the Iapetus Ocean to the south and the Khanty Ocean to the east. In the Earliest Ordovician, the microcontinent of Avalonia, a landmass that would become the northeastern United States, Nova Scotia and England, broke free from Gondwana and began its journey to Laurentia [Stanley, Steven, Earth System History (USA,1998), pp. 355–359]. Baltica collided with Laurentia by the end of the Ordovician and northern Avalonia collided with Baltica and Laurentia. Laurentia, Baltica and Avalonia formed to create a minor supercontinent of Euramerica or Laurussia, closing the Iapetus Ocean, while the Rheic Ocean expanded in the southern coast of Avalonia. The collision also resulted in the formation of the northern Appalachians. Siberia sat near Euramerica, with the Khanty Ocean between the two continents. While all this was happening, Gondwana drifted slowly towards the South Pole. This was the first step of the formation of Pangaea [Stanley, pp. 386-392]. ~ page 102 ~ Honoré Gabriel RiQueti, Comte de Mirabeau (9 March , 1749 – 2 April 1791) was a French writer, popular orator and statesman.* Mirabeau, Honoré-Gabriel Riqueti, count de Act I, Signature viii - (3) Orig. Honoré-Gabriel RiQueti Born March 9, 1749, Bignon, near Nemours, France Died April 2, 1791, Paris French politician and orator. Son of the economist Victor RiQueti (1715–89), he suffered his father's disfavour; often imprisoned for intrigues and wild behaviour (1774–80), he wrote several essays on prison life. In 1789 he was elected to the Estates General from the Third Estate. A skilled orator, he was popular with the people and was influential in the early years of the French Revolution. He advocated a constitutional monarchy and tried to mediate between the absolute monarchists and the revolutionaries. He was elected president of the National Assembly in 1791, but he died shortly thereafter. *[Image & caption credit and following text courtesy of Wikipedia]: Mirabeau focused his efforts on two main issues: changing the ministry and dealing with impending civil war. His attempts to form political alliances with Lafayette and Necker failed and resulted in open hostility. Necker disappeared from the French court and no longer posed a threat. Lafayette, however, was very powerful due to the fact that he held a monopoly on the military and the National Guard. At first, Mirabeau attempted to undermine Lafayette’s power, but decided to solve the problem of the ministry, and maintain stability, by removing all ministers and placing the ministry entirely under Lafayette. In effect, Mirabeau suggested that the king distance himself from politics and let the revolution run its course, because it would inevitably destroy itself through its contradictory nature. Furthermore, Mirabeau proposed that, if his plan should fail, Paris should no longer be the capital of France, showing a conservative line of thinking: the only way to end the revolution would be to destroy its place of birth. Mirabeau’s prospects with the crown were good until 1790, when the Chatelet presented to the National Assembly that the inciters of the October days were the Duc d’Orleans and Mirabeau himself. The charges were later removed, but for Mirabeau, the accusation had brought the realization that his strategy of working closely with both the Assembly and the court was beginning to backfire. In a later meeting with the king and Queen, Mirabeau maintained that not only was civil war inevitable, it was necessary for the survival of the monarchy. Mirabeau maintained the belief that the decision to go to war, even civil war, should come only from the king. In a letter of confidence to Mirabeau, Louis wrote that as a Christian king, he could not declare war on his subjects. However, that wouldn’t stop him from reciprocating if his subjects declared war first. In order to avoid provoking a civil war, the king refrained from confronting the Constituent Assembly, and waited instead for a constitution that he could submit to. Once the civil constitution of the clergy destroyed this hope, Louis adopted a strategy of strengthening royal authority and the church’s position, and accepted the use of force, through civil war, to accomplish this. Mirabeau's involvement with the court is interesting for the insights it provides into the mind of Louis XIV as it is for the effects it produced in the Revolution [Munro, Price, "Mirabeau and the Court: Some New Evidence," French Historical Studies 29: pp.