"GL5" - читать интересную книгу автора (vol04)

land and water; and its surface is the centre of the world
from the confines of the upper Vaiya to the confines of the
nether. Of old its fashion was thus. It was highest in the
middle, and fell away on either side into vast valleys, but
rose again in the East and West and again fell away to the
chasm at its edges. And the two valleys were filled with the

primeval water, and the shores of these ancient seas were in
the West the western highlands and the edge of the great
land, and in the East the eastern highlands and the edge of
the great land upon the other side. But at the North and
South it did not fall away, and one could go by land from
the uttermost South and the chasm of Ilmen to the utter-
most North and the chasm of Ilmen. The ancient seas lay
therefore in troughs, and their waters spilled not to the East
or to the West; but they had no shores either at the North
or at the South, and they spilled into the chasm, and their
waterfalls became ice and bridges of ice because of the
cold; so that the chasm of Ilmen was here closed and
bridged, and the ice reached out into Vaiya, and even unto
the Walls of the World.

Now it is said that the Valar coming into the World de-
scended first upon Middle-earth at its centre, save Melko
who descended in the furthest North. But the Valar took a
portion of land and made an island and hallowed it, and set
it in the Western Sea and abode upon it, while they were
busied in the exploration and first ordering of the World. As
is told they desired to make lamps, and Melko offered to
devise a new substance of great strength and beauty to be
their pillars. And he set up these great pillars north and
south of the Earth's middle yet nearer to it than the chasm;
and the Gods placed lamps upon them and the Earth had
light for a while.
But the pillars were made with deceit, being wrought of
ice; and they melted, and the lamps fell in ruin, and their
light was spilled. But the melting of the ice made two small
inland seas, north and south of the middle of the Earth, and
there was a northern land and a middle land and a southern
land. Then the Valar removed into the West and forsook the
island; and upon the highland at the western side of the
West Sea they piled great mountains, and behind them
made the land of Valinor. But the mountains of Valinor
curve backward, and Valinor is broadest in the middle of
Earth, where the mountains march beside the sea; and at the

north and south the mountains come even to the chasm.
There are those two regions of the Western Land which are
not of Middle-earth and are yet outside the mountains: they
are dark and empty. That to the North is Eruman, and that