Before I could ask aught, quoth the Angel: "This is the gulf that
reaches to another great world." "What, pray, is that world called?" I
enquired. "'Tis called the bottomless pit or the Nethermost Hell, the
home of the devils, whither they now have gone. And those vast, dreary
wilds, parts of which thou hast traversed, are called the Region of
Despair, ordained for the condemned until the Judgment Day; then it will
become one with the utmost, bottomless Hell; then will one of us come and
seal up the devils and the damned together, never more to open upon them,
never to all eternity. In the meantime they have leave to come to this
colder country to torment lost souls. Yea, often are they suffered to
wander through the air, and about the earth, to tempt men into the
pernicious ways that lead to this horrible prison whence no man returns."
While listening to this account, and wondering that the entrance of
Perdition should differ so from that of the Upper Hell, I heard the
tremendous clash of arms, and the roar of artillery, from one quarter,
and what seemed like loud-rumbling thunder answering from another
quarter, while the deadly rocks resounded.
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