Foundling (51 page)

HAROLD FACES THE SLOTHOG
ALONE BEFORE THE GATES OF CLEMENTINE

 

 

This is the engraving found in the pamphlet Rossamünd reads after his beating from Gosling; the one he stares at for a moment when he is talking to Fransitart. You can just make out the cylinders and satchels - so famously empty - hanging about Harold’s waist, while the “beast-handlers” struggle to keep the Slothog under control. The picture is a romantic view of the event. In truth Harold was one of over a hundred who tackled the Slothog, though he was certainly the only teratologist among them. Still propagandists tell of him as standing alone, and that is how popular history chooses to remember him.

THE
HALF-CONTINENT ~ AN EXPLODED VIEW ~

On the following pages will appear eight enlargements of the map of the Half-Continent, roughly following the divisions shown above. Numbers in the grid correspond to the number at the bottom of each enlargement.

DISTANCE

1 inch = 2.54 centimeters or 25.4 millimeters
1 foot = 30.5 centimeters or 305 millimeters
1 yard = 0.914 meter or 91.4 centimeters
1 mile = 1.61 kilometers or 1610 meters