The View from Tamischeira. Richard Cumyn

its race tracks and encircling canals, he travelled south in his mind the thirty miles to Dariel, and through it, fearful, blind in its terrible blackness, he would feel his way, the voice of the Terek his only guide until it debouched at Eshmuti, the opening to the Alizon Valley.

      He had familiar landmarks in Ottawa that he associated with the Puzzle. The Byward Market east of Parliament Hill was Semochada Scheni, for it seemed that whenever he was there, surrounded by the bustle of greengrocers, butchers, poulterers, fishmongers, the crowds, the surging vitality of it, the skies were always bright. It was his Sun City, a warm oasis trapped in a heart of ice. It was Phanagoria and Phoeni and Fenkhu, all one. He wrote of a promontory overlooking the Ottawa River, which height he took to calling Bakhu, the Mountain of Sunrise, because one night he and Katherine sat there conversing until the easterly sky began to blush. The fields to the east of the city were Sek-het-sasi, for in his memory they always flamed with those first rays of the joyous day. He called a little white church where he and his love often stopped on their noontime walks, To-neter, the “Holy Land,” not for its altar and hymnbooks, but for its simple pews that afforded them rest, and especially allowed them to sit close enough that they felt the conversant warmth of their bodies. For without love, he wrote, paradise is unobtainable.