Introduction
After the death of my maternal grandfather, the self-styled ‘Last of the Archaeological Explorers’, the melancholy task of emptying his house and archives fell to me. We are not concerned here with his increasingly nomadic life-style, since his early widowhood- the four poster bed surrounded by bare boards, the dining table for twelve having but one solitary chair, the hot water system which had failed 20 yrs before and simply been written off as being superfluous to requirements, and all the rest. We will confine ourselves to the library.
It was an appropriately miserable, dull, wet and sad day when I first ventured in. It looked like a left luggage office. The task progressed (and indeed eventually concluded) as one might have expected- with much tedium, backache, grubby fingers, a few mild surprises, puzzles, treasures, plus one great enigma.
Imagine a wooden box, either very old, or very ill used, so plain in design as to be timeless. It had no projecting edges, moulds or beading, nor carving nor panelling- just six slabs of sawn wood fashioned into a box, the lid attached by crude staple hinges. The simple hasp and staple, which had once comprised the fastening and closure was now damaged- not simply worn or decayed in rust, but ripped open. Rough iron hoops were ring bolted on each side, obviously for lifting. The overall dimensions were a little over two feet wide, maybe fifteen inches front to back, and no more than six inches high. It was heavily scarred, as though retrieved from a collapsed building, or buried in stony ground.
When I opened it, I found about a hundred and fifty sheets of manuscript, all in my grandfather’s hand. The bundle was not bound or tied together in any way. Rather the impression was of the whole lot having casually, carelessly, been tossed into the bottom of the box. Removal of the papers revealed the interior to be plain and featureless, save for the merest traces of the box having been lined at some time
with a dull, red, baize-like material, shreds of which were still trapped in the corner joints.
What follows, in this volume, comprises a verbatim transcript of my grandfather’s notes. Of the supposed ‘original’ document, I found no physical trace, nor any other reference- no evidence whatsoever. Like me, you must make of it what you will.