H. P. Lovecraft
48 Stories
At the Mountains of Madness
By H. P. Lovecraft
Written Feb-22 Mar 1931

I
I am forced into speech because men of science have refused to follow my advice without knowing why. It is altogether against my will that I tell my reasons for
opposing this contemplated invasion of the antarctic - with its vast fossil hunt and its wholesale boring and melting of the ancient ice caps. And I am the more
reluctant because my warning may be in vain. Doubt of the real facts, as I must reveal them, is inevitable; yet, if Isuppressed what will seem extravagant and
incredible, there would be nothing left. The hitherto withheld photographs, both ordinary and aerial, will count in my favor, for they are damnably vivid and
graphic. Still, they will be doubted because of the great lengths to which clever fakery can be carried. The ink drawings, of course, will be jeered at as obvious
impostures, notwithstanding a strangeness of technique which art experts ought to remark and puzzle over. In the end I must rely on the judgment and standing of
the few scientific leaders who have, on the one hand, sufficient independence of thought to weigh my data on its own hideously convincing merits or in the light
of certain primordial and highly baffling myth cycles; and on the other hand, sufficient influence to deter the exploring world in general from any rash and
over-ambitious program in the region of those mountains of madness. It is an unfortunate fact that relatively obscure men like myself and my associates,connected
only with a small university, have little chance of making an impression where matters of a wildly bizarre or highly controversial nature are concerned.
It is further against us that we are not, in the strictest sense, specialists in the fields which came primarily to be concerned. As a ge ologist, my object in
leading the Miskatonic University Expedition was wholly that of securing deep-level specimens of rock and soil from various parts of the antarctic continent,
aided by the remarkable drill devised by Professor Frank H. Pabodie of our engineering department. I had no wish to be a pioneer in any other field than this,
but I did hope that the use of this new mechanical appliance at different points along previously explored paths would bring to light materials of a sort hitherto
unreached by the ordinary methods of collection. Pabodie's drilling apparatus, as the public already knows from our reports, was unique and radical in its lightness,
portability, and capacity to combine the ordinary artesian drill principle with the principle of the small circular rock drill in such a way as to cope quickly
with strata of varying hardness. Steel head, jointed rods, gasoline motor, collapsible wooden derrick, dynamiting paraphernalia, cording, rubbish-removal auger,
and sectional piping for bores five inches wide and up to one thousand feet deep all formed, with needed accessories, no greater load than three...

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