conceived to be a necessary consequence of their geographical position,
it does at least reveal them looking at the world as if from the
standpoint of that eccentric posture. For they seem to him to see
everything topsy-turvy. Whether it be that their antipodal situation
has affected their brains, or whether it is the mind of the observer
himself that has hitherto been wrong in undertaking to rectify the
inverted pictures presented by his retina, the result, at all events,
is undeniable. The world stands reversed, and, taking for granted
his own uprightness, the stranger unhesitatingly imputes to them an
obliquity of vision, a state of mind outwardly typified by the
cat-like obliqueness of their eyes.

If the inversion be not precisely of the kind he expected, it is
none the less striking, and impressibly more real. If personal
experience has definitely convinced him that the inhabitants of that
under side of our planet do not adhere to it head downwards, like
flies on a ceiling,--his early a priori deduction,--they still
appear quite as antipodal, mentally considered. Intellectually,
at least, their attitude sets gravity at defiance. For to the mind's
eye their world is one huge, comical antithesis of our own. What we
regard intuitively in one way from our standpoint, they as
intuitively observe in a diametrically opposite manner from theirs.
To speak backwards, write backwards, read backwards, is but the a b c
of their contrariety. The inversion extends deeper than mere modes
of expression, down into the very matter of thought. Ideas of ours
which we deemed innate find in them no home, while methods which
strike us as preposterously unnatural appear to be their birthright.
From the standing of a wet umbrella on its handle instead of its
head to dry to the striking of a match away in place of toward one,
there seems to be no action of our daily lives, however trivial,