From: Peter Westlake <peter@harlequin.co.uk>
Subject: Re: (urth) The Wall as "Well"
Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 10:36:15 +0100

At 01:10 1998-05-13 GMT, m.driussi@genie.geis.com wrote:
>Here's another curious detail to ponder in the "hard science"
>department.  The Wall of Nessus is said to be leagues (plural)
>tall, where each league is three miles.
>
>That is some serious vertical terrain.  If we take as true the
>PLAN[E]T ENGINEERING map suggestion that the diameter of the
>circle enclosing Nessus is twenty leagues (sixty miles), and we
>assume the Wall is two or three leagues high (six or nine miles),
>we could determine the lattitude of Nessus by the altitude of the
>presumed mossline growing on the northern wall where direct sunlight
>never falls.

On the other hand, when Typhon is showing Severian the world
from the eye, Nessus is described as spreading over many
hundreds of leagues. You probably couldn't see the walls from
the middle of the city.

Peter.


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