# The Floating Islands of Lake Diuturna *The Urth list — 2 messages, 2 voices, 07 Sep 2008* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### John Smith *07 Sep 2008, 00:32* In The Sword of the Lictor, Wolfe populates Lake Diuturna with floating islands which move about with the wind. This, I had thought, was another strange and exotic invention that the author used to separate our world from the future Urth. Well, I've been reading Charles Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle, a book I had always meant to read. When Darwin gets to Lake Titicaca high in the Andes, he describes the floating islands in the lake. Looking at Wikipedia, I find that even to this day there are Indians who live on the floating islands. So what I took to be fantastic was simply fact. I wonder if there are more such fantastic realities in TBOTNS. Best wishes, Jack --- ### brunians at brunians.org *07 Sep 2008, 00:36 · in reply to John Smith* > In The Sword of the Lictor, Wolfe populates Lake Diuturna with floating > islands which move about with the wind. This, I had thought, was another > strange and exotic invention that the author used to separate our world > from the future Urth. > > Well, I've been reading Charles Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle, a book I > had always meant to read. When Darwin gets to Lake Titicaca high in the > Andes, he describes the floating islands in the lake. > > Looking at Wikipedia, I find that even to this day there are Indians who > live on the floating islands. Oh yeah. I thought everybody knew this. . ---