Subject: (whorl) Tierra del Fuego

From: j e <lo_phan17 at hotmail.com>
Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 12:21:28 +0000

>
>From: "Robert Borski" <rborski at charter.net>
>Subject: Re: Windcloud

>Unless, of course, the testifying alien is none other than Pas himself,
>since "Windcloud" is essentially what Typhon/typhoon means--("A whirlwind,
>cyclone, tornado; a violent storm of wind, a hurricane," OED)--plus we
>already have the depiction of Pas as a whirlwind from as long ago as the
>LONG SUN series. What, if not a cloud-of-wind, is a whirlwind, cyclone,
>tornado, etc.
>
>Interesting to think that this might be the only on-stage appearance of a
>major player from both the latter SUN series.
>
>But then this would also mean that Pas was a Neighbor and we all know how
>ludicrous a notion that is, right?
>
>Robert Borski

Pas as Neighbour? Or is it a doubling of names. There is a Neighbour named 
Horn who (pg 260 OBW) is of the party giving Blue to the people of the long 
sun whorl. The only connection to Windcloud we read at this time is the 
section before where Horn and Barsat and Hari Mau and others visit the 
Neighbour house near Gaon and Horn finds the cup given him by Windcloud (who 
mentions the gift at the trial in Dorp). Is Windcloud present when Horn 
recieves the "godlike" gift of Blue? Probably, but if he's Pas why isn't he 
giving the whorl himself instead of as a group of equals beings?

I said before I was going to look into connections with Tierra del Fuego.
Cape Horn was named by the first European to sail around the cape. He was a 
Dutch captain named Willem Cornelius Schouten and he named it for his 
birthplace Hoorn which incidentally means horn.  I’m not sure Wolfe intends 
a connection with Patagonia (Land of Giants)or Tierra del Fuego (Land of 
Fires) but the cold and the terrain he describes could fit. The aborigines 
wore capes like the Neighbours and lit enough fires to blacken the sky but 
were exterminated by the colonists from Europe, not driven into 
_mirror-space_ by a species of “plastic people”.
The first contact between the peoples of Tierra del Fuego and the Europeans 
was made by Magellan, who found a passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific 
that’s named for him.  An MS-Encarta search on Ferdinand Magellan yields 
little in the way of possible connections. He’s credited as being the first 
to circumnavigate the globe but he never lived to complete the voyage which 
was finished by one of the ships in his command. He died during an attack on 
an island in the steamy Philippines (Mactan) and only circumnavigated the 
globe by having passed the most easterly point he’d reached on an earlier 
voyage.

Crateowl

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