Mason & Dixon

by Thomas Pynchon

Here are the last Cadre, out in the uninterrupted Visto,— from a certain Height, oddly verminous upon the pale Riband unfolding,— fairly out in the Hundred-League Current of Sha, where ev’ry Step is purchas’d with a further surrender of Ignorance as to what they have finish’d,— what they have left at their Backs, undone,— what, measuring the Degree of Latitude next Spring, they shall be newly complicit in,— tho’ if it takes them much longer to get over the Ridge, even if they escape freezing solid, they may yet have journey’d further into Terrestrial Knowledge, than will allow them to re-emerge without bargaining away too much for merely another Return following another Excursion, in a Cycle belonging to some Engine whose higher Assembly and indeed Purpose, they are never, except from infrequent Glimpses, quite able to make out.