'The Antipodes'

'The Antipodes', an illustration by JVL in Lewis Carroll's Alices Adventures in Wonderland, 

Artists' Choice Editions, 2009.

This is the episode when Alice falls down the rabbit-hole and lands at the bottom upon a heap of sticks and dry leaves. The sticks are formed to suggest an Antipodean shape.

The Text:

  Presently she began again.  `I wonder if I shall fall right

THROUGH the earth!  How funny it'll seem to come out among the

people that walk with their heads downward!  The Antipathies, I

think--' (she was rather glad there WAS no one listening, this

time, as it didn't sound at all the right word) `--but I shall

have to ask them what the name of the country is, you know.

Please, Ma'am, is this New Zealand or Australia?' (and she tried

to curtsey as she spoke--fancy CURTSEYING as you're falling

through the air!  Do you think you could manage it?)  `And what

an ignorant little girl she'll think me for asking!  No, it'll

never do to ask:  perhaps I shall see it written up somewhere.'

Down, down, down.  There was nothing else to do, so Alice soon

began talking again.  `Dinah'll miss me very much to-night, I

should think!'  (Dinah was the cat.)  `I hope they'll remember

her saucer of milk at tea-time.  Dinah my dear!  I wish you were

down here with me!  There are no mice in the air, I'm afraid, but

you might catch a bat, and that's very like a mouse, you know.

But do cats eat bats, I wonder?'  And here Alice began to get

rather sleepy, and went on saying to herself, in a dreamy sort of

way, `Do cats eat bats?  Do cats eat bats?' and sometimes, `Do

bats eat cats?' for, you see, as she couldn't answer either

question, it didn't much matter which way she put it.  She felt

that she was dozing off, and had just begun to dream that she

was walking hand in hand with Dinah, and saying to her very

earnestly, `Now, Dinah, tell me the truth:  did you ever eat a

bat?' when suddenly, thump! thump! down she came upon a heap of

sticks and dry leaves, and the fall was over.