People think of Augustus Bedloe, the protagonist of the tale of the Ragged Mountains, as a rather curious individual. The poor young man – or is he really young? – suffers from neuralgia, and his condition is slowly getting worse. He's under the medical care of Doctor Templeton who treats him by the magnetizing hypnosis associated with mesmerism (further discussed below).

Bedloe enjoys his walks in the Ragged Mountains. With sensual awareness heightened by his addiction to morphine he gets lost on tracks unknown to any human being before him. Or at least so he thinks, but before long he comes across a lively city that appears as if taken from The Arabian Nights. He suddenly finds himself in furious pandemonium before being killed by an arrow in his temples. His soul leaves his body before he rematerializes at an earlier stage in his journey. Later the doctor reports that he was there – in the Indian city of Benares, in decades prior – when exactly this happened to a man who strongly resembled Bedloe.

I highly enjoyed the ambiguity of it all. Bedloe lay down to rest at just the spot where later he rematerializes after his apparent death, so it's likely that his exciting events were nothing but a dream. Maybe Bedloe's experiences were caused by the drugs. Or maybe he somehow inherited the memories from his doctor through their close mesmeric connection. Likewise, it's not unlikely that the grieving doctor wanted to meet the man again, mistaking strong resemblance for identity. Whatever the real cause for his experiences, the events themselves make for a thrilling story in themselves.