Suspended animation in fiction which is indistinguishable from death. In American fiction, the first story to deal with suspended animation is the tale of Rip Van Winkle, a short story by American author Washington Irving published in 1819 as well as the name of the story's fictional protagonist. In the story, a British subject in the American colonies wanders into the Catskill Mountains in the years before the American Revolutionary War, and finds a group of fairies, whose moonshine he drinks. He then falls asleep for 20 years, and returns to his village in what is now the United States, finding his home town
Tartary stream. But all the Tartar camp along the stream Was hush'd, and still the men were plunged in sleep." In Walter de la Mare's poem "If I were lord of Tartary", Tartary is an imaginary land full of happiness. In Washington Irving's short story "Rip Van Winkle", the title character would "sit on a wet rock, with a rod as long and heavy as a Tartar's lance". Tartary Tartary (Latin: "Tartaria") or Great Tartary (Latin: "Tartaria Magna") was a historical region in northern and central Asia stretching eastwards from the Caspian Sea and from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific