re come to their right mind."

Man after man capped this brave speech; the minority, who, if they liked
little to go, liked still less to be left behind, gave in their consent
perforce; and, to make a long story short, Amyas conquered, and the plan
was accepted.

"This," said Amyas, "is indeed the proudest day of my life! I have lost
one brother, but I have gained fourscore. God do so to me and more also,
if I do not deal with you according to the trust which you have put in
me this day!"

We, I suppose, are to believe that we have a right to laugh at Amyas's
scheme as frantic and chimerical. It is easy to amuse ourselves with the
premises, after the conclusion has been found for us. We know, now, that
he was mistaken: but we have not discovered his mistake for ourselves,
and have no right to plume ourselves on other men's discoveries. Had we
lived in Amyas's days, we should have belonged either to the many wise
men who believed as he did, or to the many foolish men, who not only
sneered at the story of Manoa, but at a hundred other stories, which we
now know to be true. Columbus was laughed at: but he found a new world,
nevertheless. Cortez was laughed at: but he found Mexico. Pizarro: but
he found Peru. I ask any fair reader of those two charming books, Mr.
Prescott's Conquest of Mexico and his Conquest of Peru, whether the true
wonders in them described do not outdo all the false wonders of Manoa.

But what reason was there to think them false? One quarter, perhaps, of
America had been explored, and yet in that quarter two empires had been
already found, in a state of mechanical, military, and agricultural
civilization superior, in many things, to any nation of Europe. Was
it not most rational to suppose that in the remaining three-quarters
similar empires existed? If a second Mexico had been discovered in the
mountains of Parima, and a second Peru in those of Brazil, what right
would any man have had to wonder? As for the gold legends, nothing was
told of Manoa which had not been seen in Peru and Mexico by the bodily
eyes of men then living. Why should not the rocks of Guiana have been
as full of the precious metals (we do not know yet that they are not) as
the rocks of Peru and Mexico were known to be? Even the details of the
story, its standing on a lake, for instance, bore a probability with
them. Mexico actually stood in the centre of a lake--why should not
Manoa? The Peruvian worship centred round a sacred l