arper lesson."

After that no further attempt at molestation was ventured upon, the
inhabitants simply congregating in close proximity to the doors of their
huts to see the ship go past, watching her stately progress in silent,
awestruck wonder, and obviously holding themselves ready for an instant
dive beneath the fancied shelter of their thatched roofs in the event of
any hostile demonstration on the part of the Mysterious Visitant.

At about half-past five in the evening the hilly character of the
country gave place to that of a wide-stretching level plain, thickly
overgrown with long rank grass, with occasional isolated clumps of bush,
and here and there a tall feathery palm, or a grove of wild plantains or
bamboo. The faint grey glimmer of the sea appeared on the utmost verge
of the distant horizon, and certain huge shapeless irregularities in the
extreme distance gradually revealed themselves as the colossal remains
of what must at one time have been a city of extraordinary extent and
magnificence. The ship was brought to earth and secured exactly at six
o'clock, at a distance of some eight or nine miles from the sea, and the
travellers then found themselves surrounded on all sides by gigantic
ruined walls, arches, columns, erect and overturned, huge fragments of
pediments, shattered entablatures, ruined capitals, splintered
pedestals, and crumbling mutilated statues of men and animals, all of
colossal proportions, the buildings being of a massive but ornate and
imposing style of architecture, quite unknown to civilisation. The ship
had found a resting-place as nearly as possible in the centre of the
ruins, which extended all round her for a distance of nearly three
miles, the eastern half being all aglow with the golden radiance of the
sunset, whilst the western half loomed up black, imposing, and solemnly
mysterious against the clear orange of the evening sky.

"Well," said the professor, as the party slowly paced the deck, watching
in almost silent rapture the swiftly changing glories of the dying day,
the rapid but exquisite gradations of tint on the mouldering ruins which
accompanied the fading light, and the almost instantaneous appearance of
the stars in the darkening heavens--"well, I am equally surprised and
delighted at the result of our resolve to come hither. Here we find
ourselves in the very heart of savagedom surrounded by the vast remains
of a remote but civilised and evidently highly cultivat