-a land in a
state of perfect cultivation, where even the forests looked as if they
were cared for; a land that looked like an enormous park, only it was
even more evidently an enormous garden.

"I don't see any cattle," I suggested, but Terry was silent. We were
approaching a village.

I confess that we paid small attention to the clean, well-built roads,
to the attractive architecture, to the ordered beauty of the little
town. We had our glasses out; even Terry, setting his machine for a
spiral glide, clapped the binoculars to his eyes.

They heard our whirring screw. They ran out of the houses--they gathered
in from the fields, swift-running light figures, crowds of them. We
stared and stared until it was almost too late to catch the levers,
sweep off and rise again; and then we held our peace for a long run
upward.

"Gosh!" said Terry, after a while.

"Only women there--and children," Jeff urged excitedly.

"But they look--why, this is a CIVILIZED country!" I protested. "There
must be men."

"Of course there are men," said Terry. "Come on, let's find 'em."

He refused to listen to Jeff's suggestion that we examine the country
further before we risked leaving our machine.

"There's a fine landing place right there where we came over," he
insisted, and it was an excellent one--a wide, flat-topped rock,
overlooking the lake, and quite out of sight from the interior.

"They won't find this in a hurry," he asserted, as we scrambled with the
utmost difficulty down to safer footing. "Come on, boys--there were some
good lookers in that bunch."

Of course it was unwise of us.

It was quite easy to see afterward that our best plan was to have
studied the country more fully before we left our swooping airship and
trusted ourselves to mere foot service. But we were three young men. We
had been talking about this country for over a year, hardly believing
that there was such a place, and now--we were in it.

It looked safe and civilized enough, and among those upturned, crowding
faces, though some were terrified enough, there was great beauty--on
that we all agreed.

"Come on!" cried Terry, pushing forward. "Oh, come on! Here goes for
Herland!"

CHAPTER 2. Rash Advances

Not more than ten or fifteen miles we judged it from our landing rock to
that last village. For all our eagerness we thought it wise to keep to
the woods and go carefully.

Even Terry's ardor was held in check by his firm conviction