amine the contents."

He helped himself to a cigar and leaned back with a fiercely critical
pair of eyes, taking note of the effect which this document would
produce.

I had opened the volume with some expectation of a revelation, though
of what nature I could not imagine. The first page was disappointing,
however, as it contained nothing but the picture of a very fat man in a
pea-jacket, with the legend, "Jimmy Colver on the Mail-boat," written
beneath it. There followed several pages which were filled with small
sketches of Indians and their ways. Then came a picture of a cheerful
and corpulent ecclesiastic in a shovel hat, sitting opposite a very
thin European, and the inscription: "Lunch with Fra Cristofero at
Rosario." Studies of women and babies accounted for several more
pages, and then there was an unbroken series of animal drawings with
such explanations as "Manatee upon Sandbank," "Turtles and Their Eggs,"
"Black Ajouti under a Miriti Palm"--the matter disclosing some sort of
pig-like animal; and finally came a double page of studies of
long-snouted and very unpleasant saurians. I could make nothing of it,
and said so to the Professor.

"Surely these are only crocodiles?"

"Alligators! Alligators! There is hardly such a thing as a true
crocodile in South America. The distinction between them----"

"I meant that I could see nothing unusual--nothing to justify what you
have said."

He smiled serenely.

"Try the next page," said he.

I was still unable to sympathize. It was a full-page sketch of a
landscape roughly tinted in color--the kind of painting which an
open-air artist takes as a guide to a future more elaborate effort.
There was a pale-green foreground of feathery vegetation, which sloped
upwards and ended in a line of cliffs dark red in color, and curiously
ribbed like some basaltic formations which I have seen. They extended
in an unbroken wall right across the background. At one point was an
isolated pyramidal rock, crowned by a great tree, which appeared to be
separated by a cleft from the main crag. Behind it all, a blue
tropical sky. A thin green line of vegetation fringed the summit of
the ruddy cliff.

"Well?" he asked.

"It is no doubt a curious formation," said I "but I am not geologist
enough to say that it is wonderful."

"Wonderful!" he repeated. "It is unique. It is incredible. No one on
earth has ever dreamed of such a possibility. Now the next."

I turne