e third arises from a tradition
that the people were originally yellow skinned, but grew white
after living for many generations upon these high lands. Zu-Vendis
is a country about the size of France, is, roughly speaking,
oval in shape; and on every side cut off from the surrounding
territory by illimitable forests of impenetrable thorn, beyond
which are said to be hundreds of miles of morasses, deserts,
and great mountains. It is, in short, a huge, high tableland
rising up in the centre of the dark continent, much as in southern
Africa flat-topped mountains rise from the level of the surrounding
veldt. Milosis itself lies, according to my aneroid, at a level
of about nine thousand feet above the sea, but most of the land
is even higher, the greatest elevation of the open country being,
I believe, about eleven thousand feet. As a consequence the
climate is, comparatively speaking, a cold one, being very similar
to that of southern England, only brighter and not so rainy.
The land is, however, exceedingly fertile, and grows all cereals
and temperate fruits and timber to perfection; and in the lower-lying
parts even produces a hardy variety of sugar-cane. Coal is found
in great abundance, and in many places crops out from the surface;
and so is pure marble, both black and white. The same may be
said of almost every metal except silver, which is scarce, and
only to be obtained from a range of mountains in the north.

Zu-Vendis comprises in her boundaries a great variety of scenery,
including two ranges of snow-clad mountains, one on the western
boundary beyond the impenetrable belt of thorn forest, and the
other piercing the country from north to south, and passing at
a distance of about eighty miles from Milosis, from which town
its higher peaks are distinctly visible. This range forms the
chief watershed of the land. There are also three large lakes
-- the biggest, namely that whereon we emerged, and which is
named Milosis after the city, covering some two hundred square
miles of country -- and numerous small ones, some of them salt.

The population of this favoured land is, comparatively speaking,
dense, numbering at a rough estimate from ten to twelve millions.
It is almost purely agricultural in its habits, and divided
into great classes as in civilized countries. There is a territorial
nobility, a considerable middle class, formed principally of
merchants, officers of the army, etc.; but the great bulk o