h
forests, and then again upon a raft or boat on which he was driven
alone, for many, many days, drinking a jar of water which he had with
him, and eating some dried flesh and with it a marvellous drug of his
people, some of which remained to him in the leathern bag that has power
to keep the life in a man for weeks, even if he is labouring hard.

At last, he declared, he was picked up by a great ship such as he had
never seen before, though of this ship he recalled little. Indeed he
remembered nothing more until he found himself upon the quay where I
discovered him, and of a sudden his mind seemed to return but he said
he believed that he had come ashore in a boat in which were fishermen,
having been thrown into it by the people on the ship which went on
elsewhere, and that he had walked up the shores of a river. This story
the bruises on his forehead and body seemed to bear out, but it was far
from clear, and by the time I learned it months afterwards of course no
traces of the fishermen or their boat could be found. I asked him the
name of the country from which he came. He answered that it was called
_Tavantinsuyu_. He added that it was a wonderful country in which were
cities and churches and great snow-clad mountains and fertile valleys
and high plains and hot forests through which ran wide rivers.

From all the learned men whom I could meet, especially those who
had travelled far, I made inquiries concerning this country called
Tavantinsuyu, but none of them had so much as heard its name. Indeed,
they declared that my brown man must have come from Africa, and that his
mind being disordered, he had invented this wondrous land which he said
lay far away to the west where the sun sank.

So there I must leave this matter, though for my part I was sure that
Kari was not mad, whatever he might have been in the past. A great
dreamer he was, it is true, who declared that the poison which his
brother had given him had "eaten a hole in his mind" through which he
could see and hear things which others could not. Thus he was able to
read the secret motives of men and women with wonderful clearness, so
much so that sometimes I asked him, laughing, if he could not give me
some of that poison that I might see into the hearts of those with whom
I dealt. Of another thing, too, he was always certain, namely, that he
would return to his country Tavantinsuyu of which he thought day and
night, and that _I should accompany him_. At