f the city Miela
spoke in her soft native tongue to Anina. The girl smiled at me in
parting, and, unwinding the veil from about her breast, flew into the air.

We stood watching her as she winged her way onward toward the sleeping
city. When she had dwindled to a tiny speck I sighed unconsciously and
turned away; and again Miela smiled at me with comprehension.

We started forward, Miela chattering now like a little child. She seemed
eager to tell me all about the new world of hers I was entering, and there
was indeed so much to tell she was often at a loss what to describe first.

She named the cereal which constituted the only crop to which these marsh
lands were suitable. From her description I made out it was similar to
rice, only of a somewhat larger grain. It formed, she said, the staple
article of food of the nation.

As we approached the base of the Great City mountain the ground began
gradually rising. The drainage thus afforded made it constantly drier as
we advanced. It assumed now more the character of a heavy loam.

Still farther on we began passing occasional houses--the outskirts of the
city itself. They were square, single-story, ugly little buildings, built
of reddish stone and clay, flat-roofed, and raised a foot or two off the
ground on stone pilings. They had large rectangular windows, most of them
open, a few with lattice shades. The doorways stood open without sign of a
door; access to the ground was obtained by a narrow board incline.

Interspersed with these stone houses I saw many single-room shacks,
loosely built of narrow boards from the palm trees, and thatched with
straw. In these, Miela explained, lived poorer people, who worked in the
rice fields for the small land owners.

We reached the base of the mountain proper, and I found myself in a broad
street with houses on both sides. This street seemed to run directly to
the summit of the mountain, sloping upward at a sharp angle. We turned
into it and began our climb into the sleeping city. It was laid out
regularly, all its principal streets running from the base of the mountain
upward to its summit, where they converged in a large open space in which
the castle I have already mentioned was situated. The cross-streets formed
concentric rings about the mountain, at intervals of perhaps five hundred
feet down its sides--small circles near the top, lengthening until at the
base the distance around was, I should judge, ten miles or more.