ion of high
civilisation and refinement.

From his knapsack Earle produced a folded map of the northern portion of
South America which he opened and spread out on a rock. It was the most
modern and up-to-date map that he had been able to procure, and it was
drawn to a scale large enough to show not only every town of any
importance but also innumerable villages, some of them so small that, as
the party had themselves proved, they contained less than a hundred
inhabitants. Yet on the part of the map upon which Earle now placed his
finger, and for hundreds of miles in every direction therefrom, there
was no indication of town or village, and only a mere suggestion of the
mountain range through which they had lately been travelling, while even
the courses of rivers were merely indicated by dotted lines; in short,
the party were now, and had been for several weeks, in a region which
had not been explored. But by means of astronomical observations made
and worked out by Dick, the track of the party had each day been plotted
upon the map, and such details as the forests they had passed through,
the rivers they had crossed, the Indian villages they had met with, the
great swamp, and the mountain ranges, had all been carefully plotted.

"Now," remarked Earle, pointing to a pencil mark on the map, "that is
where we were at noon to-day, and we are somewhere about here now.
There is no indication of a town or village of any sort anywhere near,
yet just about there"--laying his finger on another point of the
map--"stands yonder city on the shore of a lake, in a great basin
surrounded on all sides by mountains, of the existence of which this map
affords no indication. What do I deduce from that? you will ask. I
will tell you, Dick. I deduce from it that yonder city is the one
which, though our friend Jiravai says it is named Ulua, has been spoken
of ever since the Spanish conquest, and diligently sought, as the city
of Manoa; and to us has fallen the honour and glory of having actually
found it! Just think of the wonder of it, Dick. For over three and a
half centuries the legend of the existence of that city has persisted,
yet there is no absolutely authentic account of it having ever been
reached, although hundreds, possibly thousands--if one could but know
the whole truth--have most diligently and painfully sought it. And at
last its discovery falls to the lot of two very undistinguished people,
an Englishman and an Amer