"And all about, strung on their canals, are the bulwarked islets with
their enigmatic walls peering through the dense growths of
mangroves--dead, deserted for incalculable ages; shunned by those who
live near.

"You as a botanist are familiar with the evidence that a vast shadowy
continent existed in the Pacific--a continent that was not rent
asunder by volcanic forces as was that legendary one of Atlantis in
the Eastern Ocean.[1] My work in Java, in Papua, and in the Ladrones
had set my mind upon this Pacific lost land. Just as the Azores are
believed to be the last high peaks of Atlantis, so hints came to me
steadily that Ponape and Lele and their basalt bulwarked islets were
the last points of the slowly sunken western land clinging still to
the sunlight, and had been the last refuge and sacred places of the
rulers of that race which had lost their immemorial home under the
rising waters of the Pacific.

"I believed that under these ruins I might find the evidence
that I sought.

"My--my wife and I had talked before we were married of making this
our great work. After the honeymoon we prepared for the expedition.
Stanton was as enthusiastic as ourselves. We sailed, as you know, last
May for fulfilment of my dreams.

"At Ponape we selected, not without difficulty, workmen to help
us--diggers. I had to make extraordinary inducements before I could
get together my force. Their beliefs are gloomy, these Ponapeans. They
people their swamps, their forests, their mountains, and shores, with
malignant spirits--ani they call them. And they are afraid--bitterly
afraid of the isles of ruins and what they think the ruins hide. I do
not wonder--now!

"When they were told where they were to go, and how long we expected
to stay, they murmured. Those who, at last, were tempted made what I
thought then merely a superstitious proviso that they were to be
allowed to go away on the three nights of the full moon. Would to God
we had heeded them and gone too!"

"We passed into Metalanim harbour. Off to our left--a mile away arose
a massive quadrangle. Its walls were all of forty feet high and
hundreds of feet on each side. As we drew by, our natives grew very
silent; watched it furtively, fearfully. I knew it for the ruins that
are called Nan-Tauach, the 'place of frowning walls.' And at the
silence of my men I recalled what Christian had written of this place;
of how he had come upon its 'ancient platforms and tetragonal
enc