cially if it
is situated near the equator. Places like Papua, the Caroline Islands,
parts of Borneo, and the Never Never country in inland Australia seem
to possess a fist that attempts to push you off when you endeavour to
bring the atmosphere of civilization into a silence that has been
unbroken for centuries.

Holman went back to the sisters, and we moved slowly forward. The basalt
rocks came closer, showing plainly through the breaks in the lianas that
grew less thickly on the higher slopes. The creepers fell away slowly,
as if they had done the work they were required to do, and before we
realized it we were walking between two natural walls of rock about
eighteen feet high, above which the sky looked like a strip of blue
paper that rested upon the marvellously even tops of the barriers.

The Professor was gurgling joyfully as we tramped through that miniature
canon. He was bumping up against new wonders at every footstep, and he
stumbled continuously as he endeavoured to jot down his impressions in
the fat notebook. The Professor felt nothing mysterious about the place.
He had the bullet-proof skin of your cold analyst who yearns eternally
for facts.

"Wonderful geological formation!" he chattered. "My friend Professor
Hanlaw of Oakland would enjoy a glimpse of this spot. A geologist could
spend a lifetime here."

Leith's sallow face was disturbed by a grin as he listened to the old
science-crazed ancient disbursing information regarding the formation of
the rock. It troubled me little at that moment whether feldspar and
augite were the two largest components, and I knew that Holman and the
two girls were not interested. We knew that the place was ugly and
sinister, but feldspar and augite didn't give it that look.

The height of the walls increased as we advanced. We were in a narrow
roadway scarcely more than twelve feet across, while on each side rose
the nearly perpendicular rocks that blocked our view of the country
immediately beyond. The ground beneath our feet was covered with small
bits of lava from the crevices of which the moist flabby leaves of the
nupu plant stuck up like fat green fingers.

As we stared ahead we noted that the road seemed to dip suddenly as if
the highest point of the island was reached at that spot, and the
prospects of a walk upon a down grade were cheering after the stiff
climbs. As we neared the place, Soma, who was walking about ten paces in
front of the carriers, slacken