the two Chiefs Uraso and Muro.

Nearly three years previously the boys, George Mayfield and Harry
Crandall, who were members of the crew of a school-ship, the
_Investigator_ sailed from New York, and while on board, met a
professor, who, when the ship was blown up at sea, became their
companion in the life boat in which they sought refuge. Together they
finally were stranded upon an unknown island, less than a hundred miles
from the island which was the scene of the adventures with which we are
now concerned.

On this island they discovered five or six savage tribes, from some of
which they rescued seven of their former boy companions. Here also they
met Mr. Varney, who had escaped from the savages. The Professor
succeeded in reconciling all the warring tribes, and the natives were
now engaged in agriculture, and in various other pursuits, and the boys
had the great pleasure and satisfaction of being able to build their own
vessel and return home. The trip to the Wonderful island, with which
this volume deals, was for a double purpose, as will presently be
shown.

John, as Mr. Varney was familiarly known to them, was not only a well
educated man, but a great adventurer, and had traveled all over the
world in pursuit of scientific knowledge. He was particularly interested
in the history of the men who first went to the western world, and
scattered civilization to the benighted countries.

Like many men of his character, he did not consider the question of
money. He tried to acquire knowledge and information for the love of the
quest, and in order to be of service to his fellow man, so it was purely
by accident that he became a member of a crew that sailed for the
southern seas at the same time that the boys left New York on their
trip.

While his companions undertook the mission solely for the sake of the
money which might be acquired, John engaged thinking it might offer the
means of laying bare many of the early legends and vague historical
accounts with which that region of the South Seas abounds, and he knew
that if any records were in existence, they could be preserved only in
such secure places as caverns, which the Spanish buccaneers invariably
selected as the safest places to conceal their treasures.

While the boys, together with the Professor and John, had found a vast
amount of treasure, as stated in the first six volumes containing the
history of Wonder Island, they found not a single scrap of histori