t as cork.

As in this first house that we examined, so was it in all of them. All,
at the first glance, seemed to have been but a moment before deserted;
but all had signs about them which showed that they had been abandoned
for a very long time. In one we found a loom--in construction very like
that which the Navajo Indians use at the present day--on which hung,
partly completed, a sheer filament that once had been some sort of heavy
woollen cloth. In another, a cotton garment was lying carelessly upon a
shelf, as though but a moment before cast aside; yet, as I tried to pick
it up, it crumbled between my fingers into a fine powder.

Of humanity, the only sign that we found anywhere about this grim and
desert place was the dried, shrivelled remnant of a woman that we came
upon in an upper room of one of the larger houses farther on. She was
lying upon a bed of mats, partly turned upon her side, and one arm was
stretched out towards an earthen cup that stood just beyond her reach
upon the floor. There was strong pathos in the action of the figure, for
it told of the keen thirst of fever--of weakness so extreme that the
inch or two between the hand and the cup was a gulf impassable--of a
moaning struggle after the water so longed for--and then, at last, of
death in that utter and desolate loneliness. And what added to the
ghastliness of it all was that a thin ray of sunlight, coming through a
crevice in the wall, struck upon the woman's teeth--whence the lips had
dried away--and by its gleaming there made on her face a smile.

As we came close to the lake, we perceived, as Rayburn already had
discerned by the aid of the glass, that houses, partially submerged,
actually rose from the water, and that houses of which only the roofs
were visible were farther on. That this whole valley was the crater of
an extinct volcano was sufficiently evident; and we could only surmise
that in later times some fresh cataclysm of nature had poured suddenly
into it a vast body of water, and so had submerged the city that had
been builded here. Whatever had brought about the catastrophe, it
evidently had come with a most appalling suddenness. Everywhere the
condition of the houses showed how hastily they had been abandoned; and
the wild hurry of flight was shown still more clearly in the case of the
woman--whose surroundings gave evidence that she had been a person of
consequence--deserted in her age or infirmity and left lonely to die.