the lake on the north, and there turned upon our steps and
come slowly back again to where we started from, and having made a like
double journey of inspection to and from the edge of the lake to the
south, we came at last to our first point of departure, and rested
before the statue of Chac-Mool, disconsolate.

One discovery we had made in the course of our explorations which
enabled us to understand how the fate that had overtaken the drowned
city had fallen upon it. Close by the northern border of the valley we
saw, high up above us, a vast rift more than a thousand feet wide in the
face of the cliff; and below this the ground was torn into a deep wild
channel, and everywhere huge fragments of rock were scattered over the
ground. Here it was, then, that the water had poured in--bursting forth
from a lake above--by which the city at one stroke had been overwhelmed.
Some little notice, by the mighty roaring that must have accompanied so
great a crash of rocks and so vast a rush of water, the dwellers in the
city must have had; and the gleam of the pouring waters would have shown
them the nature of the ruin that was upon them. There would have been
time, before the water was waist-deep in the city streets, for them to
make their way to the high mound on which their temple stood; and in the
appalling horror of it all they might have clamored to their priests
that a victim should be sacrificed to stay this terrible outburst of
anger on the part of their gods. But it was more than likely that before
the sacrifice could be completed they all--people, priests, and he who
was to be sacrificed--perished together beneath the flood.

"Why," said Young, "th' Mill River disaster wasn't anything to it, an'
that was pretty bad. I was runnin' th' way-freight on th' Old Colony
road when that happened, an' I took a day off an' went up an' had a look
at it. But this just lays that little horror out cold. It's as big as
lettin' loose on Boston the whole of Massachusetts Bay."

That we should be prisoners in a place where death had wrought so
swiftly such tremendous havoc was quite enough to fill our souls with a
brooding melancholy. But in addition to the sombre thoughts which thus
were forced upon us, bred of sorrow for the thousands who had here
untimely perished, the gloomy dread of a more practical sort assailed us
that we also in a little while would join the silent company of the
thousands who had died here in a long past time. An