all-powerful domination without question. On the
other hand, if he keeps them under his iron heel by enforcing the
severest discipline, certain advantages, some compensation,
must accrue from the servitude to which they bow. What can this
compensation be?

Having turned that part of the bank under which the tunnel passes, I
find myself on the opposite side of the lagoon, where are situated the
storerooms containing the merchandise brought by the _Ebba_ on each
trip, and which contain a great quantity of bales.

Beyond is the manufactory of electric energy. I gaze in at the windows
as I pass and notice that it contains machines of the latest invention
and highest attained perfection, which take up little space. Not one
steam engine, with its more or less complicated mechanism and need
of fuel, is to be seen in the place. As I had surmised, piles of
extraordinary power supply the current to the lamps in the cavern,
as well as to the dynamos of the tug. No doubt the current is also
utilized for domestic purposes, such as warming the Beehive and
cooking food, I can see that in a neighboring cavity it is applied to
the alembics used to produce fresh water. At any rate the colonists
of Back Cup are not reduced to catching the rain water that falls so
abundantly upon the exterior of the mountain.

A few paces from the electric power house is a large cistern that,
save in the matter of proportions, is the counterpart of those I
visited in Bermuda. In the latter place the cisterns have to supply
the needs of over ten thousand people, this one of a hundred--what?

I am not sure yet what to call them. That their chief had serious
reasons for choosing the bowels of this island for his abiding place
is obvious. But what were those reasons? I can understand monks
shutting themselves behind their monastery walls with the intention of
separating themselves from the world, but these subjects of the Count
d'Artigas have nothing of the monk about them, and would not be
mistaken for such by the most simple-minded of mortals.

I continue my way through the pillars to the extremity of the cavern.
No one has sought to stop me, no one has spoken to me, not a soul
apparently has taken the very slightest notice of me. This portion of
Back Cup is extremely curious, and comparable to the most marvellous
of the grottoes of Kentucky or the Balearics. I need hardly say that
nowhere is the labor of man apparent. All this is the handiwork of
natu