etray their whereabouts. Their
fires are lit at night in hollows or places well surrounded with
thickets, and, that the flame may not be seen, they will build screens
of fir boughs or fern. When they have obtained a good supply of hot wood
coals, no more sticks are thrown on, but these are covered with turf,
and thus kept in long enough for their purposes. Much of their meat they
devour raw, and thus do not need a fire so frequently as others.

CHAPTER IV

THE INVADERS

Those who live by agriculture or in towns, and are descended from the
remnant of the ancients, are divided, as I have previously said, into
numerous provinces, kingdoms, and republics. In the middle part of the
country the cities are almost all upon the shores of the Lake, or within
a short distance of the water, and there is therefore more traffic and
communication between them by means of vessels than is the case with
inland towns, whose trade must be carried on by caravans and waggons.
These not only move slowly, but are subject to be interrupted by the
Romany and by the banditti, or persons who, for moral or political
crimes, have been banished from their homes.

It is in the cities that cluster around the great central lake that all
the life and civilization of our day are found; but there also begin
those wars and social convulsions which cause so much suffering. When
was the Peninsula at peace? and when was there not some mischief and
change brewing in the republics? When was there not a danger from the
northern mainland?

Until recent years there was little knowledge of, and scarcely any
direct commerce or intercourse between, the central part and the
districts either of the extreme west or the north, and it is only now
that the north and east are becoming open to us; for at the back of the
narrow circle or cultivated land, the belt about the Lake, there extend
immense forests in every direction, through which, till very lately, no
practicable way had been cut. Even in the more civilized central part it
is not to this day easy to travel, for at the barriers, as you approach
the territories of every prince, they demand your business and your
papers; nor even if you establish the fact that you are innocent of
designs against the State, shall you hardly enter without satisfying the
greed of the officials.

A fine is thus exacted at the gate of every province and kingdom, and
again at the gateways of the towns. The difference of the co