us cities protected by high walls, the vast mounds of
earth moulded into strange figures of extinct animals, uplifted as
altars, and sometimes utilized for the burial of their dead and their
treasure. _Sacre_! I can recall a portion of the story, yet it was a
weird, fascinating tale as she told it slowly, and with all
seriousness, although the black boy stammered so badly in his words I
got only dim pictures here and there."

"But how came they here?" I questioned.

"I was coming to that. It was some trouble with the French in
Bienville's day. Only a few escaped, and they were driven into these
hills; yet 't is said they saved a considerable amount of treasure
which had come to them from their fathers, together with some of the
mummified bodies of their kings. It is forty years since they
discovered this dell, and only the older men have any memory of the
discovery."

"What do they call themselves?"

"'Nalmas' was the word the Queen used, but they are that same people
whom we knew about in New Orleans as 'Natchez'; their old country was
called Tlapalan."

I sat silent, pondering upon his words, but before I thought out
further questioning, a warrior, bearing food, entered the hut. Setting
this down upon the ground before us, he drew back into the gathering
night shadows without uttering a word. That which I had just heard
caused me to gaze upon the fellow--a tall, stalwart savage--with newly
awakened interest, and I could not help observing again how widely the
type differed from those Indian tribes with whom my wandering border
life had rendered me familiar. Not only was this man of fairer,
clearer complexion, but his cheek-bones were not in the least
prominent, his nose was wide at the base and somewhat flattened, while
his forehead sloped sharply backward in such peculiar form as to
warrant the opinion that the deformity arose from a compression of the
frontal bone in infancy. The hair, although worn long and flowing down
the back, was decidedly wavy, and not coarse; the color was a ruddy
brown. The eyes of these Indians were bold, cruel, crafty, yet in many
instances the coloring was so light as to be startling; the average
stature was greater than that of those other Indians that I knew. In
short, they impressed me as being all that was claimed, a distinct
race, with characteristics more nearly allied to the Ethiopian and the
Mongolian than to the surrounding red races. As I figured this out
some