and palm were shooting up among
the stones, breaking and disjointing them. The two gazed long and
silently at these vast mounds, the very memory of whose builders had
passed away.

Awe-struck and surprised, they sat down by the stream, and, without
exchanging a word, drank of the clear water. Their clothes torn, hands
and faces bleeding from the exertions made in forcing their way through
the bush, their skin tanned to a deep mahogany colour, there they stood
at last among the ruined cities of a lost race. By the banks of the
stream the pomegranate, the plantain, and the mango, were growing in
wild luxuriance--trees not known in the land, consequently imported.

Overshadowing the fallen blocks of stone, the date-tree and palmyra
waved their fan-like leaves. Dense masses of powerful creepers crept up
the ruins, rending the solid masonry; and the seeds of the trees
dropping year by year had produced a rapid undergrowth, those which had
once been valuable fruit-trees having degenerated into wild ones. Chaos
had, in a word, re-appeared where once trade and prosperity, order and
regularity reigned.

"Let us gather some of the custard-apples, and climb yonder ruin," said
the missionary, speaking for the first time.

It was no easy task; for the accumulation of fallen masonry, and the
dense growth of the brush, rendered it often necessary for the onward
path to be cleared by the use of the knife. The whole mass appeared at
one time to have been encircled by a wall, now fallen, the entrances to
which could be distinctly traced, and this confirmed the report which,
had been gathered by the missionaries of Santa Lucia Bay.

Slowly the two forced their way towards the vast ruined mound they were
striving to gain, often stumbling and falling among the loose stones and
treacherous creepers.

A crowd of half-fallen passages led away to right and left, terminating
in what appeared to be a court-yard, in which were the remains of
pillars of stone.

"There has once been carved work on these pillars, Hughes," said the
missionary, as they paused, breathless with their exertions, before a
mighty column. "The action of ages has worn it away."

"And what is more singular," replied Hughes, who now seemed as much
interested in the ruins as his comrade, "no mortar of any kind appears
to have been used, the massive stones fitting into one another exactly."

"This temple or palace has stood upon a kind of platform of masonry,"
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