Roy Norton

“ We decided the island must originally have been a barren mass of rock cut and shaped and terraced to suit its occupants’ tastes, and there were evidences that in its past days of glory artificial gardens had been cultivated with an extraordinary amount of labor and care. But for these we had at that moment scant thought, for the great road now led upward to the peak we had seen from the mainland, the peak that proved to be partly artificial and partly natural and which was crowned by the greatest structure of all, the one that we afterward referred to as the Great Temple. ”

“ Colossal stone statues of dead emperors, priests, rulers, and kings frowned upon us; scores of them sitting in state as we walked through toward the center of this Valhalla. And there, in the very center of all, in a spacious place where lesser gods were represented, we found an effigy, idol, or presentation, as one may decide, of what was probably Icopan, supreme god of the Maya race—perhaps of the Aztecs, of the Quichuas, and so on down to those Incas of the southern continent for whom, alike, this may have been the sacred shrine, the mecca of their faith! ”

“ Let’s build it and get across there. How—how does one build a raft? I never saw one.”
He learned how, all right, in that forenoon when, under the sage advice of Ixtual, we cut logs of a lightness that would float, and sweated and dragged and hauled them out of that poisonous wilderness where heat, gnats, thorns, vines, and an occasional snake made the job anything but a holiday. But no one worked harder than the doctor, after all, so complaints are unwarranted. ”

“ In one room we found pathetic relics of some long-dead feminine industry—a few bronze knitting and crocheting needles not unlike those used by the mothers of our time, and in another on a ledge some tiny pots turned from marbles of different hues, proving that even in those far-off days femininity delighted in artificial adornment. ”

“ They are merely tenements to let,” Wardy rejoined; but I think I caught an inflection in his voice which indicated that he, too, had not entirely missed that peculiar feeling of superstition. Moreover, I noted that all of us seemed under some restraint of silence, that conversation lagged; that not even the sometimes voluble doctor had much to say, and that I for one was glad when we turned in. ”

“ Here and there through jungle openings could be seen ruins of what had been stately homes, and nothing save his intense desire to reach the shores of the lake restrained the doctor from halting to investigate these.
“If ever we turn him loose in here,” Wardy muttered to me with a grin, “we’ll never catch him again without a lot of work; so if he says anything we must do all we can to keep him moving. ”

“ The great avenue led onward to spaces where isolated buildings lifted themselves somberly from smooth rocks so destitute of soil and moisture that all the original vegetation with which it may have been clothed had died for want of nourishment. ”

“ At the upper end of this great space, and directly opposite us, where in a horseshoe would be found the Central caulk, the structure assumed greater importance not unlike the Pantheon save that we could see through its center where a great arch opened toward whatever lay behind.
“There’s glyphs enough on those columns, Doctor Morgano, to keep you busy for a year,” said Wardy, not without a slight tinge of irony. “And just take a look at the sculpture on the edge of that roof! Battles, priests, vestal virgins, plain hoi-polloi and proletariat ”