Brace obeyed the natural impulse to duck down out of the reptile's
reach, and his next idea was to lower himself the ten feet or so to the
bottom; but he shrank from doing this, for it seemed ignominious to
retreat, so he raised his head sharply again till his eyes were about
level with the terrace platform, and there, a dozen feet away, was the
tail part of the snake, disappearing in a fissure of the stone.
The next minute he was standing in front of one of the openings they had
seen from the river, and his companions were climbing to his side.
Here, upon examination, they found room after room with doorway and
window all cut out of the soft limestone, and Sir Humphrey and Briscoe
were not long in giving it as their opinion that these single rooms, all
separate and with their doorways opening upon the terrace, were really
the modest little houses of the old dwellers in this hivelike
arrangement. There they were, side by side, all opening upon the long
terrace, and, after examining many, they found relics of the old
inhabitants in the shape of clay-baked rough pots or their broken
sherds; and in several, roughly-formed querns or mill-stones, made, not
of the rock in which the houses were cut, but of a hard grit that would
act better upon the grain they were used to grind.
These remains, though, were very scarce, and scarcely anything else was
found, though search was made in the expectation of finding skeletons;
but not so much as a skull was discovered in either of the stone rooms
they reached: nothing to show how the ancient inhabitants came to an
end. Apparently it was by no sudden catastrophe, and probably only by
dying slowly away.
"It might have been a couple of thousand years ago for aught we can
tell," said Sir Humphrey.
"Yes," said Brace; "but we have done nothing yet. There are hundreds
more of these cells, floor above floor, right to the top."
"Well, let's try another floor or terrace, if we can," said Sir
Humphrey. "Has anyone discovered a way up?"
"Yes, sir there's a hole yonder," said one of the men, "and it isn't
stopped up."
"Well, let's try it," said Sir Humphrey.
"Hadn't we better get to the end here, and see what that better part is
like?" said Briscoe. "It seems to me that we shall find behind those
carved stones the best part of the place."
"Very well," said Sir Humphrey: "let's try that first; but we have a
month's work before us to explore all this. Now then."
Briscoe eagerly took the lead and went on along the terrace, with the
little metallic-looking lizards darting away in the sunshine amidst the
fallen stones; and cell after cell was passed till the end of their
journey was reached in the shape of a blank mass of rock, beyond which
they felt certain that the temple or palace remains must be. But there
was no means of passing farther, and nothing remained but to ascend to
the next terrace.
This was done, with similar experiences, and another step was gained,
from which, after looking down to where the boats were moored, they
again climbed higher, entering very few of the cells, but directing
their efforts towards reaching the central portion.
But failure attended every effort, and, hot and wearied out by what was
growing a monotonous task, Brace and the American readily acquiesced in
Sir Humphrey's proposal that they should now descend and join their
companions in the midday meal, and afterwards take the smaller boat, row
to the front of the temple, and try for away up from the river.
The task of descending and going back took considerably longer than they
anticipated, but at last they reached the lower terrace, where the rest
were awaiting their return, and over the meal they related their
experiences.
These were precisely similar to those of a couple of the men who had
explored a little on their own account in the other direction; but they
had been compelled to keep to the terrace where the fires had been lit.
"The place must have been built by the same kind of people who cut their
rock houses in some of the canons in Mexico," said Briscoe; "only those
are a degenerate set, and their cells or dwellings are very rough and
primitive. These people must have been greatly in advance. There: I
want to get to work again. There must be a way into that temple place
from the front."
"Well, let's try," said the captain. "It's a queer place if there is no
way in."
The afternoon was getting on when the exploring party entered the
smaller boat and had it rowed out into the stream a short distance from
the centre of the rock city, just facing the spot where the terraces
were grotesquely carved; and as they minutely examined the partly
natural, partly sculptured place, they were more than ever impressed by
the excellence of the workmanship.
It must have been the work of many, many years, perhaps of generations,
of the people who had lavished so much skilful toil on that centre,
which was about a couple of hundred feet in width, and rose up terrace
above terrace six or seven hundred feet before the plain uncarved rock
was reached, in whose clefts tree, shrub, and creeper grew abundantly
for a similar distance, while to right and left the cell-like windows
right up to the top of the canon finished off as before intimated,
something like the crenellations on the top of a Norman castle.
"It must have been magnificent at one time," said Sir Humphrey. "I wish
I were clever with my pencil, so as to be able to reproduce all this on
paper. These ornamentations are grotesque and horrible, but wonderfully
carved, and the variety of the figures is marvellous."
"Hadn't we better row close in?" said Briscoe, who seemed impatient, and
the men took to their oars till the strong rock wall was reached and the
boat drawn along by one of the men with a boat-hook from end to end and
back, without a sign of any way up being found.
There they were in the deep water, which glided along at the foot of a
blank, carefully smoothed-away wall of rock, perfectly perpendicular,
and, save where it was dotted here and there with mossy growth, offering
not the slightest foot- or hand-hold.
"Why, it must be fully fifty feet high to that carved coping-like
projection," said Brace.
"Yes, about that," said Briscoe, with a sigh of disappointment. "Here,
I'd give a hundred dollars for the loan of a ladder that we could plant
down here in the water and would reach to the top."
"It would take a long one," said Brace, laughing. "I wonder how deep it
is."
"Ah, let's try," said Briscoe. "Here, hand one of those fishing-lines
and a lead out of the locker, Lynton."
This was well within the second mate's province, and the next minute he
had the heaviest lead at the end of a line, dropped it over the side,
and let it run down as fast as he could unwind.
"I say: it's deep," he said, as the line ran over the boat's gunwale;
and he said so again and again, till the winder was empty and the lead
not yet at the bottom.
"How long is that line?" said Brace, in astonishment.
"One hundred yards, gentlemen," said Lynton loudly. "Shall I have it
wound up again?"
"Yes," said Sir Humphrey. "We must try and find bottom some other time.
The river must be of a terrific depth."
"That's so," said Briscoe. "You see, we're in a tremendous canon, and
the bottom is filled up by this river, which seems as if it would hold
any amount of flood-water. I'll be bound to say it's full of fish, and
that accounts for the Indians coming here with their nets and lines."
"What's to be done now?" said Brace.
"We must try the other end of the place, and see if we can't get into
the temple from there," said Briscoe, who had taken out his knife to
begin scraping the slime and moss from the face of the rocky wall till
he had made a clean patch, which he examined with a pocket magnifier.
"There's time to do a bit more to-day," said Lynton, who was eager to go
on exploring, and in obedience to an order the men rowed gently on past
the front of the temple, till about a quarter of a mile farther on a
similar landing to that which they had first approached was reached, and
the party eagerly ascended the rough steps to a flat wharf or terrace
like the other where the smouldering fires were found, ascended by
another L-shaped passage to the next terrace, to find more and more
rooms or cells, and then hurried on back till they came face to face
with the blank rock which formed the other end of the temple.
"This must do for to-day," said Sir Humphrey decisively. "Turn back
now. To-morrow, if all's well, we will ascend right to the top."
"And look along there for the way into this place," said Brace; "for way
in there must be. Lead on, Mr Lynton; we'll follow."
The second mate started off with the men, and as soon as their backs
were turned Briscoe stooped quickly and picked up one of the pieces of
stone which had crumbled down from somewhere up the face of the cliff.
"What have you got there?" said Brace: "a piece of ancient carving?"
"Look," said the American, in a low tone, and he handed the piece to Sir
Humphrey, holding the side that had been downward as it lay on the
stone-encumbered terrace, upward where the fracture looked comparatively
new.
"Gold!" exclaimed Sir Humphrey, as he saw that the stone was webbed with
glistening thready veins.
"Ah! I didn't say the word," said Briscoe, laughing, as he glanced
forward at the backs of Lynton and the men. "But that's what it is. I
knew it. I'm not going to talk and make a fuss; but that bit you've got
hold of would crush and give as much as a couple of pounds of gold a
ton."
"You amaze me," said Sir Humphrey.
"It amazes P Franklyn Briscoe," said their companion. "Shall I put this
in my pocket, or throw it away?"
"Keep it," said Sir Humphrey, "and we'll show it to the captain. I
don't see why we should not take back as much of the richest ore as the
boats will carry. Let's see what he'll say."
"Yes; let's do so," said Briscoe; "but it seems queer, doesn't it, that
there should have been people living who could make a town like this,
and then for hundreds or thousands of years poor simple Indians going on
shooting and fishing while all this wealth was waiting in the rocks if
they had known what it was worth?"
"They could not have been so advanced a people as the Mexicans and
Peruvians," said Brace.
"Seems not," said Briscoe drily, as he thrust the piece of ore in his
pocket and followed the men to where they could descend to the boats.
That evening, as the party sat together in front of one of the lower
cells, looking at the beauties of the reflections from the river on the
far side of the canon opposite, Brace waited till the attention of the
men, who were at a little distance from them, was quite averted, and
said softly:
"Show the captain the piece of curious rock you picked up to-day,
Briscoe."
"Eh?" said the captain: "bit of curious rock! I picked up a bit too."
He fumbled with his hand in his pocket and drew out something before
taking that which the American held out.
"Humph, yes," he said: "mine's just the same. Bit which has come down
from the face of the cliff somewhere. I say, there's no mistake about
it, Squire Briscoe: this is rich in gold."
"Ah, would you!" cried the American sharply; "who said we weren't to
mention that?"
"I said so," replied the captain drily. "Don't talk so loud. But this
sets a man thinking, eh, Sir Humphrey and Mr Brace: and, you see, gold
is gold, after all."