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I have learned that this is so, for I have lived here among them for sixty years in

the palace of their king.

"They brought me, as they brought you, directly to the palace. The Arabian chief

was taken elsewhere. I never knew what became of him. Ago XXV was king then. I

have seen many kings since that day. He was a terrible man; but then, they are

all terrible."

What is the matter with them?" asked the girl.

They are a race of maniacs," replied the old woman. "Had you not guessed it?

Among them are excellent craftsmen and good farmers and a certain amount of

law and order, such as it is.

They reverence all birds, but the parrot is their chief deity. There is one who is

held here in the palace in a very beautiful apartment. He is their god of gods. He

is a very old bird. If what Ago told me when I came is true, he must be nearly

three hundred years old by now. Their religious rites are revolting in the extreme,

and I believe that it may be the practice of these rites through ages that has

brought the race to its present condition of imbecility.

"And yet, as I said, they are not without some redeeming qualities. If legend may

be credited, their forebears--a little handful of men and women who came from

somewhere out of the north and became lost in the wilderness of central Africa--

found here only a barren desert valley. To my own knowledge rain seldom, if ever,

falls here, and yet you have seen a great forest and luxuriant vegetation outside

of the city as well as within. This miracle is accomplished by the utilization of

natural springs which their ancestors developed, and upon which they have

improved to such an extent that the entire valley receives an adequate amount of

moisture at all times.

Ago told me that many generations before his time the forest was irrigated by

changing the course of the streams which carried the spring water to the city but

that when the trees had sent their roots down to the natural moisture of the soil

and required no further irrigation, the course of the stream was changed and

other trees were planted. And so the forest grew until today it covers almost the

entire floor of the valley except for the open space where the city stands. I do not

know that this is true. It may be that the forest has always been here, but it is

one of their legends and it is borne out by the fact that there is not sufficient

rainfall here to support vegetation.

They are peculiar people in many respects, not only in their form of worship and

religious rites but also in that they breed lions as other people breed cattle. You

have seen how they use some of these lions but the majority of them they fatten

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Tarzan the Untamed