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Buckingham only sneered at her explanation, and a moment later gave the

command that started us all off toward the west. We marched for a matter of an

hour or so, coming at last to a collection of rude huts, fashioned from branches of

trees covered with skins and grasses and sometimes plastered with mud. All

about the camp they had erected a wall of saplings pointed at the tops and fire

hardened.

This palisade was a protection against both man and beasts, and within it dwelt

upward of two thousand persons, the shelters being built very close together, and

sometimes partially underground, like deep trenches, with the poles and hides

above merely as protection from the sun and rain.

The older part of the camp consisted almost wholly of trenches, as though this

had been the original form of dwellings which was slowly giving way to the drier

and airier surface domiciles. In these trench habitations I saw a survival of the

military trenches which formed so famous a part of the operation of the warring

nations during the twentieth century.

The women wore a single light deerskin about their hips, for it was summer, and

quite warm. The men, too, were clothed in a single garment, usually the pelt of

some beast of prey. The hair of both men and women was confined by a rawhide

thong passing about the forehead and tied behind. In this leathern band were

stuck feathers, flowers, or the tails of small mammals. All wore necklaces of the

teeth or claws of wild beasts, and there were numerous metal wristlets and

anklets among them.

They wore, in fact, every indication of a most primitive people--a race which had

not yet risen to the heights of agriculture or even the possession of domestic

animals. They were hunters--the lowest plane in the evolution of the human race

of which science takes cognizance.

And yet as I looked at their well shaped heads, their handsome features, and

their intelligent eyes, it was difficult to believe that I was not among my own. It

was only when I took into consideration their mode of living, their scant apparel,

the lack of every least luxury among them, that I was forced to admit that they

were, in truth, but ignorant savages.

Buckingham had relieved me of my weapons, though he had not the slightest

idea of their purpose or uses, and when we reached the camp he exhibited both

me and my arms with every indication of pride in this great capture.

The inhabitants flocked around me, examining my clothing, and exclaiming in

wonderment at each new discovery of button, buckle, pocket, and flap. It seemed

The Lost Continent