yet discovered, and Shalah, to whom our songs were nothing, now lent an
ear.

"The first Virginians," said Grey, "thought that over the hills lay the
western ocean and the road to Cathay. I do not know, but I am confident
that but a little way west we should come to water. A great river or
else the ocean."

Ringan differed. He held that the land of America was very wide in
those parts, as wide as south of the isthmus where no man had yet
crossed it. Then he told us of a sea-captain who had travelled inland
in Mexico for five weeks and come to a land where gold was as common as
chuckiestones, and a great people dwelt who worshipped a god who lived
in a mountain. And he spoke of the holy city of Manoa, which Sir Walter
Raleigh sought, and which many had seen from far hill-tops. Likewise of
the wonderful kings who once dwelt in Peru, and the little isle in the
Pacific where all the birds were nightingales and the Tree of Life
flourished; and the mountain north of the Main which was all one
emerald. "I think," he said, "that, though no man has ever had the
fruition of these marvels, they are likely to be more true than false.
I hold that God has kept this land of America to the last to be the
loadstone of adventurers, and that there are greater wonders to be seen
than any that man has imagined. The pity is that I have spent my best
years scratching like a hen at its doorstep instead of entering. I have
a notion some day to travel straight west to the sunset. I think I
should find death, but I might see some queer things first."

Then Shalah spoke:--

"There was once a man of my own people who, when he came to man's