was of vast extent; grim, forbidding mountains blocked his way,
torrents tumbling from rocky fastnesses impeded his progress, and
at every turn he was forced to match wits and muscles with the
great carnivora that he might procure sustenance.

Time and again Tarzan and Numa stalked the same quarry and now one,
now the other bore off the prize. Seldom however did the ape-man
go hungry for the country was rich in game animals and birds and
fish, in fruit and the countless other forms of vegetable life upon
which the jungle-bred man may subsist.

Tarzan often wondered why in so rich a country he found no evidences
of man and had at last come to the conclusion that the parched,
thorn-covered steppe and the hideous morasses had formed a sufficient
barrier to protect this country effectively from the inroads of
mankind.

After days of searching he had succeeded finally in discovering a
pass through the mountains and, coming down upon the opposite side,
had found himself in a country practically identical with that which
he had left. The hunting was good and at a water hole in the mouth
of a canon where it debouched upon a tree-covered plain Bara, the
deer, fell an easy victim to the ape-man's cunning.

It was just at dusk. The voices of great four-footed hunters rose
now and again from various directions, and as the canon afforded
among its trees no comfortable retreat the ape-man shouldered the
carcass of the deer and started downward onto the plain. At its
opposite side rose lofty trees--a great forest which suggested to
his practiced eye a mighty jungle. Toward this the ape-man bent