Whereupon I repeated that I knew little of the Mehrikans save what I
had learned at college, a perfunctory and fleeting knowledge, as they
were a people who interested me but little.

"Let us seat ourselves in the shade," said Nofuhl, "and I will tell
thee of them."

We sat.

"For eleven centuries the cities of this sleeping hemisphere have
decayed in solitude. Their very existence has been forgotten. The
people who built them have long since passed away, and their
civilization is but a shadowy tradition. Historians are astounded that
a nation of an hundred million beings should vanish from the earth
like a mist, and leave so little behind. But to those familiar with
their lives and character surprise is impossible. There was nothing to
leave. The Mehrikans possessed neither literature, art, nor music of
their own. Everything was borrowed. The very clothes they wore were
copied with ludicrous precision from the models of other nations. They
were a sharp, restless, quick-witted, greedy race, given body and soul
to the gathering of riches. Their chiefest passion was to buy and
sell. Even women, both of high and low degree, spent much of their
time at bargains, crowding and jostling each other in vast marts of
trade, for their attire was complicated, and demanded most of their
time."

"How degrading!" I exclaimed.

"So it must have been," said Nofuhl; "but they were not without
virtues. Their domestic life was happy. A man had but one wife, and