beards tangled and matted with filth. Their heads, however,

were shapely, and their eyes, though fierce and warlike,

were intelligent.

Appreciation of these physical attributes came later, of

course, when I had better opportunity to study the men at

close range and under circumstances less fraught with danger

and excitement. At the moment I saw, and with unmixed

wonder, only a score of wild savages charging down upon us,

where I had expected to find a community of civilized and

enlightened people.

Each of us was armed with rifle, revolver, and cutlass, but

as we stood shoulder to shoulder facing the wild men I was

loath to give the command to fire upon them, inflicting

death or suffering upon strangers with whom we had no

quarrel, and so I attempted to restrain them for the moment

that we might parley with them.

To this end I raised my left hand above my head with the

palm toward them as the most natural gesture indicative of

peaceful intentions which occurred to me. At the same time

I called aloud to them that we were friends, though, from

their appearance, there was nothing to indicate that they

might understand Pan-American, or ancient English, which are

of course practically identical.

At my gesture and words they ceased their shouting and came

to a halt a few paces from us. Then, in deep tones, one who

was in advance of the others and whom I took to be the chief

or leader of the party replied in a tongue which while

intelligible to us, was so distorted from the English

language from which it evidently had sprung, that it was

with difficulty that we interpreted it.

"Who are you," he asked, "and from what country?"

I told him that we were from Pan-America, but he only shook

his head and asked where that was. He had never heard of

it, or of the Atlantic Ocean which I told him separated his

country from mine.

"It has been two hundred years," I told him, "since a Pan-

American visited England."