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-£53 



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OCCASIONALLY A GREAT BOULDER BREAKS AWAY FROM THE BLUFF AND THUNDERS 



DOWN UPON THE WRETCHED VILLAGE, LEAVING DEATH AND 



DESTRUCTION IN ITS WAKE 



Only four days before the author's visit such a boulder had precipitated itself upon the 

 village, burying twelve houses and killing live men (the women who were killed were prob- 

 ably not counted). Several rocks were threatening to fall. The poor people appealed to the 

 visitor as to one who must needs have superior knowledge : "Does danger threaten our 

 house?" "Will that rock fall?" The largest piece of the devastating rock is seen in the fore- 

 ground. Its course can be traced, and the chambers exposed when it broke away are plainly 

 visible. The course of the rock may be discerned also in the preceding picture. 



that Paul Lukas is wholly free from this 

 universal weakness. To give only a few 

 instances from his book of travels, I ask 

 if there can be found a man who will not 

 consider Lukas's story about the innumer- 

 able host of pyramids exaggerated? He 

 affirms that each one of these pyramids 

 is hewn from a single stone (page 283), 

 and that they are hollowed out in such 

 wise that they have fine doors for en- 

 trances (page 317), that they have sev- 

 eral apartments rising one above the 

 other (page 282) and connected with 



each other by means of interior stair- 

 ways, and that these apartments are 

 lighted by large windows (page 324). 



"Many of these remarkable buildings," 

 continues Wieland with true Prussian su- 

 periority and cocksureness, "according to 

 our traveler, have never been excavated 

 into dwellings (page 289), though the 

 excavation of many of them had been be- 

 gun, but was left in an unfinished state. 



"He asserts that on the one side of the 

 bluff by which his caravan passed there 

 were no fewer than 20,000 such build- 



321 



