Lives of Alcyone

and his friend to proceed straight out into the cavity and to walk for
many hours in a straight line, leaving the great wall. They soon lost
sight of the wall in this curious diffused luminosity, and felt strangely
lost in this nightmare of a world, with no certainty of getting out of it
again. But they continued walking in spite of the difficulties of the
atmosphere, and at last came upon a different type of people, who
by comparison with the others might be said to be quite advanced,
for they had places to live in, though they were only hollowed out of
the ground—chambers in the rock. But these people wove a sort of
matting. They did not seem to know fire, but they may be said to
have kept domestic animals. They had a kind of goat, of which they
drank the milk. Their settlement was pitched round a number of
boiling springs or geysers, and in these boiling springs they cooked
the flesh of their goats, also that of some turtle like creatures. It may
have been the same race, but it was certainly a stage further
advanced. They could draw to a certain extent, and also they
engraved or scratched signs upon the rocks according to some
primitive scheme, consisting entirely of round impressions (cup-
shaped marks) arranged in a form which signified something—so
many in a straight line meaning one thing, and so many arranged in
an angle something else. These were not letters, but ideograms, or
signs for certain things. The marks were produced by grinding a
sharpened edge into the rock. They had thus a series of intelligible
signs, but no idea beyond the making of these round depressions.
They made also a kind of string or rope out of their reeds, and
the women were beginning to wear coloured stones. Our friends
came in one place upon a kind of pocket of precious stones, and
carried them away with them—fine specimens, splendid gems,