This was done, with similar experiences, and another step was gained, from which, after looking down to where the boats were moored, they again climbed higher, entering very few of the cells, but directing their efforts towards reaching the central portion.
But failure attended every effort, and, hot and wearied out by what was growing a monotonous task, Brace and the American readily acquiesced in Sir Humphrey’s proposal that they should now descend and join their companions in the midday meal, and afterwards take the smaller boat, row to the front of the temple, and try for away up from the river.
The task of descending and going back took considerably longer than they anticipated, but at last they reached the lower terrace, where the rest were awaiting their return, and over the meal they related their experiences.
These were precisely similar to those of a couple of the men who had explored a little on their own account in the other direction; but they had been compelled to keep to the terrace where the fires had been lit.
“The place must have been built by the same kind of people who cut their rock houses in some of the cañons in Mexico,” said Briscoe; “only those are a degenerate set, and their cells or dwellings are very rough and primitive. These people must have been greatly in advance. There: I want to get to work again. There must be a way into that temple place from the front.”
“Well, let’s try,” said the captain. “It’s a queer place if there is no way in.”
The afternoon was getting on when the exploring party entered the smaller boat and had it rowed out into the stream a short distance from the centre of the rock city, just facing the spot where the terraces were grotesquely carved; and as they minutely examined the partly natural, partly sculptured place, they were more than ever impressed by the excellence of the workmanship.
It must have been the work of many, many years, perhaps of generations, of the people who had lavished so much skilful toil on that centre, which was about a couple of hundred feet in width, and rose up terrace above terrace six or seven hundred feet before the plain uncarved rock was reached, in whose clefts tree, shrub, and creeper grew abundantly for a similar distance, while to right and left the cell-like windows right up to the top of the cañon finished off as before intimated, something like the crenellations on the top of a Norman castle.
“It must have been magnificent at one time,” said Sir Humphrey. “I wish I were clever with my pencil, so as to be able to reproduce all this on paper. These ornamentations are grotesque and horrible, but wonderfully carved, and the variety of the figures is marvellous.”
“Hadn’t we better row close in?” said Briscoe, who seemed impatient, and the men took to their oars till the strong rock wall was reached and the boat drawn along by one of the men with a boat-hook from end to end and back, without a sign of any way up being found.