The guide only shook his head and said—
“No good—no good.”
The place was built among trees, palms there were of many strange kinds, and an undergrowth of broad-leaved plantains and gigantic feathery ferns, but some of the trees were so weirdly fantastic in shape that in his present depressed state of mind they pained Harry to look at.
The ground here was somewhat higher, but it certainly was no oasis in a desert.
If Harry expected his spirits to rise on entering this village he was soon undeceived. It was the abode par excellence of gloom and misery.
The leaf-built huts were mere kennels, the people themselves were black, naked, decrepit, and puny, and the very children were paunchy and old-looking.
Not a sign of welcome did they make, not the slightest show of resistance; they but gazed on the expedition as it passed along with the lack-lustre eyes of chronic apathy.
It was evident that here was a tribe or people slowly but surely dying off the face of the earth. Harry soon found that they were cannibals, and that they actually ate their dead. They had no king, no law, no order; they were socialists, nihilists, and soon, doubtless, to be annihilated.
Harry sought out an open space under the shelter of a splendid spreading tree.
This tree was really a thing of beauty. It was larger than any oak, and its branches were literally bathed in the beauty of trailing flowers, while colonies of bees and birds made sweet soft music in its foliage. Harry thought if he was a bird, it would not be anywhere near this village he would build his nest and make his home.