WHAT an incongruous, paradoxical situation it was, to be sure. Here were the people, going mad with excitement over the most primitive forms of utilizing the most obvious forces of nature, while all about them, unnoticed, undeveloped, were forces ten thousand times more powerful, more economical, and which would have caused as much excitement in the outside world as did the crude wind and water engines in this hidden valley. Would these people, I wondered, ever learn to adapt the strange unknown forces of radium to mechanical needs? In years to come, would they go through the long, slow evolution of wind, water, steam, electricity, and in the end discover the terrific forces so long neglected? Would some future Mictolanian rediscover the inventions of old Nohul Voh and resurrect his name and immortalize the ancient sorcerer as the greatest scientist of his race? Would his discoveries be lost and forgotten? Or would some brilliant genius stumble upon the natural forces of the valley, solve the problem of controlling and using them and, in a single day--figuratively speaking--jump his people ages ahead of all other races? Who could say? Who could foretell what might happen? Possibly old Nohul Voh. But when I half-jokingly asked him if his Book of the Future had foretold the wheels and the mills he shook his head and admitted it had not. “The Book of the Future holds only those things to do with the race of the Kitche Maya,” he said. “These things are of another race. As I could read nothing of your past ere you spoke with Katchilcan, as I could read nothing of the future beyond the end of the road of the symbols, neither could I read of these things that dwelt within the mind of a man of another race.” I smiled. “You draw a fine line, O, Nohul Voh,” I said. “Though these things are, as you say, of my race, yet now they have to do with your people, so they should have been told to you in your Book of the Future.” “Who can say,” he replied. “It is the will of the gods.” And he admitted freely that he could not foretell what I next planned to do. I had noticed that there was iron ore in the valley and there was also lime. I had no doubt I could build a furnace and smelt the ore, but there was a simpler method. The natives had smelted copper, gold and silver for countless ages. Whenever they had done so, they had of necessity smelted a small quantity of iron at the same time, for all their ores contained iron. In the bottom of every crucible of the other metals, there must have been a tiny iron button, and why or how they had overlooked these bits of the much harder and more useful metal was a puzzle I could not explain. But that the iron was there I felt sure, and an examination of the broken clay crucibles and slag that had accumulated, confirmed my suspicions.