"The nation, shut off from all the world, has much decreased in numbers, and is now unknown where it was once all-powerful. For centuries, it is said, the surrounding country was but a chaos of swamp and mud. By degrees there grew up vegetation, and finally trees that, in time, became thick, tangled forests that could not be penetrated. Thus, for long ages, we have been cut off from all the other peoples of the world. Some parties were sent out, hundreds of years ago, to explore the surrounding country; but some never returned, and those who did brought back such terrible accounts of awful woods haunted by fearful creatures, and of deserts beyond, inhabited only by black demons, that it was considered better to keep the country here entirely to ourselves. So I believe the only known way that led out into the woods was sealed up for good; and thus ended the last attempt to communicate with the outside world. "Many of the White Priests fled to Mellenda's vessels, and were taken away with him when he departed; but the others, including their chief, Sanaima, retired to Myrlanda, where they have ever since maintained themselves. "That is the story of Mellenda, and of how he left us, and of what befell the proud city of Manoa after his departure. When he will come back we know not; but some old prophecies obtain amongst the people according to which the time of his return is very near, if it is not indeed overpast." "His return!" said Jack. "You surely would not have us understand that you expect this venerable old fossil to return, in the flesh, to trouble himself about the present state of the descendants of his ungrateful people?" Zonella stared. "Why, _of course_ we do!" she answered. "There is not a man or a woman--scarcely a child of a few years old--that has not been taught to believe in it." "I should think so," Ulama exclaimed, almost indignantly. "We all _know_ it will be so; we believe it absolutely." "But," said Jack, "how long ago do you reckon all this took place?" "About two thousand years," Zonella replied, after a brief, but apparently careful, calculation, counting up on her fingers. "Two thousand years! And you--you two sensible young people--tell us you expect to see this badly-treated, but respectable, old gentleman turn up again, just much as usual, I suppose, after two thousand years!" "Why not?" Ulama asked. "We have Coryon and Sanaima, both said to be older than that." "Yes--but"--looking at Leonard--"I fancy that is like the Pharoahs of old, you know, where there was always a Pharoah on the throne, though kings were born and died. It would be easy to keep up a farce of that sort where, as here, the 'High Priest,' black or white, is so seldom visible--always in the background." "But if the king is three hundred and forty, may it not be possible to live to two thousand, or more? I can point out many men of more than five hundred in the king's palace," observed Zonella.