"Truly," he said to his wife, then, "I think this is the contingency our friend Monella must have had in his mind when he intimated that in certain circumstances I was to be free to depart from the silence he had enjoined. It seems to me more than ever the case that he must have had 'the gift of prophecy' at that time. I cannot doubt that, if he were alive now, and saw that the future international position of Roraima was hanging in the balance, he would wish it to become permanently British territory, rather than Venezuelan. And, if he could know of the present state of indifference--or want of information--that seems to prevail in England, I feel satisfied he would wish me to do what I could to awaken the English nation to the true facts of the question that is at stake." And that is how it has come about that, after some years of silence, this strange story of Roraima and the ancient city of El Dorado is now given to the world. THE END. Transcriber's note Words in italics have been surrounded with _underscores_, and small capitals changed to all capitals. Errors in punctuation have been corrected without note. The footnotes have been placed directly after the paragraph they belong to. Missing punctuation of the poem in footnote 6 was found on the internet. Some words were hard to read but could be guessed from the context. Entirely missing words were filled in and mentioned in the list underneath. Also the following changes were made, on page vii "nöt" changed to "not" (the author did not actually visit) xiii pagenumber "xii" changed to "xiii" 27 "that" changed to "than" (far more sparsely populated than) 29 "Thoughout" changed to "Throughout" (Throughout the country) 31 "scarely" changed to "scarcely" (I can scarcely believe) 51 "Morover" changed to "Moreover" (Moreover, the Indians) 83 "Gorgetown" changed to "Georgetown" (do not alarm our friends in Georgetown) 95 "o" changed to "of" (some kind of) 126 missing word guessed "to" (repay you to some measure) 202 "mysel" changed to "myself" (For myself I do not wonder) 381 "entertaintment" changed to "entertainment" (for my especial entertainment). Otherwise the original has been preserved, including inconsistent spelling and hyphenation. End of Project Gutenberg's The Devil-Tree of El Dorado, by Frank Aubrey