This dissertation from Sajipona on the uses to which radium had been put in her kingdom was amazing enough to Leighton's trained, careful mind. In his own studies of radium activity he had failed to find any indication of the possibility even for the development of the sensational features that were now given to him as accomplished, familiar fact. For one thing, science was restricted in its experiments by the small quantity of radium within its reach. Here the amount, estimating the size of the fiery globe above him, was measured by the hundreds of tons--a fact, of course, that must greatly increase the field over which radium might be made to operate. Nevertheless, except for this vague theory that an unknown power could be developed from a great mass of this marvelous substance, suspended in a great chamber, or series of chambers, not subject to the ordinary outside influences of heat and light and air, it was difficult to find a reasonable explanation for the things that Sajipona told him and that he himself had seen. Most astounding it was, also, to a modern scientist, brought up in the methods and limited by the views of his age, to discover here a development in physics, beyond the dreams of the most daring investigator, that actually belonged to a primitive race, and was first practiced by them in a period and country without scientific culture. The whole affair, indeed, furnished an instance where science seemed to overstep the borderland of the miraculous. It was as marvelous, after all, as the familiar achievements of wireless or the cinema would have been if suddenly presented to the world of half a century ago.