"What is ours?" I asked. "The knowledge we sought;" and he pointed to the inscription, NEW YORK STOCK EXC.... He was tremulous with joy. [Illustration: "'The knowledge we sought;' and he pointed to the inscription."] "Thou hast heard of Nhū-Yok, O my Prince?" I answered that I had read of it at school. "Thou art in it now!" he said. "We are standing on the Western Continent. Little wonder we thought our voyage long!" "And what was Nhū-Yok?" I asked. "I read of it at college, but remember little. Was it not the capital of the ancient Mehrikans?" "Not the capital," he answered, "but their largest city. Its population was four millions." "Four millions!" I exclaimed. "Verily, O Fountain of Wisdom, that is many for one city!" "Such is history, my Prince! Moreover, as thou knowest, it would take us many days to walk this town." "True, it is endless." He continued thus: "Strange that a single word can tell so much! Those iron structures, the huge statue in the harbor, the temples with pointed towers, all are as writ in history." Whereupon I repeated that I knew little of the Mehrikans save what I had learned at college, a perfunctory and fleeting knowledge, as they were a people who interested me but little. "Let us seat ourselves in the shade," said Nōfūhl, "and I will tell thee of them." [Illustration: In a Street of the Forgotten City] We sat. "For eleven centuries the cities of this sleeping hemisphere have decayed in solitude. Their very existence has been forgotten. The people who built them have long since passed away, and their civilization is but a shadowy tradition. Historians are astounded that a nation of an hundred million beings should vanish from the earth like a mist, and leave so little behind. But to those familiar with their lives and character surprise is impossible. There was nothing to leave. The Mehrikans possessed neither literature, art, nor music of their own. Everything was borrowed. The very clothes they wore were copied with ludicrous precision from the models of other nations. They were a sharp, restless, quick-witted, greedy race, given body and soul to the gathering of riches. Their chiefest passion was to buy and sell. Even women, both of high and low degree, spent much of their time at bargains, crowding and jostling each other in vast marts of trade, for their attire was complicated, and demanded most of their time." "How degrading!" I exclaimed. "So it must have been," said Nōfūhl; "but they were not without virtues. Their domestic life was happy. A man had but one wife, and treated her as his equal." "That is curious! But as I remember, they were a people of elastic honor."