This feeling was accentuated when, having followed the covered walk for a distance of several hundred yards, I observed that it led to a magnificent, many-columned edifice which could pass for nothing if not for a temple of the ancient gods. It was a structure of solid marble, white marble artistically varied with veilings of black; its pillars were massive as the trunks of the giant redwoods I had seen in the California forests years before, and like those redwoods, produced an effect of solemnity and awe; but all was so perfectly designed and proportioned that, while the building occupied an area perhaps as large as the average city block, it gave an effect less of magnitude than of artistic completeness and beauty. No living thing was visible about the precincts of this amazing temple, nor would I have expected any living thing in what I had come subconsciously to regard as a realm of the dead; but I was overawed at thought of this abandoned loveliness, and paused at some distance to regard it reflectively, mentally asking whether it was some still undiscovered survival from classical times or whether I was but seeing a vision. A suppressed exclamation from young Rawson brought me back to reality--or, at least, to the unbelievable thing that passed for reality. In the very center of the swift-rolling river, the banks of which paralleled the colonnade at a distance of a dozen paces, I observed a low-lying, gliding form, gracefully elevated at both extremes, which at the first terrified glimpse I took to be some fabulous monster, but which I soon recognized as some sort of boat or canoe. Before I had had time for a half-composed glance at it, it had gone speeding out of view; but in its fast-moving frame, I thought I could distinguish half a dozen dusky bobbing shapes, and half a dozen pairs of oars that reached out rhythmically, and noiselessly clove the dark waters. Later, when I had had time for reflection, I was to recognize this strange craft as akin to the shadowy apparition, the unknown sea monster which had so terrified us in the submarine; but at present I was overwhelmed by the knowledge that this weird place was actually peopled, peopled by living men whom at any moment we might meet face to face! * * * * *