Page:Neuroomia.djvu/258

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NEUROOMIA: A NEW CONTINENT.

indentations, and mouths of the large rivers were carefully marked, as were also the hills and mountains near the sea. The inhabitants of this mysterious region, which was known as Arawarria in the native tongue, so the manuscript went on, were highly civilized, and lived under a monarchial form of government. They had great cities, important manufactures, and aqueducts. They were also well advanced in astronomy and meteorology, and, for the purposes of observation, calculation, and experiment, had massive buildings, with high towers, erected on many of the mountains and headlands. Their edifices were of the most substantial character, being built with blocks of a very durable kind of stone. The inhabitants told them that beyond the mountains, and towards the far interior, there were dense forests and great fresh inland seas. Here, secured in their natural fastnesses, lived a powerful, savage, and cruel people, of a paler colour than themselves, obtaining their subsistence by rude cultivation and the chase.

The climate was much warmer than that of Neuroomia, but the people they met led them to understand that in bygone ages it had been intensely cold. The days and nights were of brief duration, and nearly equal in length, which latter fact proved