"One day, when I was oppressed by cold, I found a fire which had been left by some wandering beggars, and was overcome with delight at the warmth I experienced from it.
When night came again I found, with pleasure, that the fire gave light as well as heat and that the discovery of this element was useful to me in my food, for I found some of the offals that the travellers had left had been roasted, and tasted much more savoury than the berries I gathered from the trees.
When this was done I went down the ship's side, and pulling them to me, I tied four of them together at both ends as well as I could, in the form of a raft, and laying two or three short pieces of plank upon them crossways, I found I could walk upon it very well, but that it was not able to bear any great weight, the pieces being too light.
There had been some barley and wheat together; but, to my great disappointment, I found afterwards that the rats had eaten or spoiled it all.
Here and there I
found traces of the little people in the shape of rare fossils broken to pieces or threaded in strings upon reeds.
As soon as the coloured people
found out that he could read, a newspaper was secured, and at the close of nearly every day's work this young man would be surrounded by a group of men and women who were anxious to hear him read the news contained in the papers.
He
found Joe Harper study- ing a Testament, and turned sadly away from the de- pressing spectacle.
When the man awoke and
found that he had been sleeping, he was grieved at heart, and said, 'She has no doubt been here and driven away again, and it is now too late for me to save her.' Then his eyes fell on the things which were lying beside him; he read the letter, and knew from it all that had happened.
Searching further he
found a little memorandum book richly bound; this Don Quixote asked of him, telling him to take the money and keep it for himself.
I
found he was an old sailor, kept a public-house, knew all the seafaring men in Bristol, had lost his health ashore, and wanted a good berth as cook to get to sea again.
Before he went, he had left all his money and other things of value with me, and what to do with them I did not know, but I secured them as well as I could, and locked up the lodgings and went to him, where I
found him very ill indeed; however, I persuaded him to be carried in a litter to the Bath, where there was more help and better advice to be had.
He
found that he was imprisoned in a subterranean chamber amply large enough to have accommodated a dozen or more of the huge animals such as the one that had dragged him thither.
And this time he was not called back by the Queen, but although he reached South America and sailed up the Orinoco and the Caroni he "returned a beggar and withered"* without having
found the fabled city.
Here we
found many more verses on many more sheets of paper in the same hand-writing.
"Under these circumstances, you will naturally ask, 'What are our prospects when the document is
found?' Our prospects have a bright side and a dark side.
