Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1902-03-12
. D The > D
Lost Continent.
By CUTCLEFFE HYNE.
Pub by Harper Bros. Copyright. 1901 by CutcfFs Hyn.
CHAPTER TX.
PHORENICE, GODDESS
PuO By Harper Bros Copyrigh. tsO by Cutelifs Hyn,

n motley crowd filled the street
which ran past the front of the OBJ
scure temple, through which 1 gained
entrance to the city, and all were
hurrying one way. With what l had
been told, it did not take much art
to guess that the great stone circle
of our Lord the Sun was their mark.
and it grieved me to think of how
many venerable centuries that great
Zane had upreared before the wealth
er and the earth cremors, without
such proclamation as it would witness
to-day. And also the thought oc-
CURED to me: WAS our Great Lord
above drawing this woman on to her
destruction? Would He take some
vast and finalact of vengeance when
she consummated her final sacrifice 2"
But the crowd pressed on, thrilled
and excited, and thinking little las is
n crowds WON'T on the deeper mat
tiers which lay beneath the bare spec
tacle. From one quarter of the city
walls the din of an attack from the
besiegers made itself clearly heard
from over the houses, and the tenn
Piles and the palaces intervening, but
no one needed it. They had grown
callous, these townsfolk, to the bat
tering of rams, and the flight of fire.
darts, and the other emotions of q
bombardment. Their nerves, their
hunger, their desperation were stung
to such pitch that little short of an
actual storm could stir them into new
RXpitemant Ovar tho
All were weaponed. The naked car
ried arms IL the hope of meeting
some one whom they could overcome
and rob: those that had a possession
walked ready to do battle for it's
ownership. There was no security,
no trust the lesson of civilization
had dropped away from these COM
mon, people as mud is washed from
the feet by rain, and in their new
habits and their thoughts they had
gone back to the grade from which
savages like those of Europe have
never yet emerged. 1t was a grim
commentary on the success of rho
renice's rule.
The, crowd merged me into their
ranks without question, and with
them | pressed forward down the
winding streets, once so clean and
trim, now so foul and mud-strewn.
Men and women had died of hunger
in these streets these latter years.
and rotted where they lay, and we
trod their bones under foot as we
walked. Yet rising out of this soual-
or and this misery were great pyra-
mids and palaces, the like of which
for splendor and magnifieence had
never been seen before. 1t was lar
ring admixture.
I'm time we came to the open space
in. the center of the city, which even
Phoreniee had not dared to encroach
upon with her ambitious building
scnemes, and stood on the secular
ground which surrounds the most an
cient. the most grand, and the barest of
all this worlds temples.
Since the beginning of time. when
man first emerged among the beasts,
our Lord the Sun has always been
his chiefest god, and legend says that
he raised this circle of stones him
self to be place where votaries
should offer him worship. 1t is the
fashion among US moderns not to take
these old tales in a too literal sease;
but for myself, this one satisfies me.