]
He pointed to some very remarkable rocky formations in the
neighborhood of _Short_, a ring mountain rising to an altitude
considerably higher than that of Mont Blanc. Even Barbican and M'Nicholl
could detect some regularity and semblance of order in the arrangement
of these rocks, but this, of course, they looked on as a mere freak of
nature, like the Lurlei Rock, the Giant's Causeway, or the Old Man of
the Franconia Mountains. Ardan, however, would not accept such an easy
mode of getting rid of a difficulty.
"See the ruins on that bluff," he exclaimed; "those steep sides must
have been washed by a great river in the prehistoric times. That was the
fortress. Farther down lay the city. There are the dismantled ramparts;
why, there's the very coping of a portico still intact! Don't you see
three broken pillars lying beside their pedestals? There! a little to
the left of those arches that evidently once bore the pipes of an
aqueduct! You don't see them? Well, look a little to the right, and
there is something that you can see! As I'm a living man I have no
difficulty in discerning the gigantic butments of a great bridge that
formerly spanned that immense river!"
Did he really see all this? To this day he affirms stoutly that he did,
and even greater wonders besides.
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