--Editor.
After breakfast we started to look about us. We were on a strip of dry
land about two hundred yards broad by five hundred long, bordered on one
side by the river, and on the other three by endless desolate swamps,
that stretched as far as the eye could reach. This strip of land was
raised about twenty-five feet above the plain of the surrounding swamps
and the river level: indeed it had every appearance of having been made
by the hand of man.
"This place has been a wharf," said Leo, dogmatically.
"Nonsense," I answered. "Who would be stupid enough to build a wharf
in the middle of these dreadful marshes in a country inhabited by
savages--that is, if it is inhabited at all?"
"Perhaps it was not always marsh, and perhaps the people were not
always savage," he said drily, looking down the steep bank, for we were
standing by the river. "Look there," he went on, pointing to a spot
where the hurricane of the previous night had torn up one of the
magnolia trees by the roots, which had grown on the extreme edge of the
bank just where it sloped down to the water, and lifted a large cake of
earth with them.
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