He was living, but beside him were the bodies of two of his companions who had been overwhelmed by sand and thirst.

He was very fierce looking.

He refused to say how he came into the desert, telling us only that he had followed the road known to the ancients before communication between his people and the outer world ceased.

We gathered, however, that his brethren with whom he fled had committed some crime for which they had been condemned to die, and that he had accompanied them in their flight.

He told us that there was a fine country beyond the mountains, fertile, but plagued with droughts and earthquakes, which latter, indeed, we often feel here.
"The people of that country were, he said, warlike and very numerous but followed agriculture.