After them came Leonard, Francisco, and the others, while the population followed in silence.
Now the sun was sinking, but enough of daylight was left to show how strange were the place and the people among which they found themselves.
The city, indeed, was rudely built of like materials and in similar fashion to the house in the plain that has been described already.

But the streets were roughly paved; each habitation stood apart from the other in its own garden, and the gates were of wood, fastened together with primitive iron bolts.

There were drinking-shops, or rather booths, and a large market-place, which they crossed as they ascended the hill, and where, as they afterwards discovered, this people carried on their trade, if trade it could be called, for they had no money, and conducted all transactions like other savages, upon a principle of barter.
As they went Leonard took note of these things, which, to his mind, showed clearly that the inhabitants of this city were the degenerate inheritors of some ancient and forgotten civilisation.

Their fortifications, stone-built houses, drinking-shops, and markets indicated this, just as their rude system of theology, with its divinities of Light and Darkness, or of Death and Life, each springing from the other, engaged in an eternal struggle, and yet one, was probably the survival of some elaborate nature-myth of the early world.
But nothing struck him so much as the appearance of the people.

In size they were almost giants, a peculiarity which was shared by the women, some of whom measured six feet in height.