Set on a hill were many low, square, flat-topped houses, brown in colour against the gray ground about them.

In front of these houses was a larger structure of the same material, a church-like building such as he had once seen in a picture, with a wooden cross at the top.

In an open square before this church were many moving persons strangely garbed, seeming to be Indians.

They surged for a moment about the door of the church, then parted to either side as if in answer to a signal, and he saw a procession of the same people coming with bowed heads, scourging themselves with short whips and thorned branches.

At their head walked a brown-cowled monk, holding aloft before him a small cross, attached by a chain to his waist.