Good, eh ?" "Excellent!" the lieutenant replied.

"There must be millions of Mohammedans, themselves, who have hardly learned of this valley.
Certainly, very few from the outside world ever have been able to cross the Empty Abodes, and reach it.
"These people here evidently represent a far higher culture than any other Moslems ever known.

Who ever saw a finer city--even not considering its material--or more wonderful cultivation of land ?" His eyes wandered out over the plain, which lost itself to sight in the remote south.

Roads in various directions, with here and there a few white dromedaries bearing bright-colored _shugdufs_ (litters), showed there was travel to some other inhabited spots inside the forbidding mountain girdle.
Here, there, herds of antelope and flocks of sheep were grazing on broad meadows, through which trickled sparkling threads of water, half glimpsed among feathery-tufted date-palms.

Plantations of fig and pomegranate, lime, apricot, and orange trees, with other fruits not recognized, slid beneath the giant liner as she slowed her pace.