There was only one possible place to ascend, and this was narrow and steep.
Venters had visited cliff-dwellings before, and they had been in ruins, and of no great character or size but this place was of proportions that stunned him, and it had not been desecrated by the hand of man, nor had it been crumbled by the hand of time.

It was a stupendous tomb.

It had been a city.

It was just as it had been left by its builders.

The little houses were there, the smoke-blackened stains of fires, the pieces of pottery scattered about cold hearths, the stone hatchets; and stone pestles and mealing-stones lay beside round holes polished by years of grinding maize--lay there as if they had been carelessly dropped yesterday.