Nothing remains but the ruins of former abodes and the memory of their inhabitants among their descendants.

These ancient people of the Rito are the actors in the story which is now to be told; the stage in the main is the Rito itself.
The language of the actors is the Queres dialect, and the time when the events occurred is much anterior to the discovery of America, to the invention of gunpowder and the printing-press in Europe.

Still the Rito must have appeared then much as it appears now,--a quiet, lovely, picturesque retreat, peaceful when basking in the sunlight, wonderfully quiet when the stars sparkled over it, or the moon shed its floods of silver on the cliffs and on the murmuring brook below.
In the lower or western part of its course the Tyuonyi rushes in places through thickets and small groves, out of which rise tall pine-trees.

It is very still on the banks of the brook when, on a warm June day, noon-time is just past and no breeze fans the air; not a sound is heard beyond the rippling of the water; the birds are asleep, and the noise of human activity does not reach there from the cliffs.

Still, on the day of which we are now speaking, a voice arose from the thicket, calling aloud,-- "Umo,--'grandfather!'"[1] "To ima satyumishe,--'come hither, my brother,'" another voice replied in the same dialect, adding, "See what a big fish I have caught." It sounded as though this second voice had issued from the very waters of the streamlet.
Pine boughs rustled, branches bent, and leaves shook.