I tried to put this strange puzzle out of my head, but again and again the accursed and torturing passage would ring in my ears until I nearly went crazy.

But I presently put the thing firmly from me, and resolved to think no more about it.
It is not an exaggeration to describe my mountain home in the centre of the continent as a perfect paradise.

The grasses and ferns there grew to a prodigious height, and there were magnificent forests of white gum and eucalyptus.

Down in the valley I built a spacious house--the largest the natives had ever seen.

It was perhaps twenty feet long, sixteen feet to eighteen feet wide, and about ten feet high.