Even Barbican and M'Nicholl could detect some regularity and semblance of order in the arrangement of these rocks, but this, of course, they looked on as a mere freak of nature, like the Lurlei Rock, the Giant's Causeway, or the Old Man of the Franconia Mountains.

Ardan, however, would not accept such an easy mode of getting rid of a difficulty.
"See the ruins on that bluff," he exclaimed; "those steep sides must have been washed by a great river in the prehistoric times.

That was the fortress.

Farther down lay the city.

There are the dismantled ramparts; why, there's the very coping of a portico still intact! Don't you see three broken pillars lying beside their pedestals?
There! a little to the left of those arches that evidently once bore the pipes of an aqueduct! You don't see them?
Well, look a little to the right, and there is something that you can see! As I'm a living man I have no difficulty in discerning the gigantic butments of a great bridge that formerly spanned that immense river!" Did he really see all this?
To this day he affirms stoutly that he did, and even greater wonders besides.