In Search of an Unknown Race — page 59: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

VAN. | 51 Like magic the darkness was suadenly illumined by the flashing up of a dozen blazing bonfires within a stone's throw of the narrow beach. Apparently fed with some resinous substance, the flames shot skyward and lit up the surroundings with startling distinctness. Before Van’s astonished and pewitdeens gaze, a large settlement of palm thatched houses, divided by narrow streets, extended back from the river bank into the thickly-wooded slope beyond. Gathering about the bonfires and rushing down to meet the occupants of the raft was a tumultuous crowd of men, women, and children, of the same nationality as his captors. Finger tips were touched, a few brief words exchanged in a subdued undertone, and then Van, as one ina dream, was escorted up from the beach by halfa dozen brawny, muscular men, each armed with a spear, and bearing a shield of several thicknesses of skin stretched over an oval frame-work. Arriving at asquare building in the very center of the village, near each corner of which a smaller bonfire was burning, Van was gently urged through the door- way by a young Mumuru. The latter took up his position on the outside, near the door, while at either corner four other guards were placed. Van's prison house seemed to bea structure some thirty feet square, built something after the primitive style of the old time log cabin, excepting that the spaces between the logs were left unchinked, presumably for the sake of air and light. | The interior was in partial darkness, till, a few mo- EOmicbdoo <SiiG