In Search of an Unknown Race — page 92: what you’re looking at

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

82 VAN. steps, where they stood respectfully waiting instructions. They were stolid, uninteresting looking men, wearing only short breeches of linen or tow reaching to the knee, without any covering for the upper part of the person. Tattooed on the broad chest of each was the familiar device so often referred to. Very different in looks and dress was the Itambez runner, even though he by no means represented the higher types of his people. He had regular and exe pressive features, tanned by contact with sun and wind. His hair, unlike that of the lake dwellers, or Pescados, as they are called, was cut short to a well shaped head, while his dress consisted of a light, sleeveless tunic, and sandals of dressed hide, in addition to the short trousers worn by the others. So attired—as Martin told Van—the runner, who acted as a courier to convey important messages from one part of the province to another, could cover from forty to fifty miles between sun and sun. Martin addressed the latter in his own language, and he in turn gave some command to the Pescados. The entire party then embarked on the raft, which was rigged with mast and sail, and an hour later were safely deposited at the opposite end of the lake, near the mouth of the Canuma river, which flowed into it from the canyon of the Cordilleras, Here was a village of neatly built wooden dwellings, raised some six to ten feet above the surface of the lake on cedar pilings. Every house had its canoe or raft fastened beneath it, while a platform that could be removed at pleasure connected one dwelling with another, and all with the shore. Eomicbookse