I can’t go here into the proofs or otherwise that Atlantis and Mu did exist and that there was a time when the earth had no moon, (our previous satellite having circled nearer and nearer, pulled over millions of years by our greater gravity, and crashed on us), the conclusions of geologists, Gondwanaland, the evidence of flora and fauna, the dove-tailing legends of the ancient world, the world’s languages, the patterned placing of the world’s pyramids, the flocks of migratory birds which every year fly to the place where Atlantis is supposed to have lain, and circle round and round, searching for the land the Atlantis-believers tell us they know must be there because of the racial-memory instinct in all animals. Here I can give only a short, very incomplete, list of the myth-ingredients I’ve found relevant to this Diary. Students of this sort of thing will recognize them all anyway. Many of them I already knew; others turned up later and astonished me with their relevance.

Atzlan was the prehistoric birthplace of the Aztecs of America—the pride, hybris, of the Atlantes in Plato’s account—The American Linapy tribe had an ancient song telling of the land of Rusuaki and how it was destroyed in a great fire and cloven by the Earth Snake, Zio, the scarlet-faced war-god of prehistoric Britain—The crocodile—demon Set of Egypt, always supposed to be a colony of Atlantis—The Aztec goddess Cioacatl ‘“by whom sin came into the world” usually represented with a serpent near her—The whole story of Adam and Eve and the Garden—The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair—There were giants in the earth in those days; and also, after that when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown—The rites of initiation into womanhood, for the South American jungle girls, which includes their promise that they will cherish the mortal men they must marry, and not resent them for their difference from the god to whom each girl was wed before her birth.

The puma dates from the Pleistocene, and the behaviour o. Cija’s “white puma” is perfectly credible. Even today the gaucho of the Argentine pampas calls the puma amigo del cristiano—The extra large snails of South America aroused interest in Colonel Fawcett—The huge birds used by th Northern army are obviously the prehistoric Diatryma, one prevalent in America, about seven feet tall.

Cija is pronounced Key-a. This slightly Celtic pronunciation gives the clue to the only other difficult names in the adventures.

Gagl—Gahl.

Ious—Yuse.

The main action of the book takes place in what is now South America.

PART ONE

THE HOSTAGE

CHAPTER ONE

THE TOWER

I can’t see things so well from any other window.