“Oh, our palace!  Our palace!”

“Ah, ah!  It falls!  It falls!  See, see, how the huge rocks rive and crumble!”

What a fall was there!  A crash that echoed terribly in that circle of mountain wildness!

A cloud of dust rolled in fearful mockery where one moment before had stood the proud pinnacle.  An enormous mass of rocks fell into the lake below, and the vapors rose in a rival cloud.  High in the firmament they curled and twisted, their wreathing forms together telling a woful tale of destruction.

We forgot our own danger in watching all our grandeur dashed to nothingness.

Destruction as it was, it was grand!

But Grilly!  Where was he?  “Ah, Grilly, Grilly!” cried I, “I fear he is lost!”

“Come, come!” said Pippity.  “Where’s Grilly?  Find Grilly!  Quick, quick!”

But there was some rough country to get over.  Gaps, masses of uprooted trees, rocks, earth and vegetation mingled in confusion.

At last we arrived at home—­no, not home!  Nothing but a heap of ruins!

And where was Grilly?  We searched, but found him not.  We called, and called again; but answer there came none.

Pippity, with a shrill and deafening cry uttered ceaselessly:  “Grilly!  Grilly!  Grilly!  Grilly!”

But answer there came none.

And all the next day we sought, and still poor Pippity cried, “Grilly! 
Grilly!”

But the dead, the lost, answer not.

* * * * *

A home we had no longer.  Where once stood magnificence, ruin now stared us in the face.

“Pippity!” I said to poor Polly, “we will leave this once glorious spot.  Our home is desolate.  It is home no longer.  Let us seek new scenes in other lands.”

“Where shall we go?” asked Pippity—­and if a parrot could shed tears he would have shed them.

“We will go to the abodes of men.  We will go among civilized people.”

“I, too, Frank.  I, too!  Call Gr——!”

“Say no more, Pippity!  Strive to forget.”

For seventeen days we traversed the mountains, picking up a scanty subsistence by the way.  Pippity was considerably frightened by the condors that really seemed to threaten us when we reached great elevations; and I was astonished at the remains of the once stupendous works of the ancient dwellers in this land.  Bridges stretching from mountain to mountain, over immense, deep valleys, attested the knowledge and power of that singular race.

Later, we began to meet people; a hut here and another there, with miles between.  Pippity was quite at a loss to know what to make of such persons as we met.  When two or more happened to be conversing together, it was utterly incomprehensible to him how they could understand one another.

“What jargon is this?” he evidently tried to say, “that these people are all the time jabbering?  It is nothing but an unmeaning chattering of monkeys.  Can it be possible that they know what they are babbling?  And you understand that gibberish, too?”