They all agreed this was the best plan, and, after making a circle above the deserted village, and noting no signs of life, the Mermaid was brought to a halt over the centre of the town, and about three hundred feet above it.  There the travelers would be comparatively safe.

It was deemed best to keep watch that night, and so, Mark, Jack, Bill and Tom took turns, though there was nothing for them to do, as not a thing happened.  With the first appearance of dawn Mr. Henderson gave orders to have the ship lowered, and it came to rest in the middle of what corresponded to a street in the queer mound village.

“Now to see what kind of people have lived here!” cried Jack.  “They must have been a queer lot.  Something like the Esquimaux, only they probably had more trouble keeping cool than the chaps up at the north pole do.”

Now that they were down among the mound houses, they saw that the dwellings were much larger than they had supposed.  They towered high above the boys’ heads, and some of them were large enough in area to have accomodated a company of soldiers.

“Say, the chaps who lived in these must have been some pumpkins,” said Jack.  “Why the ceilings are about fifteen feet high, and the doors almost the same!  Talk about giants!  I guess we’ve struck where they used to hang out, at any rate.”

The houses were a curious mixture of clay and soft stone.  There were doors, with big skins from animals as curtains, and the windows were devoid of glass.  Instead of stairs there were rude ladders, and the furniture in the mound houses was of the roughest kind.

There were fire-places in some of the houses, and the blackened and smoked walls showed that they must have been used.  In one or two of the houses clay dishes, most of them broken, were scattered about, and the size of them, in keeping with everything else, indicated that those who used them were of no small stature.

“Some of the bowls would do for bath tubs,” said Jack, as he came across one or two large ones.

By this time the professor, Bill and Tom had joined the boys, and the five went on with the exploring tour, while Washington and Andy remained in the ship to get breakfast.

“The inhabitants are evidently of a half-civilized race,” the professor said.  “Their houses, and the manner in which they live, show them to be allied to the Aztecs, though of course they are much larger than that race.”

“What’s bothering me,” Bill said, “is not so much what race they belong to, as what chance we’d stand in a race with them if they took it into their heads to chase after us.  I’ve read that them there Azhandled races——­”

“You mean the Aztecs,” interrupted the professor.

“Well the Aztecs, then.  But I’ve read they used to place their enemies on a stone altar and cut their hearts out.  Now I’m not hankerin’ after anything like that.”

“Don’t be foolish,” spoke Mr. Henderson.  “Wait until you meet some of the giants, if that is what they are, and then you can decide what to do.”