I was allowed to retain my
blankets, and the few things which I had wrapped inside them, but it was
plain that I was to consider myself a prisoner--for how long a period I
could not by any means determine. He then left me alone.
CHAPTER VIII: IN PRISON
And now for the first time my courage completely failed me. It is enough
to say that I was penniless, and a prisoner in a foreign country, where I
had no friend, nor any knowledge of the customs or language of the
people. I was at the mercy of men with whom I had little in common. And
yet, engrossed as I was with my extremely difficult and doubtful
position, I could not help feeling deeply interested in the people among
whom I had fallen. What was the meaning of that room full of old
machinery which I had just seen, and of the displeasure with which the
magistrate had regarded my watch? The people had very little machinery
now. I had been struck with this over and over again, though I had not
been more than four-and-twenty hours in the country. They were about as
far advanced as Europeans of the twelfth or thirteenth century; certainly
not more so. And yet they must have had at one time the fullest
knowledge of our own most recent inventions.
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