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"You are neither welcome nor unwelcome. I do not trouble myself with the living tribes that come down to my waters. I have my own people, of an older race than yours, that grow to mightier dimensions than your mastodons and elephants; more numerous than all the swarms that fill the air or move over the thin crust of the earth. Who are you that build your palaces on my margin?
On each side of the mastodons’ heads, which form so prominent a feature in the ornaments of the oldest edifices at Uxmal, Chichen-Itza and other parts, the word Dapas; hence TABAS is written in ancient Egyptian characters, and read, I presume, in old Maya, head. To-day the word is pronounced THAB, and means baldness.
From the first this odd conception had engaged my curiosity, purely for its fanciful side, and one evening, in alluding to it, I made the not very profound remark that Imagination had no anatomy. "They are true beasts," said Dinah. "They are the mastodons of Cuvier, no doubt; but, then, Cuvier never saw a mastodon, you know." "But I have; and I tell you Griset and Cuvier are very nearly right."
The fellow pitted against Juag was a veritable giant; he was hacking and hewing away at the poor slave with a villainous-looking knife that might have been designed for butchering mastodons. Step by step, he was forcing Juag back toward the edge of the cliff with a fiendish cunning that permitted his adversary no chance to side-step the terrible consequences of retreat in this direction.
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