In Search of an Unknown Race — page 110: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

100 VAN. here give, Mr. Briscoe, whose dress was very much like that affected by a well-to-do Calcutta merchant, explained as they walked along. The wealthiest part of the city was built on gently ascending slopes, against the side of Escomada. Here, situated in a perfect wilderness of the most luxuriant growth of tropic vegetation that ever gladdened the heart and eyes of a lover of the beautiful, was Mr. Briscoe’s home. Like many of those in South America, the flat-roofed structure was built around a square courtyard, entered by arches beneath the upper rooms. Every chamber opened upon a balcony looking down into the yard, where a fountain perpetually sent up its silvery jets among great aloes and tree ferns in stone vases almost as old as the pyramids of Egypt. The wide veranda, commanding a view of the city and fertile valley, was a mass of odorous blossoming foliage, such as no other clime could produce. Van’s heart was beating considerably faster than usual. And ashe followed Mr. Briscoe in silence up a flight of stone steps, worn in little hollows by the feet of successive generations, hardly knowing whether he was on his head or his heels, he stopped with a little exclamation. Now just here I have to hesitate fora moment. For when Van’s notebook speaks of suddenly coming upon the most beautiful young girl he had ever dreamed of seeing, I have to pause. But I have seen Ninada her- self, after all. And perhaps I can imagine how she ap-_ peared to Van’s delighted and astonished gaze as she stepped forward, without the slightest seeming embar- Eomicbooksnre