We were not prepared to show
our way was better.
There was growing in our minds, at least in Jeff's and mine,
a keen appreciation of the advantages of this strange country and
its management. Terry remained critical. We laid most of it to his
nerves. He certainly was irritable.
The most conspicuous feature of the whole land was the
perfection of its food supply. We had begun to notice from that
very first walk in the forest, the first partial view from our 'plane.
Now we were taken to see this mighty garden, and shown its
methods of culture.
The country was about the size of Holland, some ten or
twelve thousand square miles. One could lose a good many Hollands
along the forest-smothered flanks of those mighty mountains.
They had a population of about three million--not a large
one, but quality is something. Three million is quite enough to
allow for considerable variation, and these people varied more
widely than we could at first account for.
Terry had insisted that if they were parthenogenetic they'd
be as alike as so many ants or aphids; he urged their visible
differences as proof that there must be men--somewhere.
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