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CHAPTER VIII: IN PRISON

nd now for the first time my courage completely failed
Ame. It is enough to say that I was penniless, and a pris-
oner 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 interest-
ed 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 machin-
ery 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 Euro-
peans 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. How could it
have happened that having been once so far in advance they
were now as much behind us? It was evident that it was not
from ignorance. They knew my watch as a watch when they
saw it; and the care with which the broken machines were
preserved and ticketed, proved that they had not lost the
recollection of their former civilisation. The more I thought,
the less I could understand it; but at last I concluded that

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