It lay among surroundings both lovely and grand. The valley itself, only a few feet above sea-level and ?at as a Western prairie, was, then as now, rich almost beyond exaggeration, and green with all edible prod nots Of the lowlands. It was thickly dotted with grass huts, for in those times, before the great wars and centuries before the white strangers came with their loathsome diseases that consumed ?esh and bone, the population was dense.