When the affairs of the audience were concluded Ko-tan suggested
that the son of Jad-ben-Otho might wish to visit the temple in
which were performed the religious rites coincident to the worship
of the Great God. And so the ape-man was conducted by the king
himself, followed by the warriors of his court, through the corridors
of the palace toward the northern end of the group of buildings
within the royal enclosure.
The temple itself was really a part of the palace and similar
in architecture. There were several ceremonial places of varying
sizes, the purposes of which Tarzan could only conjecture. Each had
an altar in the west end and another in the east and were oval in
shape, their longest diameter lying due east and west. Each was
excavated from the summit of a small hillock and all were without
roofs. The western altars invariably were a single block of stone
the top of which was hollowed into an oblong basin. Those at
the eastern ends were similar blocks of stone with flat tops and
these latter, unlike those at the opposite ends of the ovals were
invariably stained or painted a reddish brown, nor did Tarzan need
to examine them closely to be assured of what his keen nostrils
already had told him--that the brown stains were dried and drying
human blood.
Below these temple courts were corridors and apartments reaching
far into the bowels of the hills, dim, gloomy passages that Tarzan
glimpsed as he was led from place to place on his tour of inspection
of the temple.
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