You are looking at the HTML representation of the XML format.
HTML is good for debugging, but is unsuitable for application use.
Specify the format parameter to change the output format.
To see the non HTML representation of the XML format, set format=xml.
See the complete documentation, or API help for more information. 
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<api>
  <query-continue>
    <querypage qpoffset="10" />
  </query-continue>
  <query>
    <querypage name="Ancientpages">
      <results>
        <page value="20161210195521" timestamp="2016-12-10T19:55:21Z" ns="0" title="February 3, 2016" />
        <page value="20161210195941" timestamp="2016-12-10T19:59:41Z" ns="0" title="February 10, 2016" />
        <page value="20161210195953" timestamp="2016-12-10T19:59:53Z" ns="0" title="February 17, 2016" />
        <page value="20161210200004" timestamp="2016-12-10T20:00:04Z" ns="0" title="February 24, 2016" />
        <page value="20161210200218" timestamp="2016-12-10T20:02:18Z" ns="0" title="June 22, 2016" />
        <page value="20161210200224" timestamp="2016-12-10T20:02:24Z" ns="0" title="June 15, 2016" />
        <page value="20161210200233" timestamp="2016-12-10T20:02:33Z" ns="0" title="June 8, 2016" />
        <page value="20161210200239" timestamp="2016-12-10T20:02:39Z" ns="0" title="June 1, 2016" />
        <page value="20161210200916" timestamp="2016-12-10T20:09:16Z" ns="0" title="March 30, 2016" />
        <page value="20161210201107" timestamp="2016-12-10T20:11:07Z" ns="0" title="March 23, 2016" />
      </results>
    </querypage>
  </query>
</api>