The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 30, April, 1860 - Various 6 стр.

After a little while, as far as I can recollect, I rose and began to take the customary observations, marked the road by which I had come up the mountain, and planned a route for rejoining Herndon. But ere long all subordinate thoughts and actions seemed to be swallowed up in the great tide of thought and feeling that overmastered me. I scarcely remember anything from the time when the lake first burst upon my view, till I met Herndon again. But I know, that, as the day was nearly spent, I was obliged to give up the attempt to travel back that night, especially as I now began to feel the exhaustion attendant upon my long journey and fasting. I could not have slept among those rocks, eternal guardians of the mighty secret. The absence of all breathing, transitory existence but my own rendered it too solemn for me to dare to intrude there. So I went back to the forest, (I returned much quicker than I had come,) ate some supper, and, wrapped in a blanket I had brought with me, went to sleep under the arching branches of a tree. I have as little recollection of my next day's journey, except that I defined a diagonal and thus avoided the bend. I found Herndon waiting in front of the tent, rather impatient for my arrival.

"Halloo, old fellow!" he shouted, jumping up at seeing me, "I was really getting scared about you. Where have you been? What have you seen? What are our chances? Have you had any adventures? killed any lions, or anything? By-the-by, I had a narrow escape with one yesterday. Capital shot; but prudence is the better part of valor, you know. But, really," he said again, apparently struck by my abstraction of manner, "what have you seen?"

"I have found the source of the Nile," I said, simply.

Is it not strange, that, when we have a great thing to say, we are always compelled to speak so simply in monosyllables? Perhaps this, too, is an example of the law that continually reduces many to one,the unity giving the substance of the plurality; but as the heroes of the "Iliad" were obliged to repeat the messages of the gods literatim, so we must say a great thing as it comes to us, by itself. It is curious to me now, that I was not the least excited in announcing the discovery,not because I did not feel the force of it, but because my mind was so filled, so to speak, so saturated, with the idea, that it was perfectly even with itself, though raised to an immensely higher level. In smaller minds an idea seizes upon one part of them, thus inequalizing it with the rest, and so, throwing them off their balance, they are literally de-ranged (or disarranged) with excitement. It was so with Herndon. For a minute he stared at me in stupefied astonishment, and then burst into a torrent of incoherent congratulations.

"Why, Zeitzer!" he cried, "you are the lucky man, after all. Why, your fortune's made,you'll be the greatest man of the age. You must come to America; that is the place for appreciating such things. You'll have a Common-Council dinner in Boston, and a procession in New York. Your book will sell like wildfire. You'll be a lion of the first magnitude. Just think! The Man who discovered the Source of the Nile!"

I stood bewildered, like one suddenly awakened from sleep. The unusual excitement in one generally so self-possessed and indifferent as my companion made me wonder sufficiently; but these allusions to my greatness, my prospects, completely astounded me. What had I done,I who had been chosen, and led step by step, with little interference of my own, to this end? What did this talk of noise and clamorous notoriety mean?

"To think," Herndon ran on, "that you should have beaten me, after all! that you should have first seen, first drunk of, first bathed in"

"Drunk of! bathed in!" I repeated, mechanically. "Herndon, are you crazy? Would I dare to profane the sacred fountain?"

He made no reply, unless a quizzical smile might be considered as such,but drew me within the tent, out of hearing of the two Egyptians, and bade me give an account of my adventures. When I had finished,

"This is grand!" he exclaimed. "Now, if you will share the benefits of this discovery with me, I will halve the cost of starting that steamboat I spoke of, and our plan will soon be afloat. I shouldn't wonder, now, if one might not, in order to start the town, get up some kind of a little summer-pavilion there, on the top of the mountain,something on the plan of the Tip-Top House at Mount Washington, you know,hang the stars and stripes off the roof, if you're not particular, and call it The Teuton-American. That would give you your rightful priority, you see. By the beard of the Prophet, as they say in Cairo, the thing would take!"

I laughed heartily at this idea, and tried, at first in jest, then earnestly, to make him understand I had no such plans in connection with my discovery; that I only wanted to extend the amount of knowledge in the world,not the number of ice-cream pavilions. I offered to let him take the whole affair into his own hands,cost, profit, and all. I wanted nothing to do with it. But he was too honest, as he thought, for that, and still talked and argued,giving his most visionary plans a definite, tangible shape and substance by a certain process of metallicizing, until they had not merely elbowed away the last shadow of doubt, but had effectually taken possession of the whole ground, and seemed to be the only consequences possible upon such a discovery. My dislike to personal traffic in the sublimities of truth began to waver. I felt keenly the force of the argument which Herndon used repeatedly, that, if I did not thus claim the monopoly, (he talked almost as if I had invented something,) some one else would, and so injustice be added to what I had termed vulgarity. I felt that I must prevent injustice, at least. Besides, what should I have to show for all my trouble, (ah! little had I thought of "I" or my trouble a short time ago!)what should I have gained, after all,nay, what would there be gained for any one,if I merely announced my discovery, withoutstarting the steamboat? And though I did feebly query whether I should be equally bound to establish a communication, with pecuniary emolument, to the North Pole, in case I discovered that, his remark, that this was the Nile, and had nothing to do with the North Pole, was so forcible and pertinent, that I felt ashamed of my suggestion; and upon second thought, that idea of the dinner and procession really had a good deal in it. I had been in New York, and knew the length of Broadway; and at the recollection, felt flattered by the thought of being conveyed in an open chariot drawn by four or even eight horses, with nodding plumes, (literal ones for the horses,only metaphorical ones for me,) past those stately buildings fluttering with handkerchiefs, and through streets black with people thronging to see the man who had solved the riddle of Africa. And then it would be pleasant, too, to make a neat little speech to the Common Council,letting the brave show catch its own tail in its mouth, by proving, that, if America did not achieve everything, she could appreciateyes, appreciate was the wordthose who did. Yes, this would be a fitting consummation; I would do it.

But, ah! how dim became the vision of that quiet lake on the summit of the mountain! How that vivid lightning-revelation faded into obscurity! Was Pharaoh again ascending his fatal chariot?

The next day we started for the ascent. We determined to follow the course of the river backwards around the bend and set out from my former starting-point, as any other course might lead us into a hopeless dilemma. We had no difficulty in finding the sandy plain, and soon reached landmarks which I was sure were on the right road; but a tramp of six or eight hoursstill in the road I had passed beforebrought us no nearer to our goal. In short, we wandered three days in that desert, utterly in vain. My heart sunk within me at every failure; with sickening anxiety I scanned the horizon at every point, but nothing was visible but stunted bushes and white pebbles glistening in the glaring sand.

But, ah! how dim became the vision of that quiet lake on the summit of the mountain! How that vivid lightning-revelation faded into obscurity! Was Pharaoh again ascending his fatal chariot?

The next day we started for the ascent. We determined to follow the course of the river backwards around the bend and set out from my former starting-point, as any other course might lead us into a hopeless dilemma. We had no difficulty in finding the sandy plain, and soon reached landmarks which I was sure were on the right road; but a tramp of six or eight hoursstill in the road I had passed beforebrought us no nearer to our goal. In short, we wandered three days in that desert, utterly in vain. My heart sunk within me at every failure; with sickening anxiety I scanned the horizon at every point, but nothing was visible but stunted bushes and white pebbles glistening in the glaring sand.

The fourth day came,and Herndon at last stopped short, and said, in his steady, immobile voice,

"Zeitzer, you must have made this grand discovery in your dreams. There is no Nile up this way,and our water-skins are almost dry. We had better return and follow up the course of the river where we left it. If we again fail, I shall return to Egypt to carry out my plan for converting the Pyramids into ice-houses. They are excellently well adapted for the purpose, and in that country a good supply of ice is a desideratum. Indeed, if my plan meets with half the success it deserves, the antiquaries two centuries hence will conclude that ice was the original use of those structures."

"Shade of Cheops, forbid!" I exclaimed.

"Cheops be hanged!" returned my irreverent companion. "The world suffers too much now from overcrowded population to permit a man to claim standing-room three thousand years after his death,especially when the claim is for some acres apiece, as in the case of these pyramid-builders. Will you go back with me?"

I declined for various reasons, not all very clear even to myself; but I was convinced that his peculiar enticements were the cause of our failure, and I hated him unreasonably for it. I longed to get rid of him, and of his influence over me. Fool that I was! I was the sinner, and not he; for he could not see, because he was born blind, while I fell with my eyes open. I still held on to the vague hope, that, were I alone, I might again find that mysterious lake; for I knew I had not dreamed. So we parted.

But we two (my servant and I) were not left long alone in the Desert. The next day a party of natives surprised us, and, after some desperate fighting, we were taken prisoners, sold as slaves from tribe to tribe into the interior, and at length fell into the hands of some traders on the western coast, who gave us our freedom. Unwilling, however, to return home without some definite success, I made several voyages in a merchant-vessel. But I was born for one purpose; failing in that, I had nothing further to live for. The core of my life was touched at that fatal river, and a subtile disease has eaten it out till nothing but the rind is left. A wave, gathering to the full its mighty strength, had upreared itself for a moment majestically above its fellows,falling, its scattered spray can only impotently sprinkle the dull, dreary shore. Broken and nerveless, I can only wait the lifting of the curtain, quietly wondering if a failure be always irretrievable,if a prize once lost can never again be found.

AN EXPERIENCE

ABOUT THIEVES

It is recorded in the pages of Diodorus Siculus, that Actisanes, the Ethiopian, who was king of Egypt, caused a general search to be made for all Egyptian thieves, and that all being brought together, and the king having "given them a just hearing," he commanded their noses to be cut off,and, of course, what a king of Egypt commanded was done; so that all the Egyptian "knucks," "cracksmen," "shoplifters," and pilferers generally, of whatever description known to the slang terras of the time, became marked men.

Inspired, perhaps, with the very idea on which the Ethiopian acted, the police authorities have lately provided, that, in an out-of-the-way room, on a back street, the honest men of New York city may scan the faces of its thieves, and hold silent communion with that interesting part of the population which has agreed to defy the laws and to stand at issue with society. Without disturbing the deep pool of penalogy, or entering at all into the question, as to whether Actisanes was right, or whether the police of New York do not overstep their authority in putting on the walls this terrible bill of attainder against certain citizens of the United States, whom their country's constitution has endeavored to protect from "infamous punishments,"the student of moral science will certainly be thankful for the faces.

We do not remember ever having "opened" a place or picked a pocket. We have made puns, however; and so, upon the Johnsonian dictum, the thing is latent in us, and we feel the affinity. We do not hate thieves. We feel satisfied that even in the character of a man who does not respect ownership there may be much to admire. Sparkles of genius scintillate along the line of many a rogue's career. Many there are, it is true, who are obtuse and vicious below the mean,but a far greater number display skill and courage infinitely above it. Points of noble character, of every good as well as most base characteristics of the human race, will be found in the annals of thievery, when they are written aright.