hundred foot high, just a steep mountain, all built out
of hunks of stone as big as a bureau, and laid up
in perfectly regular layers, like stair-steps. Thirteen
acres, you see, for just one building; it’s a farm. If
it hadn’t been in Sunday-school, I would ‘a’ judged it
was a lie; and outside I was certain of it. And he
said there was a hole in the pyramid, and you could go
in there with candles, and go ever so far up a long
slanting tunnel, and come to a large room in the
stomach of that stone mountain, and there you would
find a big stone chest with a king in it, four thousand
years old. I said to myself, then, if that ain’t a lie I
will eat that king if they will fetch him, for even
Methusalem warn’t that old, and nobody claims it.
As we come a little nearer we see the yaller sand
come to an end in a long straight edge like a blanket,
and on to it was joined, edge to edge, a wide country
of bright green, with a snaky stripe crooking through
it, and Tom said it was the Nile. It made my heart
jump again, for the Nile was another thing that wasn’t
real to me. Now I can tell you one thing which is
dead certain: if you will fool along over three thou-
sand miles of yaller sand, all glimmering with heat so
that it makes your eyes water to look at it, and you’ve
been a considerable part of a week doing it, the green
country will look so like home and heaven to you that
it will make your eyes water AGAIN.
It was just so with me, and the same with Jim.
And when Jim got so he could believe it WAS the
land of Egypt he was looking at, he wouldn’t enter it
standing up, but got down on his knees and took off
his hat, because he said it wasn’t fitten’ for a humble
poor nigger to come any other way where such men
had been as Moses and Joseph and Pharaoh and the
other prophets. He was a Presbyterian, and had a
most deep respect for Moses which was a Presbyterian,
too, he said. He was all stirred up, and says:
“Hit’s de lan’ of Egypt, de lan’ of Egypt, en I’s
‘lowed to look at it wid my own eyes! En dah’s de
river dat was turn’ to blood, en I’s looking at de very
same groun’ whah de plagues was, en de lice, en de
frogs, en de locus’, en de hail, en whah dey marked
de door-pos’, en de angel o’ de Lord come by in de
darkness o’ de night en slew de fust-born in all de lan’
o’ Egypt. Ole Jim ain’t worthy to see dis day!”
And then he just broke down and cried, he was so
thankful. So between him and Tom there was talk
enough, Jim being excited because the land was so full
of history — Joseph and his brethren, Moses in the
bulrushers, Jacob coming down into Egypt to buy
corn, the silver cup in the sack, and all them interesting
things; and Tom just as excited too, because the land
was so full of history that was in HIS line, about
Noureddin, and Bedreddin, and such like monstrous
giants, that made Jim’s wool rise, and a raft of other
Arabian Nights folks, which the half of them never
done the things they let on they done, I don’t believe.
Then we struck a disappointment, for one of them
early morning fogs started up, and it warn’t no use to
sail over the top of it, because we would go by Egypt,
sure, so we judged it was best to set her by compass
straight for the place where the pyramids was gitting
blurred and blotted out, and then drop low and skin
along pretty close to the ground and keep a sharp
lookout. Tom took the hellum, I stood by to let go
the anchor, and Jim he straddled the bow to dig
through the fog with his eyes and watch out for danger