Americans -- Europe -- Fiction; Europe -- Fiction; Humorous stories; Walking -- Fiction
"He'd MAKE trade," said Harris. "That's the difference between
governments and individuals. Governments don't care, individuals do. Tom
Scott would take all the trade; in two years Gorner stock would go to
two hundred, and inside of two more you would see all the other glaciers
under the hammer for taxes." After a reflective pause, Harris added, "A
little less than an inch a day; a little less than an INCH, mind you.
Well, I'm losing my reverence for glaciers."
I was feeling much the same way myself. I have traveled by canal-boat,
ox-wagon, raft, and by the Ephesus and Smyrna railway; but when it comes
down to good solid honest slow motion, I bet my money on the glacier. As
a means of passenger transportation, I consider the glacier a failure;
but as a vehicle of slow freight, I think she fills the bill. In the
matter of putting the fine shades on that line of business, I judge she
could teach the Germans something.
I ordered the men to break camp and prepare for the land journey to
Zermatt. At this moment a most interesting find was made; a dark object,
bedded in the glacial ice, was cut out with the ice-axes, and it proved
to be a piece of the undressed skin of some animal--a hair trunk,
perhaps; but a close inspection disabled the hair-trunk theory, and
further discussion and examination exploded it entirely--that is, in the
opinion of all the scientists except the one who had advanced it. This
one clung to his theory with affectionate fidelity characteristic of
originators of scientific theories, and afterward won many of the first
scientists of the age to his view, by a very able pamphlet which he
wrote, entitled, "Evidences going to show that the hair trunk, in a wild
state, belonged to the early glacial period, and roamed the wastes of
chaos in the company with the cave-bear, primeval man, and the other
Ooelitics of the Old Silurian family."
Each of our scientists had a theory of his own, and put forward
an animal of his own as a candidate for the skin. I sided with the
geologist of the Expedition in the belief that this patch of skin had
once helped to cover a Siberian elephant, in some old forgotten age--but
we divided there, the geologist believing that this discovery proved
that Siberia had formerly been located where Switzerland is now, whereas
I held the opinion that it merely proved that the primeval Swiss was not
the dull savage he is represented to have been, but was a being of high
intellectual development, who liked to go to the menagerie.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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