TOM DISCOURSES ON THE DESERT

STILL, we thought we would drop down there a

minute, but on another errand. Most of the professor’s cargo of food was put up in cans, in the new

way that somebody had just invented; the rest was

fresh. When you fetch Missouri beefsteak to the

Great Sahara, you want to be particular and stay up

in the coolish weather. So we reckoned we would

drop down into the lion market and see how we could

make out there.

We hauled in the ladder and dropped down till we

was just above the reach of the animals, then we let

down a rope with a slip-knot in it and hauled up a

dead lion, a small tender one, then yanked up a cub

tiger. We had to keep the congregation off with the

revolver, or they would ‘a’ took a hand in the proceed-ings and helped.

We carved off a supply from both, and saved the

skins, and hove the rest overboard. Then we baited

some of the professor’s hooks with the fresh meat and

went a-fishing. We stood over the lake just a con-venient distance above the water, and catched a lot of

the nicest fish you ever see. It was a most amazing

good supper we had; lion steak, tiger steak, fried fish,

and hot corn-pone. I don’t want nothing better than

that.

We had some fruit to finish off with. We got it out

of the top of a monstrous tall tree. It was a very slim

tree that hadn’t a branch on it from the bottom plumb

to the top, and there it bursted out like a feather-duster. It was a pa’m-tree, of course; anybody knows

a pa’m-tree the minute he see it, by the pictures. We

went for cocoanuts in this one, but there warn’t none.

There was only big loose bunches of things like over-sized grapes, and Tom allowed they was dates, because

he said they answered the description in the Arabian

Nights and the other books. Of course they mightn’t

be, and they might be poison; so we had to wait a

spell, and watch and see if the birds et them. They

done it; so we done it, too, and they was most amazing good.

By this time monstrous big birds begun to come and

settle on the dead animals. They was plucky creturs;

they would tackle one end of a lion that was being

gnawed at the other end by another lion. If the lion

drove the bird away, it didn’t do no good; he was

back again the minute the lion was busy.

The big birds come out of every part of the sky —

you could make them out with the glass while they was

still so far away you couldn’t see them with your naked

eye. Tom said the birds didn’t find out the meat was

there by the smell; they had to find it out by seeing

it. Oh, but ain’t that an eye for you! Tom said at

the distance of five mile a patch of dead lions couldn’t

look any bigger than a person’s finger-nail, and he

couldn’t imagine how the birds could notice such a

little thing so far off.

It was strange and unnatural to see lion eat lion,

and we thought maybe they warn’t kin. But Jim said

that didn’t make no difference. He said a hog was

fond of her own children, and so was a spider, and he

reckoned maybe a lion was pretty near as unprincipled

though maybe not quite. He thought likely a lion

wouldn’t eat his own father, if he knowed which was

him, but reckoned he would eat his brother-in-law if

he was uncommon hungry, and eat his mother-in-law

any time. But RECKONING don’t settle nothing. You

can reckon till the cows come home, but that don’t

fetch you to no decision. So we give it up and let it

drop.

Generly it was very still in the Desert nights, but this

time there was music. A lot of other animals come to

dinner; sneaking yelpers that Tom allowed was jackals,

and roached-backed ones that he said was hyenas; and

all the whole biling of them kept up a racket all the

time. They made a picture in the moonlight that was

more different than any picture I ever see. We had a

line out and made fast to the top of a tree, and didn’t

stand no watch, but all turned in and slept; but I was

up two or three times to look down at the animals and

hear the music. It was like having a front seat at a

menagerie for nothing, which I hadn’t ever had before,

and so it seemed foolish to sleep and not make the

most of it; I mightn’t ever have such a chance

again.

We went a-fishing again in the early dawn, and then

lazied around all day in the deep shade on an island,

taking turn about to watch and see that none of the

animals come a-snooping around there after erronorts

for dinner. We was going to leave the next day, but

couldn’t, it was too lovely.

The day after, when we rose up toward the sky and

sailed off eastward, we looked back and watched that

place till it warn’t nothing but just a speck in the

Desert, and I tell you it was like saying good-bye to a

friend that you ain’t ever going to see any more.

Jim was thinking to himself, and at last he says:

“Mars Tom, we’s mos’ to de end er de Desert now,

I speck.”

“Why?”

“Well, hit stan’ to reason we is. You knows how

long we’s been a-skimmin’ over it. Mus’ be mos’ out

o’ san’. Hit’s a wonder to me dat it’s hilt out as long

as it has.”

“Shucks, there’s plenty sand, you needn’t worry.”

“Oh, I ain’t a-worryin’, Mars Tom, only wonderin’,

dat’s all. De Lord’s got plenty san’, I ain’t doubtin’

dat; but nemmine, He ain’t gwyne to WAS’E it jist on

dat account; en I allows dat dis Desert’s plenty big

enough now, jist de way she is, en you can’t spread

her out no mo’ ‘dout was’in’ san’.”

“Oh, go ‘long! we ain’t much more than fairly

STARTED across this Desert yet. The United States is a

pretty big country, ain’t it? Ain’t it, Huck?”

“Yes,” I says, “there ain’t no bigger one, I don’t

reckon.”

“Well,” he says, “this Desert is about the shape

of the United States, and if you was to lay it down on

top of the United States, it would cover the land of

the free out of sight like a blanket. There’d be a little

corner sticking out, up at Maine and away up north-west, and Florida sticking out like a turtle’s tail, and

that’s all. We’ve took California away from the

Mexicans two or three years ago, so that part of the

Pacific coast is ours now, and if you laid the Great

Sahara down with her edge on the Pacific, she would

cover the United States and stick out past New York

six hundred miles into the Atlantic ocean.”

I say:

“Good land! have you got the documents for that,

Tom Sawyer?”

“Yes, and they’re right here, and I’ve been studying them. You can look for yourself. From New

York to the Pacific is 2,600 miles. From one end of

the Great Desert to the other is 3,200. The United

States contains 3,600,000 square miles, the Desert

contains 4,162,000. With the Desert’s bulk you could

cover up every last inch of the United States, and in

under where the edges projected out, you could tuck

England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Denmark, and all

Germany. Yes, sir, you could hide the home of the

brave and all of them countries clean out of sight under

the Great Sahara, and you would still have 2,000

square miles of sand left.”

“Well,” I says, “it clean beats me. Why, Tom,

it shows that the Lord took as much pains makin’ this

Desert as makin’ the United States and all them other

countries.”

Jim says: “Huck, dat don’ stan’ to reason. I

reckon dis Desert wa’n’t made at all. Now you take

en look at it like dis — you look at it, and see ef I’s

right. What’s a desert good for? ‘Taint good for

nuthin’. Dey ain’t no way to make it pay. Hain’t

dat so, Huck?”

“Yes, I reckon.”

“Hain’t it so, Mars Tom?”

“I guess so. Go on.”

“Ef a thing ain’t no good, it’s made in vain, ain’t it?”

“Yes.”

“NOW, den! Do de Lord make anything in vain?

You answer me dat.”

“Well — no, He don’t.”

“Den how come He make a desert?”

“Well, go on. How DID He come to make it?”

“Mars Tom, I b’lieve it uz jes like when you’s buildin’

a house; dey’s allays a lot o’ truck en rubbish lef’ over.

What does you do wid it? Doan’ you take en k’yart

it off en dump it into a ole vacant back lot? ‘Course.

Now, den, it’s my opinion hit was jes like dat — dat

de Great Sahara warn’t made at all, she jes HAPPEN’.”

I said it was a real good argument, and I believed it

was the best one Jim ever made. Tom he said the same,

but said the trouble about arguments is, they ain’t

nothing but THEORIES, after all, and theories don’t prove

nothing, they only give you a place to rest on, a spell,

when you are tuckered out butting around and around

trying to find out something there ain’t no way TO find

out. And he says:

“There’s another trouble about theories: there’s

always a hole in them somewheres, sure, if you look

close enough. It’s just so with this one of Jim’s.

Look what billions and billions of stars there is. How

does it come that there was just exactly enough star-stuff, and none left over? How does it come there

ain’t no sand-pile up there?”

But Jim was fixed for him and says:

“What’s de Milky Way? — dat’s what I want to

know. What’s de Milky Way? Answer me dat!”

In my opinion it was just a sockdologer. It’s only

an opinion, it’s only MY opinion and others may think

different; but I said it then and I stand to it now — it

was a sockdologer. And moreover, besides, it landed

Tom Sawyer. He couldn’t say a word. He had that

stunned look of a person that’s been shot in the back

with a kag of nails. All he said was, as for people

like me and Jim, he’d just as soon have intellectual

intercourse with a catfish. But anybody can say that

— and I notice they always do, when somebody has

fetched them a lifter. Tom Sawyer was tired of that

end of the subject.

So we got back to talking about the size of the

Desert again, and the more we compared it with this

and that and t’other thing, the more nobler and bigger

and grander it got to look right along. And so, hunting among the figgers, Tom found, by and by, that it

was just the same size as the Empire of China. Then

he showed us the spread the Empire of China made on

the map, and the room she took up in the world.

Well, it was wonderful to think of, and I says:

“Why, I’ve heard talk about this Desert plenty of

times, but I never knowed before how important she

was.”

Then Tom says:

“Important! Sahara important! That’s just the

way with some people. If a thing’s big, it’s important.

That’s all the sense they’ve got. All they can see is

SIZE. Why, look at England. It’s the most important

country in the world; and yet you could put it in

China’s vest-pocket; and not only that, but you’d

have the dickens’s own time to find it again the next

time you wanted it. And look at Russia. It spreads

all around and everywhere, and yet ain’t no more important in this world than Rhode Island is, and hasn’t

got half as much in it that’s worth saving.”

Away off now we see a little hill, a-standing up just

on the edge of the world. Tom broke off his talk, and

reached for a glass very much excited, and took a look,

and says:

“That’s it — it’s the one I’ve been looking for,

sure. If I’m right, it’s the one the dervish took the

man into and showed him all the treasures.”

So we begun to gaze, and he begun to tell about it

out of the Arabian Nights.

CHAPTER X.