128 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. 



"You are hired to dig, sir — that is all. We need your muscle, not your brains. 

 When we want your opinion on scientific matters, we will hasten to let you know. 

 Your coolness, is intolerable, too — loafing about here meddling with august matters 

 of learning, when the other laborers are pitching camp. Go along and help handle 

 the baggage." 



The Tumble-Bug turned on his heel uncrushed, unabashed, observing to himself, 

 " If it isn't land tilted up, let me die the death of the unrighteous." 



Professor Bull Frog, (nephew of the late explorer,) said he believed the ridge 

 was the wall that enclosed the earth. He continued: 



" Our fathers have left us much learning, but they had not traveled far, and so 

 we may count this a noble new discpvery. We are safe for renown, now, even 

 though our labors began and ended with this single achievement. I wonder what 

 this wall is built of .' Can it be fungus ? Fungus is an honorable good thing to 

 build a wall of." 



Professor Snail adjusted his field-glass and examined the rampart critically. 

 Finally he said : 



" The fact that it is not diaphanous, convinces me that it is a dense vapor formed 

 by the calorification of ascending moisture dephlogisticated by refraction. A few 

 endiometrical experiments would confirm this, but it is not necessary. — The thing 

 is obvious." 



So he shut up his glass and went into his shell to make a note of the discovery 

 of the world's end, and the nature of it. 



"Profound mind!" said Professor Angle- Worm to Professor Field-Mouse; "pro- 

 found mind ! nothing can long remain a mystery to that august brain." 



Night drew on apace, the sentinel crickets were posted, the Glow Worm and 

 Fire-Fly lamps were lighted, and the camp sank to silence and sleep. After 

 breakfast in the morning, the expedition moved on. About noon a great avenue 

 was reached, which had in it two endless parallel bars of some kind of hard black 

 substance, raised the height of the tallest Bull Frog above the general level. The 

 scientists climbed up on these and examined and tested them in various ways. 

 They walked along them for a great distance, but found no end and no break in 

 them. They could arrive at no decision. There was nothing in the records of 



