While Field continued to paddle and float
down the river, I dismounted and followed along the bank, trying to
encourage him to renewed efforts to float ashore. Finally he passed
behind a clump of willows out of sight; but soon I heard him call for
help and on going a little further down, found him stuck fast in the
mud. I waded waist deep into that mud, and literally dragged him out,
almost a mile below his starting point.
As we were struggling in this muddy swamp, Field said he wondered why
some of this superfluous water was not distributed over those dry
deserts from which we had so recently come. I told him, politely, that I
thought that a man of his age, ability, opportunities, and nationality,
(you know he was quite proud of being an Englishman) ought to know why
the moisture was not so distributed, and that I was too illiterate to
enlighten him on that point, but that, when opportunity offered, he
might consult some one who knew more of natural science than I did. I
informed him that I had an idea that if any considerable portion of the
water of that river had been distributed over that desert that we would
not have had the experience of the last fifteen days, whereupon he very
plainly intimated that I did not have much sense, or, in other words, he
called me a d--d fool.
After reaching solid ground and resting for a little while, we returned
to the place from which he had started out on his perilous voyage, and
where I had hastily left my horse.
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