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Tom Sawyer Abroad 133
village. Jim, you and the guide will go and get it, and me and Huck will camp here on Mount Sinai till you come back."
"But, Mars Tom, we couldn't ever find de village. I could find de pipe, 'case I knows de kitchen, but my Ian', we can't ever find de village, nur Sent Louis, nur none o' dem places. We don't know de way, Mars Tom."
That was a fact, and it stumped Tom for a minute. Then he said:
" Looky here, it can be done, sure; and I'll tell you how. You set your compass and sail west as straight as a dart, till you find the United States. It ain't any trouble, because it's the first land you'll strike the other side of the Atlantic. If it's daytime when you strike it, bulge right on, straight west from the upper part of the Florida coast, and in an hour and three quarters you'll hit the mouth of the Mississippi — at the speed that I'm going to send you. You'll be so high up in the air that the earth will be curved considerable — sorter like a washbowl turned upside down — and you'll see a raft of rivers crawling around every which way, long before you get there, and you can pick out the Mississippi without any trouble. Then you can follow the river north nearly, an hour and three quarters, till you see the Ohio come in; then you want to look sharp, because you're getting near. Away up to your left you'll see another thread coming in — that's the Missouri and is a little above St. Louis. You'll come down low then, so as you can examine the villages as |
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