“I would suggest Majerona Hill,” said Hope-Jones.
“Would not Fort Pincushion be more appropriate?” asked the captain.
“Capital! Capital!” exclaimed the two men, and the boy blushed as he had done on the occasion when he felt the object in his pocket which had been pierced by the arrow.
Although the white rock, which had been their goal since leaving Callao, had seemed only a short distance from the fort, yet they were nearly half an hour reaching a point beneath its strange formation, and all four expressed astonishment at the brilliant, pearly white lustre. Ferguson was the first to touch the stone, and in passing his hand over the surface, he noticed that his finger nail left a mark.
“My, how soft it is! Almost as soft as soapstone! Can you tell us, Mr. Geologist, what manner of outcropping the Earth has given us here?”
Harvey, thus appealed to, took from his knapsack the little hammer which he had brought for such purpose, and knocking off a fragment, he examined it critically, then said:—
“It looks very much like alabaster.”
“Alabaster in these regions?”
“Yes, and it is not unusual. The stone is found near Cuzco, and it abounds in the Cordilleras of Chile. To be sure, the best quality comes from Tuscany, but excellent specimens abound in this interior region, and we have found an unusually large deposit.”
“It seems to me that I perceive a faint odor of lime,” said Hope-Jones.