“No: that was true enough,” replied Brace thoughtfully.
“So’s this. I’ve dreamed about it for years, and I mean to find it yet.”
“Why, you surprise me. I thought it was the temple of natural history which you used as your place of worship.”
“So I do, but I’ve got the golden city behind all that.”
“Nonsense! It is, as you said just now, merely a dream.”
“Perhaps.”
“Where is it to be found? You did not fancy it was up the Orinoco, did you, when you planned to go up there?”
“Yes, either there or up here,” said Briscoe. “Don’t you understand that it must be on the banks of some river out of the bed of which the Indians could wash gold?”
“No. I should have thought it would be close to some mountain out of which the old people could dig gold.”
“Then I shouldn’t,” said Briscoe. “The first gold-finders found it in the beds of the streams down which it had been washed. That’s what I think, and I determined to come up and examine the South American rivers till I found the right one. I meant to go up the Orinoco; but the Amazons did just as well. It might be there, but it’s just as likely to be here, and—”