“Then why did we come?” cried Chris.
“Just to make sure, my lad. That’s the sort of thing we shall have to do: keep on trying, and always expecting we are not right.”
“Oh!” cried Ned impatiently.
“Ah, you may ‘Oh,’ my lad, but that’s the way to succeed. We shall go about to hundreds of places before we’ve done, and out of those hundreds there’s only one can be right, and it isn’t natural to expect that it will be ready for us at the start. There’s no hurry.”
“No hurry?” cried the boy, staring.
“Not a bit. You chaps are a long way off twenty yet, and if you find the gold city before you’re seventy you’ll do well.”
“Hark at him!” cried Chris merrily. “Griggs turned philosopher. What about you then? You’re past thirty.”
“Ever so much,” said the American, “but I don’t mind if I never find it. This life’s quite good enough for me.”
“Do you mean to tell me that you don’t want to find the old city?” cried Chris.
“No, of course not. I should like to find it, my lads, and be a rich man; but I shan’t break my heart if we never go near the place. We shall have travelled half over America and seen plenty of the country. That’s good enough for a man who only wants to live.”