“No, no, father,” cried Chris; “not so far as that. I haven’t forgotten all my geography since I’ve been here, and I know that there are plenty of desert regions such as that poor fellow may have been wandering in between here and Panama.”
“Hear, hear!” cried Griggs. “But give us one or two, squire.”
Chris grew red and uncomfortable, but he caught his father’s eye looking keenly at him, and he spoke out.
“I don’t know about being exactly south,” he said. “Perhaps some of the places lie east; but the old man might have been wandering in the mountainous parts of Colorado or Lower California, or—or—”
“New Mexico,” whispered Ned.
“Yes, New Mexico, or California, or perhaps have got to Mexico itself.”
“Well done, our side!” cried Griggs, thumping the table. “Three cheers for our own private professor of geography. To be sure, there’s desert land in all those places, as I’ve learned myself from fellows who have been there. But what’s Arizona done to be left out in the cold?”
“In the sun, you mean,” cried Chris eagerly. “That’s the hottest and dryest place of all of them.”
“To be sure,” said the doctor—“the arid zone.”
“Dessay it’s true,” said Griggs. “I vote we go and see.”