DR MOHL
FROM THE OIL PAINTING PRESENTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF DORPOTT BY HIS MAJESTY WILLIAM II, EMPEROR AND KING
Even the neglected museum of Theoretical Geography received, for the first time in forty years, a daily influx of visitors eager to behold the raised map of the M’Korio Delta. The absolute flatness, and consequent ease of cultivation, of the region could not be better appreciated than in this graphic form.
Two rival hosiers, having each patented a type of collar under the name of “The M’Korio,” went to law to decide which should have the right of using so valuable a title. The case was reported at great length, and aroused the widest interest and discussion. It is one of his many acts of private generosity, so few of which I have been able to record in this book, that Mr Barnett recouped the loser of this action for his trouble and expense out of his own pocket, and gave him a handsome present beside.
Finally, in a brochure of the utmost interest, based upon vast research, and expressed with admirable economy of proof, Dr Mohl, of the University of Dorpott, conclusively identified the Delta with the Sheol of the Old Testament.
I would it were my lot to set down nothing save the positive side of this wave of success; but I owe it to Mr Barnett, and also to the truth, to touch upon such opposition as the movement encountered.
This opposition was not always consciously exerted. It existed none the less.
An article appeared in a German Review advocating the purchase of the Delta by Germany, with one of whose colonies it was coterminous. The wound it dealt was the deeper from the fact that Mr Barnett’s own second cousin, Baron Bloch, was the author of the article, which appeared above his pseudonym of “Sympathicus.” It was good to hear the outburst of indignation with which this proposal was met in England. We were saved by the rally of our own blood to our side. The article “Git,” which appeared in the principal American newspaper in London, was undoubtedly the turning point, after which the City and the banking interest determined to support what was feared at the time to be the vacillating policy of the Government.
Owing to the persistence of a very wealthy private member, whom no arguments could mollify, unexpected difficulties arose in the transference of the Delta from the Foreign to the Colonial Office, a trifling but necessary formality which could not be accomplished till much later, in August, when the close season for grouse was at an end.
BARON BLOCH
(FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY M. M. BALLARU ET CIE., 147 bis, RUE ST. LOUP. LES CLICHÉS SONT LA PROPRIÉTÉ EXCLUSIVE DE LA MAISON)