“Indeed? And, pray, how long since has it been that you would, with at least equal positivity, have declared it impossible to enter a tornado while in wildest career, yet emerge from it with life and limb intact?”
“Yes, uncle, but—this is different, by far.”
“In one sense, yes; in another, no,” affirmed the professor, with emphatic nod, brushing the tips of his fingers together, as he moved back to assume a more comfortable position inside the air-ship, then quickly preparing a pipe and tobacco for his regular after-meal smoke.
A brief silence, then the professor spoke, clearly, distinctly:
“Washington has her great unknown land, quite as much as has the interior of Darkest Africa, my boys, besides enjoying this peculiar advantage: while adventurous white men have traversed those benighted regions in every direction, even though little permanent good may have been accomplished, this terra incognita remains virgin in that particular sense of the word.”
“You mean, uncle?”
“That here in the Olympic region you see what is literally an unknown, unexplored scope of country, as foreign to the foot of mankind as it was countless ages gone by. So far as history reads, neither white man nor red has ever ventured fairly within these limits; a mountainous waste which rises from the level country, within ten or fifteen miles of the Straits of San Juan de Fuca, in the north, the Pacific Ocean in the west, Hood's Canal in the east, and the barren sand-hills lying to the far south.
“This irregular range is known upon the map as the Olympics, and, rising to the height of from six to eight thousand feet, shut in a vast unexplored area.
“The Indians have never penetrated it, so far as can be ascertained, for their traditions say that it is inhabited by a very fierce tribe of warriors, before whose might and strange weapons not one of the coast tribes can stand.”
“One of the Lost Tribes of Israel, shouldn't wonder,” drawlingly volunteered Waldo, stifling a yawn, and forced to rub his inflamed eyes with a surreptitious paw.