Of course the Professor was quite equal to this demand upon his imagination.
“Mineral wealth? Probably immense. The mother lodes of the gold of Alaska have never been found. They lie north of Alaska; the geological extension of the mineral deposits of Alaska is naturally in that direction, and the enrichment of the primary crystallines with the precious metals can be reasonably asserted to surpass the mythical values of Golconda or California.”
“That suits me,” was Hopkins’ laconic comment.
At last the whole scheme was pretty thoroughly worked out, down to its details. Correspondence would be maintained during the summer. The Professor left for Christiania, Goritz and myself for Stockholm, and Hopkins steamed away to Hull on the English ship “North Cape.” Our conference had lasted just a week.
How wonderfully lovely was the day and scene when he left us that June morning three years ago. If portents of our success could be discerned in its delicious, enveloping glory of light and beauty, then surely we might be hopeful. The great gulls were sweeping with deep undulations through the upper sky, exulting in their splendid power, the summer wind faintly stirred the dark spruces, whose gentle expostulation at its intrusion reached us with a sound like the washing of waves on a faraway shore. The granite rocks of peak and cliff flashed back the unchecked sunlight; the road, like a white ribbon, spun its loops to and fro over the hillside, through meads where the glistening red farm houses stood, that seemed like rubies set in an emerald shield while the waters of the fiord slumbered at our feet, a liquid mass of beryl.
It now seems to me as if a quarter of a century had passed since then. And, if events are the measure of duration to the subjective sense, it might seem even farther away. I recall Spruce Hopkins, radiant and handsome, amid a throng of new acquaintances—he gathered friends about him as frankly and quickly as roses attract bees—among whom not a few young women offered him their mute but eloquent admiration; I remember him leaning over the rail of the steamer’s deck and reciting in a rollicking drawl:
“When the sea rolled its fathomless billows
Across the broad plains of Nebraska;
When around the North Pole grew bananas and willows,
And mastodons fought with the great armadillos,