CHAPTER XX
THE LAST OF CAPTAIN MAZAGAN
Captain Ringgold was very much delighted with the success which had attended his efforts to interest his passengers; for he never lost sight of the instructive feature of the voyage. None of his party were scientists in a technical sense in the studies which occupied them, though Dr. Hawkes and Professor Giroud were such in their occupation at home; but they were all well-educated persons in the ordinary use of the term.
They were not Egyptologists, philosophers, theologians, zoölogists, biblical critics, ethnologists, or devoted to any special studies; they were ordinary seekers after knowledge in all its varieties. The everyday facts, events, and scenes, as presented to them in their present migratory existence, were the staple topics of thought and study. Though none of the party ascended to the higher flights of scientific inquiry, the commander endeavored to make use of the discoveries and conclusions of the learned men of the present and the past.
He was eminently a practical man, and practical knowledge was his aim; and he endeavored to lead the conferences in this direction. The building of the piers at Port Said, and the construction of the canal, as meagrely described by the magnate of the Fifth Avenue, were the kind of subjects he believed in; and he had a sort of mild contempt for one who could discourse learnedly over a polype, and did not know the difference between a sea mile and a statute mile.
"Do you believe in the explanation of that Dutchman you mentioned, Captain Ringgold?" asked Mr. Woolridge, at the close of the conference.
"What Dutchman?" inquired the commander. "I do not remember that I alluded to any Dutchman."
"I mean the man who says that Pharaoh's army perished in the lake where the weeds and papyrus grew," the magnate explained.
"Brugsch? He was not a Dutchman; he was a German."
"It is all the same thing; I have been in the habit of calling a German a Dutchman."