“Well, it is a kind of an anomaly, I believe,” the general answered, looking up at his daughter with a smile. “The Aztecs, you are aware, dressed chiefly in cotton. Even their defensive armor was of cotton, thickly quilted. Their ornaments were feathers, and embroidery of gold and precious stones. But wool, for some reason, they didn’t wear; and yet this garment, as you can see for yourself, is pure wool; and that it is also pure Aztecan is beyond question.”
“Admitting that, what clue does it give to the treasure?”
“You must ask Kamaiakan,” said Miriam: “only, he wouldn’t tell you.”
“Possibly,” the professor suggested, “the place where the treasure is hidden is the place whence the water is to flow out; and the water is the treasure.”
“Seriously, do you suppose that such a phenomenon as the return of an inland sea is physically practicable?” asked Trednoke.
“No phenomenon, in this part of the world, would surprise me,” returned Meschines. “The Colorado might break its barriers; or it is conceivable that some huge stream, taking its rise in the heights hundreds of miles north and east of us, may be flowing through subterranean passages into the sea, emerging from the sea-bottom hundreds of miles to the westward. Now, if a rattling good earthquake were to happen along, you might awake in the morning to find yourself on an island, or even under water.”
“A moderate Mediterranean would satisfy me,” the general said. “I wouldn’t exchange the certainty of it for the treasures of Montezuma.”
“The thirst for gold and for water are synonymous in your case?”
“Give this section a moist climate, and I needn’t tell you that the Great American Desert would literally blossom as the rose. Even as it is, I expect a great deal of it will be redeemed by scientific irrigation. The soil only needs water to become inexhaustibly productive. Our desert, as you know, is not sand, like parts of the Sahara; it has all the ingredients that go to nourish plants, only their present powdery condition makes them unavailable. Now, I can, to-day, buy a hundred square miles of desert for a few dollars. You see the point, don’t you?”
“And all you want is expert opinion as to the likelihood of finding water?”