e intellectual
intercourse with a catfish. But anybody can say that--and I notice they
always do, when somebody has fetched them a lifter. Tom Sawyer was tired
of that end of the subject.

So we got back to talking about the size of the Desert again, and the
more we compared it with this and that and t'other thing, the more
nobler and bigger and grander it got to look right along. And so,
hunting among the figgers, Tom found, by and by, that it was just the
same size as the Empire of China. Then he showed us the spread the
Empire of China made on the map, and the room she took up in the world.
Well, it was wonderful to think of, and I says:

"Why, I've heard talk about this Desert plenty of times, but I never
knowed before how important she was."

Then Tom says:

"Important! Sahara important! That's just the way with some people. If a
thing's big, it's important. That's all the sense they've got. All they
can see is SIZE. Why, look at England. It's the most important country
in the world; and yet you could put it in China's vest-pocket; and not
only that, but you'd have the dickens's own time to find it again the
next time you wanted it. And look at Russia. It spreads all around and
everywhere, and yet ain't no more important in this world than Rhode
Island is, and hasn't got half as much in it that's worth saving."

Away off now we see a little hill, a-standing up just on the edge of
the world. Tom broke off his talk, and reached for a glass very much
excited, and took a look, and says:

"That's it--it's the one I've been looking for, sure. If I'm right, it's
the one the dervish took the man into and showed him all the treasures."

So we begun to gaze, and he begun to tell about it out of the Arabian
Nights.

CHAPTER X. THE TREASURE-HILL

TOM said it happened like this.

A dervish was stumping it along through the Desert, on foot, one blazing
hot day, and he had come a thousand miles and was pretty poor, and
hungry, and ornery and tired, and along about where we are now he run
across a camel-driver with a hundred camels, and asked him for some
a'ms. But the cameldriver he asked to be excused. The dervish said:

"Don't you own these camels?"

"Yes, they're mine."

"Are you in debt?"

"Who--me? No."

"Well, a man that owns a hundred camels and ain't in debt is rich--and
not only rich, but very rich. Ain't it so?"

The camel-driver owned up that it was so. Then the dervish says:

"God has made