Various - The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 30, April, 1860

But, ah! how dim became the vision of that quiet lake on the summit of the mountain! How that vivid lightning-revelation faded into obscurity! Was Pharaoh again ascending his fatal chariot?

The next day we started for the ascent. We determined to follow the course of the river backwards around the bend and set out from my former starting-point, as any other course might lead us into a hopeless dilemma. We had no difficulty in finding the sandy plain, and soon reached landmarks which I was sure were on the right road; but a tramp of six or eight hours—still in the road I had passed before—brought us no nearer to our goal. In short, we wandered three days in that desert, utterly in vain. My heart sunk within me at every failure; with sickening anxiety I scanned the horizon at every point, but nothing was visible but stunted bushes and white pebbles glistening in the glaring sand.

The fourth day came,—and Herndon at last stopped short, and said, in his steady, immobile voice,—

"Zeitzer, you must have made this grand discovery in your dreams. There is no Nile up this way,—and our water-skins are almost dry. We had better return and follow up the course of the river where we left it. If we again fail, I shall return to Egypt to carry out my plan for converting the Pyramids into ice-houses. They are excellently well adapted for the purpose, and in that country a good supply of ice is a desideratum . Indeed, if my plan meets with half the success it deserves, the antiquaries two centuries hence will conclude that ice was the original use of those structures."

"Shade of Cheops, forbid!" I exclaimed.

"Cheops be hanged!" returned my irreverent companion. "The world suffers too much now from overcrowded population to permit a man to claim standing-room three thousand years after his death,—especially when the claim is for some acres apiece, as in the case of these pyramid-builders. Will you go back with me?"

I declined for various reasons, not all very clear even to myself; but I was convinced that his peculiar enticements were the cause of our failure, and I hated him unreasonably for it. I longed to get rid of him, and of his influence over me. Fool that I was! I was the sinner, and not he; for he could not see, because he was born blind, while I fell with my eyes open. I still held on to the vague hope, that, were I alone, I might again find that mysterious lake; for I knew I had not dreamed. So we parted.

But we two (my servant and I) were not left long alone in the Desert. The next day a party of natives surprised us, and, after some desperate fighting, we were taken prisoners, sold as slaves from tribe to tribe into the interior, and at length fell into the hands of some traders on the western coast, who gave us our freedom. Unwilling, however, to return home without some definite success, I made several voyages in a merchant-vessel. But I was born for one purpose; failing in that, I had nothing further to live for. The core of my life was touched at that fatal river, and a subtile disease has eaten it out till nothing but the rind is left. A wave, gathering to the full its mighty strength, had upreared itself for a moment majestically above its fellows,—falling, its scattered spray can only impotently sprinkle the dull, dreary shore. Broken and nerveless, I can only wait the lifting of the curtain, quietly wondering if a failure be always irretrievable,—if a prize once lost can never again be found.

It is recorded in the pages of Diodorus Siculus, that Actisanes, the Ethiopian, who was king of Egypt, caused a general search to be made for all Egyptian thieves, and that all being brought together, and the king having "given them a just hearing," he commanded their noses to be cut off,—and, of course, what a king of Egypt commanded was done; so that all the Egyptian "knucks," "cracksmen," "shoplifters," and pilferers generally, of whatever description known to the slang terras of the time, became marked men.

Inspired, perhaps, with the very idea on which the Ethiopian acted, the police authorities have lately provided, that, in an out-of-the-way room, on a back street, the honest men of New York city may scan the faces of its thieves, and hold silent communion with that interesting part of the population which has agreed to defy the laws and to stand at issue with society. Without disturbing the deep pool of penalogy, or entering at all into the question, as to whether Actisanes was right, or whether the police of New York do not overstep their authority in putting on the walls this terrible bill of attainder against certain citizens of the United States, whom their country's constitution has endeavored to protect from "infamous punishments,"—the student of moral science will certainly be thankful for the faces.

We do not remember ever having "opened" a place or picked a pocket. We have made puns, however; and so, upon the Johnsonian dictum , the thing is latent in us, and we feel the affinity. We do not hate thieves. We feel satisfied that even in the character of a man who does not respect ownership there may be much to admire. Sparkles of genius scintillate along the line of many a rogue's career. Many there are, it is true, who are obtuse and vicious below the mean,—but a far greater number display skill and courage infinitely above it. Points of noble character, of every good as well as most base characteristics of the human race, will be found in the annals of thievery, when they are written aright.

Thieves, like the State of Massachusetts in the great man's oration, "have their history," and it may be safely asserted that they did not steal it. It is dimly hinted in the verse of a certain ancient, that there was a time in a remoter antiquity "ere thieves were feared"; yet even this is cautiously quiet as to their non-existence. Homer, recounting traditions old in his time, chuckles with narrative delight over the boldness, wit, and invention of a great cattle-stealer, and for his genius renders him the ultimatum of Greek tribute, intellectually speaking, by calling him a son of Zeus. Herodotus speaks plainly and tells a story; and the best of all his stories, to our thinking, is a thief's story, which we abridge thus.