All this jumped with reason well, and was plainer than a pikestaff. But the path of true love still was crossed by one little bar, without a sign-post. In the name of the zodiac, where was Daghestan?
Man had not quite hatched board-schools yet; though already, under the tread of Progress, incubating of them. Having been only at a public school, and then for two years at Oxford, no opportunity had I found for hearing of Modern Geography. That such a thing existed, I could well believe, from the talk of undergraduates, whose lot it was to cram for competition of a lower kind. I had been a prefect at Winchester, and passed my little-go at Oxford, and might have gone in for honours there, though very likely not to get them. But in all this thoroughly sound education, I had never dreamed of Modern Geography. I could have told you, though it is all gone now, the name of every village in Peloponnese, and of every hill in Attica, and the shape of every bay and island, and a pestilent lot of them there was, from the Hellespont to Tænarus. But if you had asked me the names and number of the counties of England, and other wild questions of that sort, I should have answered, as a friend of mine did, who got an open scholarship at Oxford, and then went in for something in London, "There are about half a hundred, more or less; but Parliament is always changing them." And this man got the highest marks in the geography of that year; because the examiner was a Welshman, and therefore laid claim to Monmouth.
But wherever Daghestan might be, I felt sure of its being the noblest country (outside the British dominions) of all the sun could shine upon. Moreover, it sounded as if it had no little to do with the Garden of Eden. Ispahan, and Teheran, and other rhymes for caravan, had a gorgeous oriental sound, as of regions of romance, inhabited by Peris, and paved with gold and diamonds. And the glow that flickered through the wheat that day, as the mellow fountains danced before the blue half-moon of sickle, was warmer than an English sun can throw, and quickened with a brilliance of heavenly tints, such as Hope alone, the Iris of the heart, may cast.
"Farmer Jarge, here's nuts for you. What do you suppose I have found out now?"