While exploring the rocky gullies and canyons in the foothills of Mount
Ararat last summer, I found a roughly symmetrical mass of pure copper.
Oxidized and honeycombed as it was, I recognized the metal immediately,
and repressing a strong inclination to hunt for the lead and stake out
my claim, I took my find home with me. Surprised at its diminishing
weight as the moisture dried out of the spongy mass, I endeavored to
saw into it. The pure metal inside tore off every tooth of the saw, and
now convinced that it was a hollow cylinder of hardened copper, I
brought it to America and gave it to a machinist to open. He ruined two
dozen finely-tempered saws in the job, which I cheerfully settled for,
as the cylinder contained a papyrus roll of manuscript of certainly
great antiquity.
My efforts to decipher it were baffled, as it was written in neither
ancient nor modern Egyptian, new nor old Pali, nor in Greek, Latin,
Sanscrit, nor in any other language with which I am acquainted. So I
called in the services of two reverend friends of mine--able, eminent,
and renowned professors of biology, bibliology, ethnology, and
sockdology--who at once pronounced it ancient Cush and proceeded to
translate it; one remarking with a levity which but indifferently
became his calling, as I thought, that the exceeding toughness of the
yarn no doubt accounted for the difficulty of sawing into it--in which
view his collaborator, to my surprise, was inclined to coincide.
However, I cheerfully give them credit for the translation, but am free
to maintain that the elegance of diction, force of expression, and
choiceness of synonyms are my own.
Besides, I found it.