It was a favorite joke of Cuthbert's to compare himself with that wonderfully humorous character of Spanish literature, who took himself so solemnly even while he furnished merriment for everybody--Don Quixote, the Knight of La Mancha--this wild expedition into the depths of the Northwestern Unknown Land was now, in the originator's mind, about as weird and ridiculous a proposition as any of the adventures of the crazy knight; and he never tired of cracking broad jokes upon the subject.