ONE
IN THE time of Spanish rule, and for many years
afterwards, the town of Sula co? the luxuriant beauty of
the orange gardens bears witness to its antiquity?had
never been commercially anyth ing more important than a
coasting port with a fairly large local trade in ox-hides and
indigo. The clumsy deep-sea galleons of the conquerors
that, needing a brisk gale to move at all, would lie
becalmed, where your modern sh ip built on clipper lines
forges ahead by the mere flapping o f her sails, had been
barred out of Sulaco by the prevai ling calms of its vast
gulf. Some harbours of the earth are made difficult of
access by th e treachery of sunken rocks and th e tempests
of their shores. Sulaco had found an inviolable sanctuary
from the temptati ons o f a trading world in the solemn
hush of the deep Golfo Placido as if within an enormous
semi-circular and unroofed temple open to the ocean,
with its wall s of lofty mountains hung with the mourning
draperies of cloud.
On one side of this broad curve in the straight seaboard
of the Republic of Costaguana, the last sp ur of the coast
range forms an insignificant cape whose name is Punta
Mala. From the middle of the gulf the point of the land
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itself is not visible at all; but the shoulder of a steep hill at
the back can be made ou t faintly like a shadow on the sky.
On the other side, what see ms to b e an isola ted patch
of blue mi st floats lightly on th e glare of the horizon. Thi s
is the peninsula of Azuera, a wild chaos of sharp rocks and
stony levels cut about b y vertical ravines. It lies far out to
sea like a rough head of stone stretched from a green-clad
coast at the end of a slende r neck of sand covered with
thickets of thorny scrub. Utterly waterless, for the rainfall
runs off at once on all sides in to the sea, it h as no t soil
enough?it is said?to g row a single blade of grass, as if i t
were blight ed by a curse. The poor, associating by an
obscure insti nct of consolation the id eas of evil and wealth,
will tell yo u that it is deadly because of its forbidden
treasures. The common folk of the neighbourhood, peons
of the estancias, vaquer os of the seaboard plains, tame
Indians coming miles to ma rket with a bundle of sugar-
cane or a basket of maize worth about threepence, are w ell
aware that heaps of shi ning gold lie in the gloom of the
deep p recip ices cleaving the stony lev els of Azuera.
Tradition has it that many adventurers of olden time had
perished in the search. The story goes also th at withi n
men?s memory two w andering sailors? Americanos,
perhaps, but gringos of s ome sort for certain?talked over
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a gambling, good-for-nothing mozo, and the three stole a
donkey to carry for them a bundle of dry stick s, a water-
skin, and p rovisions enough to last a few days. Thus
accompanie d, and with revolvers at their belts, they had
started to chop their way with machetes th rough the
thorny scrub on the neck of the peninsula.
On the second evening an upright spiral of smo ke (it
could only have been from th eir camp-fire) was seen for
the first ti me within memory of man standi ng up faintl y
upon the sky above a razor-backed ridge on the stony
head. The crew of a coasting schooner, lying becalmed
three miles off the shor e, stared at it with amazement till
dark. A negro fisherman, living in a lonely hut in a little
bay near by, had seen the start and was on the lookout for
some sign. He called to his wife just as the su n was about
to set. They had watched the strange portent with envy,
incredulity, and awe.
The impious adventurers ga ve n o other sign. The
sailors, the Indian, and the sto len burro were never seen
again. As to the mozo, a Sulaco man?his wife paid for
some masse s, and the poor four -footed beast, being
without sin, had been probably permitted to di e; but the
two gringos, spectral and aliv e, are believed to be dwelling
to this day a mongst the rocks, under the fatal spell of their
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success. Their souls cannot te ar themselves away from
their bodies mounting guard over the discovered treasure.
They are now rich and hungry and thirsty? a strange
theory of tenaciou s gringo ghosts su ffering in their starved
and parched flesh of defiant heretics, where a Christian
would have renounced and been released.
These, then, are the legendary inhabitants of Azuera
guarding its forbidden wealth; and the shadow on the sky
on one side with the round patc h of blue haze bl urring the
bright skirt of the horizon on the other, mark the two
outermost p oints of the bend which bears the name of
Golfo Placido, because never a strong wind had been
known to blow upon its waters.
On crossing the imaginary line drawn from Punta Mala
to Azuera the ships from Europe bound to Sul aco lose at
once the strong breezes of the ocean. They become the
prey of capricious airs that play with them for thirty hours
at a stretch sometimes. B efore them the head of the calm
gulf is filled on most days of the year by a great body of
motionless and opaque clouds. On the rare clear mornings
another shadow is cast upon the sweep of the gulf. The
dawn breaks high behind the towering and serrated wall of
the Cordillera, a clear-cut vision of dark peaks rearing
their steep slopes on a lofty pedestal of forest rising from
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the very edg e of the shore. Amongst them the white head
of Higuerota rises majestically upon the blue. Bare clusters
of enormou s rocks spri nkle with tiny black dots the
smooth dome of snow.
Then, as the midday sun withdraws from the gulf the
shadow of the mountai ns, the clouds begin to roll out of
the lower va lleys. They swathe in sombre tatters the naked
crags of precipices above th e wooded slopes, hide the
peaks, smo ke in stormy trails across the snows of
Higuerota. The Cordillera is gone from you as if it had
dissolved itself into grea t piles of grey and blac k vapours
that travel out slowly to seaward and vanish into thin air
all along the front before the blazing heat of the day. The
wasting edge of the cl oud-bank al ways strives for, but
seldom win s, the midd le of the gulf. The su n?as the
sailors say? is eating it up. Unless perchance a sombre
thunder-head breaks away from the main body to career
all over the gulf till it escapes into the offing beyond
Azuera, where it bursts sudde nly into flame and crashes
like a sinster pirate-ship of the air, hove-to above the
horizon, engaging the sea.
At night the body of clouds advancing higher up the
sky smothers the whole quiet gulf below with an
impenetrable darkness, in which the sound of the falling
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showers can be heard beginning and ceasing abruptly?
now here, now there. Indeed, these cloudy nights are
proverbial with the seamen along the whole west coast of
a great continent. Sky, land, and sea disappear together out
of the world when the Placido?as the saying is?goes to
sleep under its black poncho. The few stars left below the
seaward frown of the v ault shi ne feebly as into the mouth
of a black cavern. In its vastness your ship floats unseen
under your feet, her sails flutter invisi ble above your head.
The eye of God Himsel f?they add with grim profanity?
could not fi nd out what work a man?s hand is doing in
there; and you would be free to call the devil to your aid
with impunity if even his malice were not d efeated by
such a blind darkness.
The shores on the gulf are steep-to all round; three
uninhabited islets basking in the sun shine just outside the
cloud veil, and opposite the entrance to the harbour of
Sulaco, bear the name of ?The Isabels.?
There is the Great Isabel; the Little Isabel, w hich is
round; and Hermosa, which is the smallest.
That l ast is no more than a foot hig h, and about seven
paces across, a mere flat top of a grey rock which smokes
like a hot cinder after a show er, and where no man would
care to venture a naked sole before sunset. On the Little
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Isabel an old ragged pa lm, with a thick bulging trunk
rough with spines, a very witch amongst palm trees, rustles
a dismal bunch of dead leaves above the coarse sand. The
Great Isabel has a spring of fresh water issuing from the
overgrown side of a ravine. Resembling an emerald green
wedge of land a mile long, and laid flat upon the sea, it
bears two forest trees standin g close together, with a wide
spread of shade at the foot of their smooth trunks. A
ravine exten ding the whole leng th of the island is full of
bushes; and presenting a deep tang led cleft on the high
side spreads itself out on the other into a shallow
depression abutting on a small strip of sandy shore.
From that low end of the Great Isabel the eye plunges
through an opening two miles away, as abrupt as i f
chopped with an axe out of the regular sweep of t he coast,
right into the harbour of Sula co. It is an oblong, lake-like
piece of water. On one side the sho rt wooded spurs and
valleys of the Cordillera come down at right ang les to the
very strand; on the other the open view of the great
Sulaco plai n passes into the opal mystery of great distan ces
overhung by dry haze. The town of Sulaco itself?tops of
walls, a great cupola, gleams of white miradors in a vast
grove of ora nge trees?li es between the mountains and the
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plain, at some little distance from i ts harbour and out of
the direct line of sight from the sea.
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