"
Kirk wagged his head admiringly, as he said:
"I wish I could make language behave like that," and Edith
Cortlandt laughed like a young girl.
"Oh, I'm not a perfervid poet," she disclaimed, "but everything
down here is so full of association I can't help feeling it."
"I'm beginning to notice it myself. Maybe it's the climate."
"Perhaps. Anyhow, it is all very vivid to me. Did you ever stop to
think how brave those men must have been who first went venturing
into unknown seas in their little wooden boats?"
"They were looking for a short cut to the East Indies, weren't
they?"
"Yes, to Cathay. And then the people they found and conquered! The
spoils they exacted! They were men--those conquistadores--whatever
else they were--big, cruel, heroic fellows like Bastida, Nicuesa,
Balboa, Pedrarias the Assassin, and the rest. They oppressed the
natives terribly, yet they paved the way for civilization, after
all. The Spaniards did try to uplift the Indians, you know. And
the life in the colonies was like that in old Spain, only more
romantic and picturesque. Why, whenever I pass through these
Latin-American cities I see, in place of the crumbling ruins,
grand cathedrals and palaces; in place of the squalid beggars
idling about the market-places I see velvet-clad dons and high-
born ladies.
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