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.”

“Aren’t there any beautiful ladies left?”

“A few, perhaps.”

“What happened to the cathedrals and the velvet fellows and all that?”

“Oh, the old state of affairs couldn’t last forever.  The Spanish administration wasn’t so bad as is generally supposed, yet of course there was too much rapacity and not enough industry.  Central America, broadly speaking, was known as the treasure-chest of the world, and there were constant wars and disturbances.  The colonies as a whole did not progress like those in the North, and in course of time deteriorated.  The old cathedrals decayed and were not rebuilt.  The old Spanish stock died out and in its stead grew up a motley race given to revolt, revolution, and corruption.  Even when the provinces became free, they weren’t able to unite and form a strong nation.  The Isthmus of Panama became a pest-hole where the scum of the Four Seas settled.  The people became mean and unhealthy in mind and body and morals, preserving nothing except the cruelty of their forefathers.  Here and there, to be sure, one comes across the old Castilian breed, like a silver thread running through a rotting altar-cloth, but only here and there, and most of those silver threads have become tarnished from contact with the fabric.”

“It must be a nice place,” Kirk observed with gentle sarcasm.