"Whichever way I turn," I said, "I see before me one of the fairest
habitations God has made for man: great plains smiling with everlasting
spring; ancient woods; swift, beautiful rivers; ranges of blue hills
stretching away to the dim horizon. And beyond those fair slopes, how
many leagues of pleasant wilderness are sleeping in the sunshine, where
the wild flowers waste their sweetness and no plough turns the fruitful
soil, where deer and ostrich roam fearless of the hunter, while over
all bends a blue sky without a cloud to stain its exquisite beauty?
And the people dwelling in yon city--the key to a continent--they are
the possessors of it all. It is theirs, since the world, out of which
the old spirit is fast dying, has suffered them to keep it. What have
they done with this their heritage? What are they doing even now? They
are sitting dejected in their houses, or standing in their doorways
with folded arms and anxious, expectant faces. For a change is coming:
they are on the eve of a tempest. Not an atmospheric change; no
blighting simoom will sweep over their fields, nor will any volcanic
eruption darken their crystal heavens. The earthquakes that shake the
Andean cities to their foundations they have never known and can never
know. The expected change and tempest is a political one. The plot is
ripe, the daggers sharpened, the contingent of assassins hired, the
throne of human skulls, styled in their ghastly facetiousness a
Presidential Chair, is about to be assaulted.
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