Page 138 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

at the end of his rule (which had kept peace in the country
for a whole fifteen years) there was more fatuous imbecil-
ity, plenty of cruelty and suffering still, but much less of the
old-time fierce and blindly ferocious political fanaticism. It
was all more vile, more base, more contemptible, and infi-
nitely more manageable in the very outspoken cynicism of
motives. It was more clearly a brazen-faced scramble for a
constantly diminishing quantity of booty; since all enter-
prise had been stupidly killed in the land. Thus it came to
pass that the province of Sulaco, once the field of cruel party
vengeances, had become in a way one of the considerable
prizes of political career. The great of the earth (in Sta. Mar-
ta) reserved the posts in the old Occidental State to those
nearest and dearest to them: nephews, brothers, husbands
of favourite sisters, bosom friends, trusty supporters—or
prominent supporters of whom perhaps they were afraid. It
was the blessed province of great opportunities and of larg-
est salaries; for the San Tome mine had its own unofficial
pay list, whose items and amounts, fixed in consultation by
Charles Gould and Senor Avellanos, were known to a prom-
inent business man in the United States, who for twenty
minutes or so in every month gave his undivided attention
to Sulaco affairs. At the same time the material interests of
all sorts, backed up by the influence of the San Tome mine,
were quietly gathering substance in that part of the Repub-
lic. If, for instance, the Sulaco Collectorship was generally
understood, in the political world of the capital, to open the
way to the Ministry of Finance, and so on for every offi-
cial post, then, on the other hand, the despondent business

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