Page 48 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

CHAPTER FIVE

N THIS way only was the power of the local authori-
Ities vindicated amongst the great body of strong-limbed
foreigners who dug the earth, blasted the rocks, drove the
engines for the ‘progressive and patriotic undertaking.’ In
these very words eighteen months before the Excellentissi-
mo Senor don Vincente Ribiera, the Dictator of Costaguana,
had described the National Central Railway in his great
speech at the turning of the first sod.
He had come on purpose to Sulaco, and there was a
one-o’clock dinner-party, a convite offered by the O.S.N.
Company on board the Juno after the function on shore.
Captain Mitchell had himself steered the cargo lighter, all
draped with flags, which, in tow of the Juno’s steam launch,
took the Excellentissimo from the jetty to the ship. Every-
body of note in Sulaco had been invited—the one or two
foreign merchants, all the representatives of the old Span-
ish families then in town, the great owners of estates on the
plain, grave, courteous, simple men, caballeros of pure de-
scent, with small hands and feet, conservative, hospitable,
and kind. The Occidental Province was their stronghold;
their Blanco party had triumphed now; it was their Pres-
ident-Dictator, a Blanco of the Blancos, who sat smiling
urbanely between the representatives of two friendly for-
eign powers. They had come with him from Sta. Marta to