Page 51 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

the parties, with the possession of the capital for a prize and
an outlet to another ocean. They were more advanced over
there. Here in Sulaco they heard only the echoes of these
great questions, and, of course, their official world changed
each time, coming to them over their rampart of moun-
tains which he himself had traversed in an old diligencia,
with such a risk to life and limb.
The chairman of the railway had been enjoying her hos-
pitality for several days, and he was really grateful for it. It
was only since he had left Sta. Marta that he had utterly lost
touch with the feeling of European life on the background
of his exotic surroundings. In the capital he had been the
guest of the Legation, and had been kept busy negotiating
with the members of Don Vincente’s Government—cul-
tured men, men to whom the conditions of civilized business
were not unknown.
What concerned him most at the time was the acquisition
of land for the railway. In the Sta. Marta Valley, where there
was already one line in existence, the people were tractable,
and it was only a matter of price. A commission had been
nominated to fix the values, and the difficulty resolved itself
into the judicious influencing of the Commissioners. But in
Sulaco—the Occidental Province for whose very develop-
ment the railway was intended—there had been trouble. It
had been lying for ages ensconced behind its natural bar-
riers, repelling modern enterprise by the precipices of its
mountain range, by its shallow harbour opening into the
everlasting calms of a gulf full of clouds, by the benighted
state of mind of the owners of its fertile territory—all these

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