Page 54 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

showed some talent as guerilla chief and had been rewarded
at the pacification by the post of Military Commandant of
the capital.
The Minister of War, then, accompanied the Dictator.
The board of the O.S.N. Company, working hand-in-hand
with the railway people for the good of the Republic, had
on this important occasion instructed Captain Mitchell to
put the mail-boat Juno at the disposal of the distinguished
party. Don Vincente, journeying south from Sta. Marta,
had embarked at Cayta, the principal port of Costaguana,
and came to Sulaco by sea. But the chairman of the rail-
way company had courageously crossed the mountains in
a ramshackle diligencia, mainly for the purpose of meet-
ing his engineer-in-chief engaged in the final survey of the
road.
For all the indifference of a man of affairs to nature,
whose hostility can always be overcome by the resources of
finance, he could not help being impressed by his surround-
ings during his halt at the surveying camp established at the
highest point his railway was to reach. He spent the night
there, arriving just too late to see the last dying glow of sun-
light upon the snowy flank of Higuerota. Pillared masses
of black basalt framed like an open portal a portion of the
white field lying aslant against the west. In the transpar-
ent air of the high altitudes everything seemed very near,
steeped in a clear stillness as in an imponderable liquid;
and with his ear ready to catch the first sound of the ex-
pected diligencia the engineer-in-chief, at the door of a hut
of rough stones, had contemplated the changing hues on