Page 562 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

CHAPTER ELEVEN

ULACO outstripped Nostromo’s prudence, growing
Srich swiftly on the hidden treasures of the earth, hov-
ered over by the anxious spirits of good and evil, torn out
by the labouring hands of the people. It was like a second
youth, like a new life, full of promise, of unrest, of toil, scat-
tering lavishly its wealth to the four corners of an excited
world. Material changes swept along in the train of mate-
rial interests. And other changes more subtle, outwardly
unmarked, affected the minds and hearts of the workers.
Captain Mitchell had gone home to live on his savings
invested in the San Tome mine; and Dr. Monygham had
grown older, with his head steel-grey and the unchanged
expression of his face, living on the inexhaustible treasure
of his devotion drawn upon in the secret of his heart like a
store of unlawful wealth.
The Inspector-General of State Hospitals (whose main-
tenance is a charge upon the Gould Concession), Official
Adviser on Sanitation to the Municipality, Chief Medical
Officer of the San Tome Consolidated Mines (whose terri-
tory, containing gold, silver, copper, lead, cobalt, extends for
miles along the foot-hills of the Cordillera), had felt pov-
erty-stricken, miserable, and starved during the prolonged,
second visit the Goulds paid to Europe and the United States
of America. Intimate of the casa, proved friend, a bachelor

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