ndo spoke slowly and with deep emotion. Tears trickled
down his swart cheeks--"I am no longer young. More than sixty years of
hardship and heavy toil rest upon me. My parents--I have not told you
this--were slaves. They worked in the mines of Guamoco, under hard
masters. They lived in bamboo huts, and slept on the damp ground. At
four each morning, year after year, they were driven from their hard
beds and sent out to toil under the lash fourteen hours a day, washing
gold from the streams. The gold went to the building of Cartagena's
walls, and to her Bishop, to buy idleness and luxury for him and his
fat priests. When the war came it lasted thirteen years; but we drove
the Christian Spaniards into the sea! Then my father and mother went
back to Guamoco; and there I was born. When I was old enough to use a
_batea_ I, too, washed gold in the Tigui, and in the little streams so
numerous in that region. But they had been pretty well washed out
under the Spaniards; and so my father came down here and made a little
_hacienda_ on the hills across the lake from Simiti. Then he and my
poor mother lay down and died, worn out with their long years of toil
for their cruel masters."

He brushed the tears from his eyes; then resumed: "The district of
Guamoco gradually became deserted. Revolution after revolution broke
out in this unhappy country, sometimes stirred up by the priests,
sometimes by political agitators who tried to get control of the
Government. The men and boys went to the wars, and were killed off.
Guamoco was again swallowed up by the forest--"

He stopped abruptly, and sat some moments silent.

"I have been back there many times since, and often I have washed gold
again along the beautiful Tigui," he continued. "But the awful
loneliness of the jungle, and the memories of those gloomy days when I
toiled there as a boy, and the thoughts of my poor parents' sufferings
under the Spaniards, made me so sad that I could not stay. And then I
got too old for that kind of work, standing bent over in the cold
mountain water all day long, swinging a _batea_ heavy with gravel."

He paused again, and seemed to lose himself in the memory of those
dark days.

"But there is still gold in the Tigui. I can find it. It means hard
work--but I can do it. Padre, I will go back there and wash out gold
for you to send to the Bishop of Cartagena, that you may stay here and
protect and teach the little Carmen. Perhaps in time I can wash