n the sea must come from a great distance and
from no ordinary river; and he decides that its volume and direction have
been acquired in its fall from the apex of the pear, from the very top of
the world, from the Garden of Eden itself. It was a most beautiful
conception; a theory worthy to be fitted to all the sweet sights and
sounds in the world about him; but it led him farther and farther away
from the truth, and blinded him to knowledge and understanding of what he
had actually accomplished.

He had thought the coast of Cuba the mainland, and he now began to
consider it at least possible that the peninsula of Paria was mainland
also--another part of the same continent. That was the truth--Paria was
the mainland--and if he had not been so bemused by his dreams and
theories he might have had some inkling of the real wonder and
significance of his discovery. But no; in his profoundly unscientific
mind there was little of that patience which holds men back from
theorising and keeps them ready to receive the truth. He was patient
enough in doing, but in thinking he was not patient at all. No sooner
had he observed a fact than he must find a theory which would bring it
into relation with the whole of his knowledge; and if the facts would not
harmonise of themselves he invented a scheme of things by which they were
forced into harmony. He was indeed a Darwinian before his time, an adept
in the art of inventing causes to fit facts, and then proving that the
facts sprang from the causes; but his origins were tangible, immovable
things of rock and soil that could be seen and visited by other men, and
their true relation to the terrestrial phenomena accurately established;
so that his very proofs were monumental, and became themselves the
advertisements of his profound misjudgment. But meanwhile he is the
Admiral of the Ocean Seas, and can "make it so"; and accordingly, in a
state of mental instability, he makes the Gulf of Paria to be a slope of
earth immediately below the Garden of Eden, although fortunately he does
not this time provide a sworn affidavit of trembling ships' boys to
confirm his discovery.

Meanwhile also here were pearls; the native women wore ropes of them all
over their bodies, and a fair store of them were bartered for pieces of
broken crockery. Asked as usual about the pearls the natives, also as
usual, pointed vaguely to the west and south-west, and explained that
there were more pearls in tha