aters into golden
sand and the throbbing engines stopped.

The land about Choco Bay is a pleasant land. It is surpassed only by
the plains along the upper Orinoco where villages cluster in the bosom
of the Andes in a season of never changing autumn. Nearer the coast
the climate is more fitful and more drowsy. One wonders how history
would have been changed had the early Puritans chanced upon such rich
soil for their momentous conquering, instead of the rock-ribbed,
barren coast of New England. The same energy, the same dauntless
spirit, the same stubborn clinging to where the foot first fell, if
expended here, would have gained for them and their progeny a country
as near the Garden of Eden as any on earth. But perhaps the balmy
breezes, the warming sun, the coaxing sensualism of Nature herself
would have wheedled them away from their stern principles and turned
them into a nation of dreamers. If so, what dreamers we should have
had! We might have had a dozen more Keatses, perhaps another
Shakespeare. For this is a poet's land, where things are only half
real. The birds sing about Choco Bay.

Rippling through the blue waters after dark, the yacht glided in as
close to the shore as possible. The morning sun revealed a golden
semicircle of sand rimming the turquoise waters of the bay. Across the
blue sky above seagulls skimmed and darted and circled; so clear the
waters beneath that the clean bottom showed like a floor of burnished
gold. The harbor proper lay ten miles beyond, where a smaller inlet
with deeper soundings was protected from the open inrush of the sea by
the promontory forming one tip of this broader crescent. Far, very far
in the distance the lofty Andes raised their snowy crests--monarchs
which, Jove-like, stood with their heads among the clouds. So they had
stood while kings were born, fought their petty fights, died, and gave
place to others; so they stood while men contended for their different
gods; so they stood while men loved and followed their loves into
other spheres. It was these same summits upon which Wilson now looked
which had greeted Quesada, and these same summits at which Quesada had
shaken his palsied fist. It was these same summits which but a short
while before must have greeted Jo; it was possible that at their very
base he might find her again, and with her a treasure which should
make her a queen before men. It made them seem very intimate to him.

CHAPTER XV

_Good News a