Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
exploit of modern times." About the same time, too, his brother had turned up from Europe, where he had gone apparently as secretary to a consul. Having, however, collected a small band of outlaws, he 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 railway company had courageously crossed the mountains in a ramshackle diligencia, mainly for the purpose of meeting 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 be always overcome by the resources of finance, he could not help being impressed by his surroundings 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 sunlight 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 transparent air of the high altitudes everything seemed very near, steeped in a clear stillness as in an imponderable
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