16 The Wine-Dark Sea - Libro della tutto

Patrick O'Brian The Wine-Dark Sea
shall presently have messengers going to Panama
and Chagres by way of Quito. I should
in any case have offered their services for any
letters you might wish to have sent from the
Atlantic side of the isthmus; but it occurs to me
that some of these interviews may take a long
while to arrange, a long while for emissaries
to come and go – Potosi, Cuzco, for example
– and that possibly you might find time to
travel with them as far as Quito, reliable men
who know the road and who could show you
prodigious prospects of snow, rock and ice,
volcanoes, bears, guanacoes, vicuñas, eagles...'
'You tempt me strangely: I wish it could be
so. I dearly love a mountain,' said Stephen.
'But I could not square it with my conscience.
No. I am afraid it will have to wait until our
design is carried out. But I shall certainly burden
your people with my letters, if I may: