Nostromo - A Tale of the Seaboard.pdf - Planet eBook

the parties, with the possession of the capital for a prize andan outlet to another ocean. They were more advanced overthere. Here in Sulaco they heard only the echoes of thesegreat questions, and, of course, their official world changedeach time, coming to them over their rampart of mountainswhich he himself had traversed in an old diligencia,with such a risk to life and limb.The chairman of the railway had been enjoying her hospitalityfor several days, and he was really grateful for it. Itwas only since he had left Sta. Marta that he had utterly losttouch with the feeling of European life on the backgroundof his exotic surroundings. In the capital he had been theguest of the Legation, and had been kept busy negotiatingwith the members of Don Vincente’s Government—culturedmen, men to whom the conditions of civilized businesswere not unknown.What concerned him most at the time was the acquisitionof land for the railway. In the Sta. Marta Valley, where therewas already one line in existence, the people were tractable,and it was only a matter of price. A commission had beennominated to fix the values, and the difficulty resolved itselfinto the judicious influencing of the Commissioners. But inSulaco—the Occidental Province for whose very developmentthe railway was intended—there had been trouble. Ithad been lying for ages ensconced behind its natural barriers,repelling modern enterprise by the precipices of itsmountain range, by its shallow harbour opening into theeverlasting calms of a gulf full of clouds, by the benightedstate of mind of the owners of its fertile territory—all these