Well, well, he had a glorious journey, and one that in the days when joints grow stiff and mules impossible to mount will still console him for all he underwent.
I, having read the book, am glad of his success; but hope when he is asked about Paroma that he will have forgotten both its longitude and latitude, and treat it as a dream. Long may it flourish, just as an unknown orchid flourishes in Colombian everglades, or a fine undiscovered jewel in a mine, quite uncontaminated by the thing that we call progress, and pride ourselves upon, as justly as a man might pride himself upon an ulcer in his leg, a fine harelip, or any other malformation.
I hope the chief will not forget, when the false dawn streaks all the sky with red, to rise up from sleep, and taking down a calabash fill it with chicha, then, winding his poncho round his neck, will make his way through the wet grass, leaving a trail, with his short inturned feet as of a plantigrade, in the white dew. Then in the middle of the square, whilst the God of his forefathers is born again into the world, that he will pour the chicha on the grass, praying, as the Incas prayed in that great temple that they raised in Cuzco, to the sun.
Let him pray on; for prayer is to the soul what most divine tobacco is to the senses, deadening and comforting. For after all it is but giving up oneself unto oneself, and waiting dumbly for something that may come from nothing, or again may never come; but as he prays the sun will rise for all that, just as it rose in Atahualpa’s time, and will continue rising.