A wonderful day, but somehow I am glad I was born in the temperate zone. I suppose it's the New England blood protesting against all this, as something wasteful and unrelated. Since we passed the heavy-flowing Rio Mariposa I have been having more than a touch of "world-pain." The light is so poor in my state-room that I can't read, but I arrive at San Gerónimo at 5.30, which means a 4.30 rising, so good night.
January 5th, 5.30 a.m.
Chivela Pass in the lemon-colored dawn! I don't know what I went through in the night, but now I am descending to the Pacific. Sharp outlines of treeless, pinkish hills are everywhere showing themselves, with here and there patches of the classic and beautiful organos cactus. It is almost chilly. My heart and I are ready for the meeting. The porter tells me there are only two more stations.
San Gerónimo, January 6th, evening.
As the train got in to San G. I saw a very pale, very blue-eyed, slim, white-clad figure. New England, though a thousand cycles had been passed in the tropics. We met in silence, two full hearts, and in silence we went over to the house....
January 8th, evening.
We have been walking up and down the garden under the big fig-tree, where a huge and very beautiful huacamaia, a sort of parrot, with a yellow-and-red head and a long blue tail makes his home. We have been thinking and talking in a way so foreign to the thick tropical darkness enveloping us.
The sun went down on a world of ashes of roses and then this soft, very black night fell. At sunset we took a turn about the sandy, desolate-looking town.
Women, scriptural women, were washing and bathing in the broad, high-banked stream. It reminded me of Tissot's pictures of the Holy Land—the barren banks of the pebbly river, the fig-trees, the little groups. The women wear most lovely garments as to outline. A wide skirt with a deep flounce is tucked up in front, for more ease in moving, and the falling flounce gives quite a Tanagra line.
Little girls are always dressed, from their tenderest age, in skirts too long; but little boys go naked till they are eleven or twelve, and the clad and the unclad play about together.