“I shall wish to know—that is, all here will wish to know,” said Monella, “that you get back in safety to ‘Monella Lodge.’ With the heliograph mirror which you will find packed away at ‘Monella Lodge’ you can send us back a message to that effect; then, with the one we brought here with us, we can reply, and send you a ‘God speed you’ to start you on your way. Shall it be so arranged?”
“Gladly,” responded Templemore with emotion. “But must I then resign myself to the thought that I shall never see Leonard or any of you any more?”
“You must,” Monella answered quietly, but firmly. “Leonard—or Ranelda, as I prefer to call him—has asked me to guide him and instruct him; and my first and last advice to him is, and will be, to keep his people to themselves. Now let us consider this question from what you yourself would term a practical point of view. The term ‘El Dorado’ has come to be a synonym in the outside world for a sort of earthly paradise, has it not? Originally handed down from actual facts and history relating to this, the celebrated island capital of Manoa—the Queen City of my once powerful and extensive empire—with the tales of its wonderful wealth and the virtues of the Plant of Life; its memory lingered through the ages long after the waters had receded and left it isolated and unknown. And the Spaniards called it ‘El Dorado,’ which has ever since been but another expression—as I have said—for ‘Earthly Paradise,’ or ‘summit of every man’s ambition.’ Is it not so? And seeing that the great curse that so long lay upon the land has been removed, can you say that now it does not deserve the term? Have we not here a veritable ‘Earthly Paradise’—an actual realisation of what you in the outside world understand when you use the expression ‘El Dorado?’”
“Truly I believe it.”
“Ah yes! It is so now—or will be henceforth, when those who have had such sorrows here shall have outlived them,” said Monella with impressive emphasis. “But what I would put to you, is this; you have, perhaps, seen something of frontier settlements, or miners’ camps, and gold diggings—at least, I have—and you have heard of them. Now, you know well enough that the only people who would care to brave the hardships of the journey hither would be those led on by the lust and greed of gold. Supposing things were reversed, and you were in Leonard’s place, and had here your wife—as he will have—your friends, your own people—all that was dearest in the world, with ample wealth, would you care to allow him, or any one else, to lead people hither, to turn this ‘El Dorado’ into a ‘Gold diggings,’ a ‘Miners’ camp,’ with all their hideous associations, their gambling and drunkenness; their rowdyism and their debauchery, their shootings and murders?”
“No!” said Templemore thoughtfully, “you are right there. Still—surely, between that, and forbidding intercourse altogether—forbidding me even to come to visit my friend——”
Monella smiled and gravely shook his head.
“You think that, between the two extremes, there should be some middle course possible,” he rejoined. “Unfortunately—or fortunately—there is none. You will have no need to come here seeking for wealth. You would not be likely to undertake the expedition alone. Those who accompanied you would do so from self-seeking motives. Then, again, you will have other ties; you will have your wife, children. You do not contemplate dragging them hither through trackless wastes to greet friends they have never known as you have? They would not like it, again, if you, a man of wealth, able to do as you pleased, were to leave them for a long space while you made the journey hither alone! And, finally, the thing is not practical or feasible for another reason. You will have much ado to find your way out from here. You know that in these regions vegetation spreads rapidly unless—as in the canyon we came up, or in the clearing immediately outside around the cavern by which we entered, or out on the savanna—there are special causes that check its spread. Should you come back in a year’s time, you would not only find the road we cut out impassable—you could not even trace it. The spread of the undergrowth, the fall of great trees or branches, the hurling down of rocks from the heights above, floods from the streams and watercourses—all these, and other forces of nature in this wild region, will, within a few months, have combined to block up or obliterate completely the path we cut with so much difficulty. Is it not so?”
“I fear you are right, though it had not occurred to me,” Templemore admitted with reluctance.
“Then, again, with the wealth you will take back with you, you will not care to remain in Georgetown. You will wish to travel with your wife; in any case, it would be years before you would be likely to think of undertaking another journey.”