"That is a land, and that is a lake," said Dick musingly, "that I should dearly like to visit. Yes, and to dwell in or on for a time.
"I suppose labour is cheap?" he added enquiringly.
"I guess," returned Rodrigo, "that if you wanted to erect a wooden hut on some high and healthy promontory overlooking the lake--and this would be your best holt--you would have to learn the use of axe and adze and saw, and learn also how to drive a nail or two without doubling it over your thumb and hitting the wrong nail on the head."
"Well, anyhow," said Dick, "I shall dream to-night of your great inland ocean, of your Lake Titicaca, and in my dreams I shall imagine I am already there. I suppose the woods are alive with beautiful birds?"
"Yes," said Rodrigo, "and with splendid moths and butterflies also; so let these have a place in your dreams as well. Throw in chattering monkeys too, and beautiful parrots that love to mock every sound they hear around them. Let there be evergreen trees draped in garments of climbing flowers, roaring torrents, wild foaming rivers, that during storms roll down before them, from the flooded mountains, massive tree trunks, and boulders houses high."
"You are quite poetic!"
"But I am not done yet. People your paradise with strangely beautiful lizards that creep and crawl everywhere, looking like living flowers, and arrayed in colours that rival the tints of the rainbow. Lizards--ay, and snakes; but bless you, boys, these are very innocent, objecting to nothing except to having their tails trodden on."
"Well, no creature cares for treatment like that," said Roland. "If you and I go to this land of beauty, Dick, we must make a point of not treading on snakes' tails."
"But, boys, there are fortunes in this land of ours also. Fortunes to be had for the digging."
"Copper?"