Leaning over the rail of the white ship, early in the dawning of that day, it came to me over and over again that we were at last in the presence of the great West Indian Mother, and that her face was in truth an exact realisation of our imaginings.
A strong breeze blew the waves fast and loose, one upon another, to the near-lying shore, where a white line of surf circled about a rounding promontory, and lost itself on the other side of the cliff. Up and beyond, rose the mountains, and some one said: “The Andes!” and we looked again, and longer, and said to ourselves—“The Andes,—South America, we are looking upon them with actual eyes!”
Up, and still up, rose the mountains; great, tender lines of undulating softness, all green and blue and gentle and grand, one sweep upon another of matchless warm tints; one sweep upon another of voluptuous curves in billowy green, and dropping in and about the contour of the great continent’s majestic form, far disappearing valleys swept into the dimness of soft, shadowy depths.
Like a great mother, asleep, spread with a coverlet of the changing tints of malachite and beryl, South America lay before us.
Clambering up her skirts were the little white roofs of La Guayra, spots on her verdant garment,—irregular spots here, there, and everywhere; now in patches, comfortably huddling together at her feet; now stray offshoots away beyond. All very square and very Spanish were these houses, very quaint to look upon; and if this is La Guayra, where is Caracas? Must we, too, clamber and climb away into those mountain heights, and, perchance, awaken the Great Mother, who sleeps so gently under the drowsy lullings of the deep sea?
II.
Things are moving on the shore, and in the distance dots like men and women stir about the tiny houses, and a toy train toots, and toy engines rattle, and toy cars seem filling with toy people; and we think it time to go ashore and see if we can find a seat in one of those cars; so we run up forward, where our impatient fellow voyagers have been hurrying into the launch this long time. It has just puffed away, and we are really glad.
There is something very like the “stray sheep” in our make-up. It is Americanism boiled down,—this love of going alone, and being self-reliant.