At the distance of two or three miles from the usual anchorage, and forming an excellent leading mark for the bay, is Pedro Blanco, or the White Rock, of two hundred feet height, perfectly precipitous and inaccessible, and resembling a huge tower, rising abruptly from the sea.
Taken altogether, the bay of St. Blas forms a very beautiful prospect, with the Andes in the back ground, which, with their
"Meteor standard to the winds unfurl'd,
Look from their throne of clouds o'er half the world;"
its white sand beach, fading gradually away to the south and east, its town roosting on its barren rock, and indistinctly seen; its low lands covered with a luxuriant growth of lime and other trees; and lastly, by way of seasoning, its moschetoes and sand-flies.
CHAPTER II.
A knight he was, whose very sight would
Entitle him mirror of knighthood.
Hudibras.
Tropical climates have certainly one advantage over all others, that is not to be held in light esteem. They have rainy and dry seasons, that are exclusively rainy and dry. During six months, or nearly as long, the windows of heaven stand wide open, by night and by day, and the liquid blessing descends upon the thirsty earth beneath "in one lot," as auctioneers say; while on the other hand, the dry season has its great and manifold advantages and pleasures. With us in the temperate zone, as geographers call it, I suppose, for want of another name, a man does not think of riding twenty miles without India rubbers, a great coat, boots, and an umbrella, to say nothing of an entire change of raiment, if he is a prudent, cautious old bachelor, or widower; and even then he is as likely to get a ducking as to have fine weather.
During a tropical dry season, on the contrary, a journey of two hundred miles may be safely undertaken, without any of these encumbrances; with two or three clean shirts, a man may scamper about for months, like a Roman light-infantryman, "impedimentis relictis," unless he should be so ill advised as to carry his wife and children with him.
Throughout the rainy season, many diseases arise, and make great destruction among those who remain on the sea-coast; those who can afford it, retreat to the more salubrious mountain regions, while, as aforesaid, those who stay behind, being generally the poor, the worthless, and the useless part of the community, fall victims to the numerous diseases generated by the excessive rains, and the then swampy condition of the country. This annual purgation of society, is perhaps another blessing of a tropical country. I know of more than one community, whose moral, and in some measure physical health, would in my mere mortal and short sighted notion of the fitness of things, be vastly benefited by the visitation of an energetic, wide sweeping epidemic. Human society is very like a grate full of ignited anthracite coal, those parts of it that have lost their combustibility, and become worthless, are constantly filtering down through the bottom of the grate; and so in society, those individuals, who are daily falling from a state of grace in the eyes of their fellow-worms, either as regards fashion, or property, or reputation, go to swell the number of the outcasts from the ranks of "good society;" a convenient phrase that has recently been invented, and signifies the speaker's own particular friends and acquaintances, though he and they may be at that very moment getting out stone on Blackwell's Island. So you see, reader, that it is fore-ordained, for I am a good deal of a fatalist, that one of the ingredients of civilized society should be a certain proportion of poor miserable devils, such as you and I both know.
It was just at the close of the rainy season, when Nature looked infinitely better and fresher for having her face washed, though she had been six months about it; the air seemed purer and more healthful, and the sky looked clearer and of a richer blue, for the half year's drenching; it was at this particular time of the year, that we have thought proper to raise the curtain, and introduce the reader into the business part of the story.