ss to
ministers, and that the numerous Costaguana generals were always anxious
to dine at his house. Presidents granted him audience with facility. He
corresponded actively with his maternal uncle, Don Jose Avellanos;
but his letters--unless those expressing formally his dutiful
affection--were seldom entrusted to the Costaguana Post Office. There
the envelopes are opened, indiscriminately, with the frankness of a
brazen and childish impudence characteristic of some Spanish-American
Governments. But it must be noted that at about the time of the
re-opening of the San Tome mine the muleteer who had been employed by
Charles Gould in his preliminary travels on the Campo added his small
train of animals to the thin stream of traffic carried over the mountain
passes between the Sta. Marta upland and the Valley of Sulaco. There
are no travellers by that arduous and unsafe route unless under very
exceptional circumstances, and the state of inland trade did not visibly
require additional transport facilities; but the man seemed to find his
account in it. A few packages were always found for him whenever he
took the road. Very brown and wooden, in goatskin breeches with the
hair outside, he sat near the tail of his own smart mule, his great hat
turned against the sun, an expression of blissful vacancy on his long
face, humming day after day a love-song in a plaintive key, or, without
a change of expression, letting out a yell at his small tropilla in
front. A round little guitar hung high up on his back; and there was a
place scooped out artistically in the wood of one of his pack-saddles
where a tightly rolled piece of paper could be slipped in, the wooden
plug replaced, and the coarse canvas nailed on again. When in Sulaco
it was his practice to smoke and doze all day long (as though he had
no care in the world) on a stone bench outside the doorway of the Casa
Gould and facing the windows of the Avellanos house. Years and years
ago his mother had been chief laundry-woman in that family--very
accomplished in the matter of clear-starching. He himself had been
born on one of their haciendas. His name was Bonifacio, and Don Jose,
crossing the street about five o'clock to call on Dona Emilia, always
acknowledged his humble salute by some movement of hand or head. The
porters of both houses conversed lazily with him in tones of grave
intimacy. His evenings he devoted to gambling and to calls in a spirit
of generous festivity upon the