each Sunday he invited the American minister to dine at the
palace. In return His Excellency expected once a week to be invited to
breakfast with the minister. He preferred that the activities of that
gentleman should go no further. Life in the diplomatic circle was even
less strenuous. Everett was the doyen of the diplomatic corps because
he was the only diplomat. All other countries were represented by
consuls who were commission merchants and shopkeepers. They were
delighted at having among them a minister plenipotentiary. When he
took pity on them and invited them to tea, which invitations he
delivered in person to each consul at the door of each shop, the entire
diplomatic corps, as the consuls were pleased to describe themselves,
put up the shutters, put on their official full-dress uniforms and
arrived in a body.

The first week at his post Everett spent in reading the archives of the
legation. They were most discouraging. He found that for the sixteen
years prior to his arrival the only events reported to the department
by his predecessors were revolutions and the refusals of successive
presidents to consent to a treaty of extradition. On that point all
Amapalans were in accord. Though overnight the government changed
hands, though presidents gave way to dictators, and dictators to
military governors, the national policy of Amapala continued to be "No
extradition!" The ill success of those who had preceded him appalled
Everett. He had promised himself by a brilliant assault to secure the
treaty and claim the legation in Europe. But the record of sixteen
years of failure caused him to alter his strategy. Instead of an
attack he prepared for a siege. He unpacked his books, placed the
portrait of his own President over the office desk, and proceeded to
make friends with his fellow exiles.

Of the foreign colony in Camaguay some fifty were Americans, and from
the rest of the world they were as hopelessly separated as the crew of
a light-ship. From the Pacific they were cut off by the Cordilleras,
from the Caribbean by a nine-day mule-ride. To the north and south,
jungle, forests, swamp-lands, and mountains hemmed them in.

Of the fifty Americans, one-half were constantly on the trail; riding
to the coast to visit their plantations, or into the mountains to
inspect their mines. When Everett arrived, of those absent the two
most important were Chester Ward and Colonel Goddard. Indeed, so
importan