University of Virginia Library

Peru was fallen, and her king was dead;
And from its tower, plucked down with ruthless hand,
The golden image of the worshipped Sun
No longer blazed o'er Cuzco. Far and wide
The land was harried of its garnered wealth,
Stripped of its ornaments of dowried gold,
Its silver from the rock's reluctant grip
Wrung with relentless hand; and what remained
Was the slow promise of the laboured fields.
But not to them, these fiery youth of Spain,
The shepherd's even pulse, or the long hopes
That wait on tillage and the swelling seed
And fostering heat and rain: their veins were filled
With lust of conquest, and the gleam of gold
Was ever in each eye. Yet still they thronged
The narrow belt between the aerial hills
And the wide mystery of the Western seas;
And, finding nothing left of native growth
To fuel their ambitious wants, they turned
With envious glances on each other's gain.
Till the great Marquis, sitting at Quito,
And ruling with an ill-acknowledged sway
Subjects that hoped each one himself to rule,
Spoke to Gonzalo:

“Other realms there are
Beyond these giant hills or o'er those waves,
Haply in continent, at least in isle,
The bearer of whose destiny be thou
And these—take whom thou wilt—that cannot rest
Until it be delivered. Oh, my brother!
There comes not once again in after-time
To thee or any man such glorious hope
As beckons now: 'tis the last mystery
Of the round globe hid in yon ocean waste,
Or from yon snowy heights to be descried.
Rise equal to thy fortune. Be it thine
To finish what Columbus but began,
And make the name, our common name, Pizarro,
Wide as the water, lasting as the land!
See what a sacrifice of fame I make!
But thou or I, what matter? We are one;
And while I strengthen yet my foothold here
The freer thine for conquest.”

While he spake,
Down the steep flanks of the Sierra crept
The tell-tale breezes, bearing in their wings
Odours of cinnamon, and whispering low
Of wealth unguarded in the vales beyond.
The Spanish soldier, keeping nightly watch
Before the general's tent with idle pace,
Paused, and with upturned face inquiringly
Sniffed the cool odorous air: sweeter to him
Its soft caresses on his swarthy cheek
Than memories of Xenil, or the gush
Of Ebro's waters clear: nor kindlier less
Its freshness folding round his sunburnt neck
Than virgin's arm of snow. While thus he stood,
Gonzalo, issuing from the tent, remarked
His absent gaze upon the snowy ridge
Which cut into the sky, shearing the stars,
Past the low-floating moon. Familiarly
Upon his shoulder with broad hand he smote,
And to his look high thought attributing—
“What say'st thou, comrade? Will it yield to Spain?
Or is it sacred to the stars alone,
A higher Alp than Hannibal would dare?
Perchance there is a Hannibal at hand!
Only be ready thou, my valiant soldier,
Whom I elect my standard-bearer here
—What is thy name?”

Abrupt he stayed; and he,
That other,—“Hernan Sanchez am I called.”
“I know thee well: attend my trumpet-call
To-morrow morning; I have need of thee”—
And passed to his own tent, leaving the youth
With the warm blush of pride upon his face,
And a vague sense of praise.

At earliest dawn
Gonzalo's trumpet shrilling through the tents
Awoke the warrior conquering in his dreams.
Three hundred youths sprang joyful to the call.
These overnight, ere e'er he had retired,
And with his great idea burning clear
In its unclouded dawn, Gonzalo drew,
As flame draws flame, partakers of a faith
To light on hidden empire, win for Spain
Another Mexico, a new Peru!
Each brought a heart strengthened by hardy use,
And never yet contaminate with fear;
A sword, and each could wield it; and a band
Of dusky faces waiting on his nod,
And catching from his frown the fearlessness
Born of excessive or habitual fear.
With arms caught up in haste, and warlike stores,
And other needs resigned to Indian slaves
Enlackeyed with the baggage, forth at dawn,
With little words of parting,—forth they rode
While yet the ensanguined sun, like some vast bird
With flaming wings in a wide equipoise,
Stooped on the mountains ere he soared aloft
For a strong flight prepared: not otherwise
The soul of each, with vigorous thoughts elate,
Spurning the summits of attainèd hope,
Looked to a loftier goal.

Next day at noon
Their ranks were startled with a voice behind
As of a messenger who gallops hard,
Ere yet too late, with some neglected trust.
All turned; and lo! impelled by destiny,
Breathless he comes, the inimitable thief
Who stole the glory of the Amazon,
And wrote across a continent his name
As if on parchment with a running pen,—
Who, like a meteor flashing down the night,
That bursts full-blazed, and, blazing, is blown out,
That upsprings unannounced of tremulous dawn,
And sinks without a setting,—shot athwart
The width of the New World, and disappeared
Leaving the long lapse of the ocean stream
To syllable his name to all its shores
With repetitive murmur, Orellana!

On the fifth day
The sudden swoop of night descending prone
Surprised them in a hollow where the land
Sinks ere it reascends with daring slope
To end with snowy purity in Heaven.
Here, weary with their march of days, the task,
Though self-imposed, in all its magnitude
First seemed to tower with sudden increment
Beyond the flight of Hope. For, as they lay
Supine beside their camp-fires, and the moon,
Looking sheer down upon them from the ridge
With unexpected light, revealed the steeps
Which rose to where she seemed to sit enthroned,
And the vast bulk as of a natural wall
Which God with His own hands had built, the thought
Of their own littleness, as there they lay,
A handful hid in a forgotten valley,
While the great mountain towered and the broad sky
Spread placid and serene, and the vague fear
Of a presumptuous sin in such high presence
O'ercame them, wearied, and they would have fled,
But that they were ashamed even to speak
The coward thoughts which each man deemed his own.
But with the morn courage returned; and Hope
That, revelling in the Elysian fields beyond,
Forgetful of her office by the way,
Had winged by night her backward flight unseen,
Now settling on the summits overhead,
Shone with severer ray, commandingly
To the stern joys of danger ill to dare
And labour yielding slow. Under its light
(For hope too distant but fatigues the mind)
They braced them for the first encountered toil,
And were in wonder, past the point of shame,
Whence the distrust and awe of yesternight,—
Distrust of mind, the strongest power on earth,
And awe of senseless matter, dull and dead,
And would have laughed aloud in the clear air
Of early morning as they scaled the side
Of the huge innocent mountain, but the dread
Of a recurrence of the perilous spell
Moved them to sober thought and kept them mute.

Three days the ascent continued—three long days—
And on the fourth they came upon the snow;
And still the mountain towered till lost to view
In a dense whirl of cloud. Ah! then for thee,
Poor Indian slave, struggling beneath thy load,
With back low bent and shivering limbs thin clad,
On the bleak wintry heights, what woes in store
When wild and wide, with whirling wind and snow,
And crash of loosened rocks the storm came down,
And, clutching at thy heart with fingers cold,
Blew the sharp ice of death into thine eyes,
That never more should brighten at the glow
Of summer beauty in thy native plains!
Unseen the mute imploring look, unrecked
If seen, with which the sinking Indian turned
His human eyes, dim with the glaze of death,
Upon his resolute lord, the Spaniard drew
His mantle closer round him, set his teeth,
And without word toiled steadily up the steep,
Nor turned to right or left, nor paused, nor spoke
Even when his comrade, swaying to the blast,
Went headlong o'er the rocks, or disappeared
Where, walking fearless to his doom, he stepped
Upon a bridge of snow. For he would storm
The stronghold of the storm, and plant his foot
And flag victorious in the chiefest seat
And citadel of the tempest!

Yet at last
When they had reached the summit the wind dropped,
And the mist reeled and fled: the sun poured in,
And shivering on the naked top, they saw
Through the immaculate air the curving globe
Bend to the far horizon's utmost verge
From west to east unknown, a roomy width!
But not beyond the grasp of human will
To limit and explore: the mystery,
The impenetrable mystery was gone
Of magnitude: the big earth seemed to shrink
To conquerable compass; and the fear
That there was nothing further now to find,
Nor continent to conquer after this,
High-hovering o'er their minds, would have descended
To circumscribe their hope, but that the view
That eastward stretched beneath them filled their eyes,
And shut out from their hearts the after-pain,
Which yet, with furious mind swift to exhaust
Immediate expectation, some even then
In lust of conquest were anticipating!

It was a scene of Earth the grandest: far
As eye could pierce undimmed with utmost strain
The landscape spread in virgin loveliness
As if new-made, without the trace of man,
And waiting in the hush of afternoon
Expectant of possessors, a new race
Of sinless being, to admire its beauty
And live the life of happy worshippers
Amid its groves, and gratefully content.

Far other they that with fierce eyes looked down
From the high natural wall that guarded in
This later paradise: the wolvish joy
That snatches to destroy lay in their heart
Slumbering, while wonder gazed on tiptoe mute
Where wide savannahs rolled like a green sea
Of verdure decked with flowers, and forests waved
Their wealth of branches on the lower hills,
And in the lonely valleys brightly clear
Wound with a noble freedom lordly streams,
With here a wide expanse of silvery lake
Green-islanded with palm of stately droop,
And there the sheeny bend repeated oft
Of some more distant river sliding slow
To far-off waters. They forgat their toils,
Forgat that they had ever lived till now.
The past broke from them wholly, like a mantle
It slipped from them with all its care and grief,
Remembrance of inhospitable shores,
Hardship on hill and billow, sickness, want,
Thirst, the broad ocean, memories of home,
Country, and kin, and love's and friendship's claims.
They seemed new-wakened; and, the present pain
Of pinching cold unfelt, their souls leapt down
To taste existence in the under valleys.

On the sharp rocks meanwhile the Indians lay
Breathless with pallid lips moaning in pain
Their secret miseries to Mother Earth
That would not take them to the long embrace
Of her pain-lulling arms, but let them cling
Heedless of their complaints, the while she flung
Her favours at the feet of aliens.
Or if, though few, in shivering groups upheld
By force of sympathy, not native might,
Incuriously like timid sheep they turned
Their dumb pathetic eyes from the new scenes
That met their adverse gaze, arrived the top,
Backwards to whence they came: it was their home,
And this perchance the latest farewell look
Of happiness and hope!

Night caught them thus;
These on the new-found land gazing with hope,
And those with mind or eye despondingly
Upon the old. And now along the ridge
Glimmered the little camp-fires, scantily fed
With sapless twigs in handfuls, wintry moss,
And baggage-boxes, what they best could spare.
To sleep was death: the Spaniard in his cloak
Stalked out the weary hours from fire to fire
Under the chilling shadow of the dark,
Shadow of death to many! where they sat
Frozen to statues, stretching pulseless arms
To flames that but revealed the stony glare
Of eyes untenanted, and gave no heat;
Or ghastlier still when the cold beam of morn
Played on the features of the seated dead
Circling a heap of ashes!

Down the long slope
At break of day the straggling march began,
And ere the last, an Indian with his load,
Had left the night's encampment to the dead,
The hovering condor dropped upon its prey.
Snow fell in mantling flakes, but soon they dipped
Into a warmer air: the grass grew green,
And plants, just budding in the sheltered cleft,
And clumps of trees in social brotherhood,
And note of startled bird, and flash of plumes
Awoke unwonted pleasure in their minds
To see and hear at hand: in one day's march
They stepped from January into June.
And still 'twas January, the drear time
When universal death to other lands
Makes periodic visit to assert
Usurped dominion o'er the realms of life
Designed of old for governance of man,
An ill-kept birthright: but in this fair land,
A new-made world then first surveyed by eyes
Tired with the faded glories of the old,
Perpetual Spring and Summer hand in hand,
Inseparable sisters, make their home
Eternal in the valleys: wintry storms
Menace but come not, nor the bounteous year
Ends in a harvestry of withered leaves,
But leaf to leaf without a pause succeeds
Shooting off death, and bud to blossom grows,
And on the bough, whence falls the fruit mature,
Straight peering through the tender bark you see
The hastening buds gemming the immortal tree.

Arrived the lower slopes they pitched their camp
Under a lofty shade of forest boughs,
And wasted a long afternoon in doubt
Which way to turn, so wide the region lay,
In its immensity fit to maintain
The growth of ancient monarchies that might
In solitude be sitting far apart
And coexist, perchance in mutual peace
As being each to other quite unknown.
Ere early nightfall—for the western hills,
A high horizon, met the sinking sun
Before its full decline—their scouts returned
And made report of natural gardens fair,
And bird and beast that followed wildly tame
But fled them when approached, as half in fear
And half in wonder of the human form,
But nowhere trace of man or other race
Corporeal that betokened by their look
Or handiwork the godlike power of mind.
The gibbering of the ape rang through the woods
And from the rocks and o'er the rushing streams;
And on the lonely level river-shores
Where cities should have sat, or temple towered
On flowery hill, primeval quiet reigned:
The land was tenantless.

So on they rode with listless bridles ringing
Idly, and silence fell upon their march.
Through the clear air from boughs o'erarching high
In sunny radiance fragile blossoms fair,
The peaceful tribute of the unowned woods,
Descended lightly on their warlike arms,
As down the glade or by the forest's marge
In a strange pomp the short procession wound.
They moved as in a dream: the industrious bee
Hummed heedless by on its own task intent
As if they were not; on the distant glade
The indifferent herd was feeding as they passed;
The bird pursued its mate from tree to tree,
Forgetful of their presence; they were shunned
Or tolerated only in a land
Sacred to peaceful thoughts and beauteous forms:
The genius of the place viewed them askance,
Withholding all communion: they were awed
By the lone wealth and beauty of the land,
And felt like men of too presumptuous mind
Trespassing on the gardens of a god.
They longed for difficulties, dangers, foes,
Which yet they dreaded being yet unseen,
Yet everywhere suspected: and as oft
As to some flowery eminence they came
That rose unforested, a specular mount,
Commanding all the varied region round,
It was the sudden movement in the brake
Of panther half-revealed, or to the shore
The alligator shooting from the stream,
That sent the languor from their sated eyes,
O'erwearied with the spectral loveliness
And dulled by the excess of beauty,—if perchance
The distant figure might betoken man,
Savage or civilised, urging the chase
Afoot, or in canoe threading the maze
Of intertangling waters that unite
Haply some hidden settlement or hut
With the big bustle of a central town.

Strange choice of men, if choice it may be called,
Perverse that inappreciative turns
Or with suspicious eye from the green nooks
Of Eden that still gem the desolate earth
To fix on barren sands and snowy wastes
And rocks amid the sea: strange choice is theirs
Self-exiled in the wild to force by art,
And hardly force after long strife and pain,
A pittance from inhospitable shores
Among unlovely scenes, while nature wastes
Her richest and her fairest on the brute.
As lovely is the land, and still, alas!
As lonely to this day, as when they passed,
These mailèd strangers, like a threatening wing
That hurries through the sunshine of a dream.
Yet still the Briton to his barren rocks
Clings with convulsive hand! It seems as if,
Since the great nameless terror of the Flame
That round the umbrageous gates of Eden swung
Relentless to the expatriated pair,
The memory of the fear, an instinct grown
Transmitted with the blood, still drives the sons
Of Adam to the Desert, and despoils
With strange suspicions loveliness itself
Of more than half its natural yield of joy.
So through those beauteous realms, that seemed to them
The hallowed gardens of an absent god,
With fearful hearts they hastened. And ere long
Strange fitful airs of most divine perfume,
That come and go like wandered harmonies
Loosed from an angel's lyre, salute their sense
Inhaling Paradise;—the heralds these
Of a new marvel from the hidden East.
And lo! at last she comes, the fair Windqueen,
Riding the billowy air most gracefully!
The tall tree-tops in meek obeisance bow,
The lower forest claps its hands of leaves,
And the dim air is lightened with the flush
And glow of scattered blossoms, pink and pale,
Before her coming! She is come, is gone!
And the sweet thought of cedarn palaces
And bowers of cinnamon in far retreats
Amid the woodland gloom fills all the mind,
Dropped from her trailing garments as she passed,
Till growing faint and faint the charm dies out,
And to the hungering Spaniard leaves again
The common airs of earth, and memories
Eternal, though of momentary birth.

Now with the heavenly balm intoxicate
They turn their quest to whence the incense came,
If haply they may find the odorous shades
Of El Dorado: sudden hope is theirs
Expectant of fruition every hour,
But every hour the hope is lengthened out,
And fond exertion slackens; droopingly
They journey on as in a labyrinth
Whose every winding leads them towards an end,
Or leaves them more astray: forward they move,
Yet more like wearied soldiers to their camp
Listless returning after a defeat.

The vacant air transmits no messages,
Or, from perplexing quarters faintly blown,
The musky-pinioned couriers of the sky,
Viewless and vagrant, only mock their toil;
For everywhere the land is as before,
Beauteous but barren of immediate gain;
And the long calm eventless monotone
Of day succeeds to day with all the hues
That at the first flashed in their joyous eyes
Now faded, blanched, and colourless as glass
On which the shivered lance of level light,
Full aimed, no longer falls.

“A soldier I,”
At length impatiently the leader spoke:
'Twas midnight, and the restless Spaniards sat
Like statues, speaking none, beneath the shade
Of the mysterious wood, while overhead
Pulsed the large constellations in the heat
Of the high air most tranquilly: “A soldier I;
And this strange peace and utter loneliness,
They madden me: nor man nor town is here,
Nor laurels worthy of a warrior's brow;
And if the promised groves of cinnamon
Be here, we know not—the winds only know!
Nay! I will back—there's honour in Peru!”

None moved nor answered, when a distant voice
That seemed aerial from the listening wild
Rose syllabled above the forest hum
Articulated humanly, and thrice
In a strange tongue but sweetly kind to hear.
It startled all—save one, whom destiny
With most secure indifference lapped in sleep,
The unconscious owner of the Amazon,
Biding his time. And first the Father spoke,
Whose spirit, fired with Christian chivalry,
Yearned for adventure in the pagan mind
(And hither on that errand had he come):
“It is the voice of God, spoken by bird
I know not, but believe the omen true.
Inviting was the sound—nay! let us on!
Speak not of going back: trifles like this,
If it were but the cry of startled bird,
Are trifles only to the heedless ear;
To those that note them they are proved the call
Of Heaven to noble deeds: nay! let us on!
It needs must be that somewhere in these wilds
A remnant of the sundered race of man
In pagan isolation dwells apart
From the great brotherhood, with whom 'tis ours
To link them in fraternal bonds of love;
For not alone to us did God's dear Son
Leave the rich legacy of promised Heaven;
And they, the co-heirs with us of His grace,
Wait the announcement privileged to us,
Yea, and enjoined the ambassadors of God
Of His most blessèd embassy to them.
Lofty our mission and our warfare high,
Above the mean ambitions of the flesh,
With demons and the darkened mind: and if,
Pray Heaven it be! a bloodless victory
Won by the spiritual arm, let the spear rust,
Let Spain be silent of our soundless deeds:
We are the vassals of a higher lord
Of more imperial sway than Charles of Spain!”

They gave assent, cloaking their secret thoughts
Of earthly riches, temporal renown,
With a religious falsehood self-deceived;
For soon the fair white robe they seemed to wear
Of Christianity was splashed with blood,
When, with the fruitless toil renewed in vain,
Exasperate on an Indian tribe they fell
After long search, and, failing in their hopes
Of a sure guide, secured at length though late,
To point their march to El Dorado, used
Torture of steel and fire and hounded dog
On the poor timid wretches to extort
A knowledge from them which they did not know.
What knew they of the dreams in other lands,
Of fancy and unreasoning rumour bred,
That pointed to their own disastrously,
And met a naysay with vindictive rage
And further search infatuate of belief?
Dreams, idle dreams! that haunt the restless mind
With recollection of the primal loss
Of happiness and everlasting youth,
Transferred of old to Heaven's securer clime.
Dreams, idle dreams! worthy alone in this—
They fire the sluggish mind to energy,
Whence spring collateral deeds of lofty strain
That, blindly wrought, in benefits endure
When the false heat that moulded them is cold,
And the unconscious worker, faint and foiled,
Has perished in the flames himself had fanned.

To kindly nursing in the native tents,
Dumb with the sheer scverity of woe,
Gonzalo left his sick, loath to be left,
Not from a fear of vengeance, for their hopes
Swallowed all fear: a godlike fearlessness,
Responsible to none, was in their look,
Which, weakened though they were and numbering few,
Struck with paralysis the Indian mind:
But that their eyes should miss the first far glimpse
Of unknown empire rising with its towers
Amid the woods and waters onward still,
Whither their comrades with impatient steps
Were certainly advancing.

They, meanwhile,
Pushed on through dreary flats of marshy land;—
For the scene changed, and all was desolate:
The forest thinned, and even shrubs were few;
And, save the plashing of incessant rains
Among the stagnant pools, and the wild cry
Of passing bird lost in the misty air,
With distant winds that round the horizon sobbed
Like spirits imprisoned in a drear confine
Searching for freedom, other sound was none;
Nor did they seek to break the monotone
With show of cheerful talk where cheer was none.
And here amid the rainy solitude
A gaunt companion joined them—Famine stalked
With fleshless limbs and hollow-staring eyes
Silent beside them, full of brooding thought,
Or chewing bitter buds plucked from dank boughs,
Or yellow roots that only bred disease,
From the black soaking soil snatched greedily,
Yet with blue feverish lips mouthed in disgust.

Here sank amid these melancholy wastes,
Like worthless weed, full many an ardent life
Whose value had been left, a cherished hope,
Endeared by many and many a conscious fear
In some particular home, in some one heart,
Hopelessly far in Spain! And here, perhaps,
They all had perished in a nameless grave,
As some have perished daring deeds as great,
Of whom no record tells, and the stern hum
Of the big drowsy world had sounded on
Unbroken in regardless apathy,
But that the forest with its foodful palms
And medicinal stores opened once more
Its wide asylum to the wasted band;
And further on beside the Coca's banks
The friendly shelter of an Indian town,
Built underneath one patriarchal roof,
Offered the accepted welcome of a home.

Long time they tarried here—oh, rest was sweet!
And the most ardent of them could have sold
The dowried future, riches, power, renown,
And a salvation from the common blank
On History's glorious page, in glad exchange
For the torn blanket and the garlic meal
Of herdsman on the brownest hills in Spain.
Sickness, fatigue, and fasting, and the sense
Of utter homelessness so tamed their pride,
And they so yearned for human sympathy,
That all mean occupations, once despised,
And all the trammels of society
That gall the fiery spirit to endure,
Seen in their artificiality,
Seen from Brazilian woods afar in Spain,
Were coveted, yea! realised in dreams;
Which so subdued their thoughts to humble mood
That frankly, when awake, they fraternised
With the meek Indians marvelling much that men
Visaged so sadly should have dared so far.

But with returning health vigour returned,
And the old restlessness stirred in their veins,
And drove them forth a reunited band,
Recruited and with fresh access of hope
To penetrate the mystery of the wilds.
The Coca's turbid stream, swollen with the rains,
Seemed in their eyes a clew by which to thread
The wilderness: it babbled in their ears
Of distant empire in its lower course
Whither its waters hastened: nay! it seemed
By very force of sympathy like themselves,
A pioneer peering for hidden lands:
With what mad joy its current leapt along,
Reeling and swaying like a drunk Bacchante,
Startling the temple quiet of the woods
And revelling through their holiest adytum!
Not one of all the Spanish band but threw
A portion of his soul into the stream
And raced with it along: not one but chode
The slow delay, the halts, the tedious turnings
On the swift-rushing river's cumbered banks.
How enviously they saw sweep on before
The speeding fleck of froth, the brittle bell,
Borne on the river's back triumphantly,
Leaving them far behind! Eagerly now
They would have hurried, having put their hand
Upon the running clew-line of the stream
That promised a safe passage through the dark
Illimitable wild: nearer they seemed
With each day's farther march to friends and home,
For they had found a highway to the sea
On whose salt waves no Spaniard could be lost.
Yet, as they gazed upon the rolling flood
And with its pace compared their daily march,
Time seemed to stagnate; and their hopes were chilled
With the cold fear, deep-seated in their hearts,
That Fate had caught them in her iron clutch,
Restraining them to a funereal march
Timed to have ending in the desert, where
A sacrificial altar was prepared
On which their hopes should perish, and their lives.
Unspoken were their fears; they even sought,
As brave men will when Fate is at their neck,
To conquer by obedience, to annul
The despotism of dire necessity
By uncomplaining patience, and the show
Of liberty that wears as if in sport
And with a jaunty air a weight of chains.
So from the painful task they turned not back,
Nor paused, nor 'plained, but, though with joy-less lips
Flinging upon the air semblance of mirth
In songs that told the glory of the Cid
And ballads of the Moors, right steadfastly
They kept their pensive faces all the while
Fronting the great Unknown.

The storms were up
One evening when they pitched their wind-blown camp
Under the rocking trees beside the stream.
But as they slept o'erwearied with their toil
The tempest sank, and in the sudden calm
A muffled voice came booming up the stream,
Deepening and broadening, a continuous roll
As if of thunder breaking through the folds
Of cloud and night that wrap it seven times round,
Until the full-voiced terror drowned the ear
And wrought such horror in the realm of dreams
That some from ineffectual struggling woke
Screaming; and others started to their feet
Making the holy sign; and each looked wild
And strangely on his neighbour, gathering in
Slowly his personality of pain.
Never before had European ears
Been so bewildered by such awful noise.
Was Hell broke loose? Or had the keystone slipped
That binds the fabric of the bulging globe?
Not even Ordas could conjecture make;
Ordas! who dared the dark volcano's throat
Courting the horrible, what time the flame
Of Cortez' genius shot towards Mexico
Like a clear-burning tongue of arrowy fire
Scorching the dazzling halls of Montezume;
Even Ordas felt a shrinking of the soul,
The veteran Ordas! who in one dark night—
The Night of Sorrows—faced a thousand deaths,
Till the last trace of Fear's alloy was purged
From his whole heart for ever. Day by day
The awful sound with fascinating dread
That drew them towards it, loud and louder swelled
Till the wide air was one vast sea of sound,
And from sequestered chambers of the soul
Strange threatening echoes from their primal sleep
Rose like a new creation, horrible!
And scarcely was the terror reasoned down
When from the high bank of a river cape
They saw this vast immensity of waters,
Drawn by the Coca from a thousand caves
In the far-distant Andes, leap in mass
Most fearfully into a gulf of air
Two hundred fathoms down: the volumed foam,
That without halt makes everlasting plunge,
Whirled from its sphere of consciousness the soul
And left the body, emptied of all feeling,
Tranced in the dumb rigidity of awe.
Nor was their wonder less when farther on
The narrowing torrent with concentred strength
Poured all its length into the channelled rock,
And through the chasm that pent its thunders in,
A dreadful depth, unsounded of the sun,
Toiled in tumultuous agony: the rocks,
Irrevocably sundered, scowling flung
Defiance on each other front to front,
And heedless of the Hell that howled below.

On the sheer brink, grasping with knotted roots
The stable rock, a giant cedar leaned
Forward, who from the forest had advanced
More dauntless than the rest: him Horror seized,
Preventing all return: and on the verge,
Bound in eternal spell, he gazed below.
With ruthless axe assailed, his giant trunk
Fell crashing o'er the chasm from bank to bank,
The first beam of a bridge: beside him thrown
Lay lighter palm-trees, in the forest felled:
Gay flowering clusias bound the rolling logs;
And o'er the airy walk the Spaniards marched,
Horseman and foot, struggling and stumbling on,
Till all had passed, safe—to a hostile shore.
For here a shower of darts, blown from the woods
Through the long gravatana, sing i' the air,
And hiss and sting! Anon the ambuscade
With hideous yell advance, a martial race
Accustomed to aggression. But unknown
To them the sudden flash, the rattling peal
And fatal ravage of the Spanish arm.
Unknown the graceful terror of the steed
That speeds and fights and almost thinks for man.
The astonished Indians fled, or grovelling lay
As at the feet of centaurs suppliantly
Conceding all—possessions, children, life.
Under their conduct through a barren tract
The Spaniards journeyed, joyful with the hope
Of rumoured fortune in a distant realm.
And after weary days corn-fields appeared,
And cotton plantings, and the huts of men
Domesticated to a settled life
Arcadian, but with little store of gold.
Here fretting much at their enforced delay
By sickness, hunger, and the present rain—
For now unceasing torrents night and day
Poured from the inky sky, and from its bed
The rising river wandered in gapó,
Flooding the forest—deeming they had reached
The edge of empire where the arts of man
Wage desultory warfare with the wild,
They sent forth pioneers to make survey
For further action: these returning told
Of broken forests, marshes, pools, and ponds,
And squalid tribes inhabiting in trees,
Who yet confirmed, in terror, or in fraud,
The rumoured hints of empire, but remote.
With mingled feelings of despair and hope,
Impatient of suspense, Gonzalo's mind
Resolved a final throw with Fate, which failing,
Farewell the hope that lured him from Quito!
The river was their only highway—smooth
And swift its hurrying waters ran; it only
Could solve the secret that consumed their soul.
Thus musing in the doorway of his hut
With folded arms, and eyes of brooding gloom
Bent on the muddy flood that tumbled by
Scourged by the slanting rains, the while his men
Dozed out the weary moments—musing thus,
Suddenly to his mind a Vision rose,
A fair large vision of a River Ship
That idly lay moored to a bank, with sails
Full-spread and oars, the while the current raced
That should have borne the naiad freely on.
Starting, he looked again, and it was gone;
And th' inscrutable waters whence it rose,
Or seemed to rise, assumed their apathy:
But not less real seemed the gurgling stream
Than that aerial ship that sat the wave,
A moment seen full imaged in the rain,
Then without warning took mysterious flight!
“Saint Jago be my speed,” Gonzalo cried,
With spirit roused from her inactive mood,
“And I will make this glorious fiction fact!
Why was I blind to the fair dream till now?
Did not the whispering waters hint of this?
And I, dull schoolboy, understood them not!
Heaven sent me this to fire my flagging zeal
In mild reproach: Did not the lively mind
Of Vasco Nuñez on the mountain ridge
Provide a fleet for the yet distant sea?
Dull dreamer that I am! did not the mules
Of Cortez bear upon their sweltering backs,
O'er many a mile, to launch them in the lakes
Of Mexico, the keels of many a bark?
And I, with a great river in my eyes
Daily, and timber for a sea of ships
In these vast forests where each branching trunk
Sends seaward with the rushing winds and streams
Its wishes to be free—I saw, I heard it not,
And murmured at my own slow-paced delay!
No more of this! No longer on the banks,
Waiting for fortune, housed in idleness;
But on the river—that way lies my path—
To force her tardy coming!”—In his eyes
The light of genius shone, and where they darted
Among his listless followers, a new life
Shot through their veins, and cheerfully remembering
That they had set themselves the task of choice,
Like boys at play they went about the work,
Gonzalo guiding. In the sombrous woods
Screened from the incessant rain and gusty winds
That shook and pattered on the slim-built shed
Their workshop in the wild, they built a forge;
And soon the ruddy gleams, forth darting far
Into the cavernous forest, sent their glow
Upon the sinewy limbs and naked breasts
Of willing workers bending at their toil
Or passing to and fro: around the axe
Here thick the splinters flew whitening the ground;
There, as if wakening from its centuried trance
And wakening but to look around and choose
Ground for a resting-place, the stately tree,
Swaying with all its boughs in the high air,
Sank down majestic in its fall, as sinks
Some galleon in mid-ocean in a calm
With sails unfurled and all her bravery on.
Some lop the prostrate branches; on the stocks
Some stretch the keel, and prop the curving frame.
There, half concealed in smoke, a cheerful band
Of demons move, charring the flameless wood
For future fuel: others from the pine,
That stand like patient martyrs ringed with fire
Bleeding from many a wound, collect the drops
Of resin as they fall. One with a box
Makes circuit of the camp, collecting tax
Of ear-rings, finger-rings, crosses, and chains
Of ornamental gold, given willingly,
With armour-plates of silver framed in steel,
And helmets thought superfluous. In the furnace
These with the iron shoes wrenched from the feet
Of mules and horses, dead or yet alive,
Flung, in the blaze he stands with one arm stretched
To stir the glowing coal; the other plies
The groaning bellows. Like a Cyclops vast
His shadow on a background of green leaves,
Begrimed with smoke, yet glistening in the rain,
Toils like a phantom in the noiseless shades
To idle imitation damned. Anon
The obsidian anvil rings: chief at the work
With sleeves rolled up Gonzalo sweats and toils,
Now at the forge, now swinging the wide axe,
Or straining at a rope, knee touching knee
Familiar with his fellows, bating nought;
And men must follow when their captain bends
The crest of his nobility to toil.

So from their hands this Argo of the West
Took shape, and grew, and to their houseless hopes
Became a very fortress where they sang.
To songs that breathe of ancient chivalry
Opposed to Frank and Moor, in snatches sung,
The unforced product of a hopeful heart
Recalling the achievements of its race,
And in that memory strong—the fair renown
Bernardo heired from brave Orlando slain
At Roncesvalles, or when Gonsalez set
The first stone of Castile; of Vargas, too,
Surnamed the Bruiser, and Ramiro old;
But most of him Spain's matchless paladin
The brave knight of Bivár:—to songs, that made
These heroes live in them, the vessel rose,
The structure of their hearts no less than hands,
Endeared by mutual suffering cheerily borne,
For in its sides their hearts were built, and not
Alone their wealth in every driven nail,
Their very clothing steeped in bubbling pitch
Thrust in its seams, and hope of life and home.
Lo! as they toiled the river-god arose
Curious above his banks, and his great eyes
Gleamed through the trees upon them at their toil;
Then, as if found the object of his quest,
The virgin vessel, with tumultuous rush
He flung out his long arms, folding her round,
And like a bridegroom took her to his breast.

And now, their more immediate wishes met,
The dull reaction came with idle hands
Of labour wasted: what were one small bark
Where scarcely forty would suffice to bear
Their numerous band along? The greater part,
With futile efforts every hour renewed,
Hewed for themselves along the bosky banks
Their woodland way, while in the brigantine
A scanty complement of sickly men
Waited, with oars backed in the hurrying rush
Of the impetuous stream, the slow-paced march
Of their o'erwearied comrades on the shore.
So passed laborious weeks, till hunger-forced,
And tempted by fresh rumours of a land
Rich in all blessings—food, and towns, and gold,
Far down the river where a mightier stream
Engulfed the Coca, they made general halt
Arguing the folly of the bridled ship,
On the free element a captive log,
Bound to the sluggish measures of the land.