I've been holding camp-meetings with
them. Why, he's sitting on a liquid gold mine that's aching to run.
I'll tell you. I went from here to Titiaca's village. It's on the
shore and some of the people are fishermen, and I talked with them.
Then I got a donkey and rode over by plantations where they raise
cocoa, which appears to be a red cucumber full of beans, and growing
on an apple tree. They dry it, and take it in boat-loads up a bay
about forty miles, and get from five cents a pound upwards. I talked
with them. Then I met an old priest, who was fat and slow and
peaceable. I went in a sailboat with him up the coast to his house,
and spent the night. He said the Injuns of this neighbourhood were
more'n half heathen in their minds, but he was too old, and settled
down now, and couldn't help it. It didn't appear to trouble him much.
He wondered if Senor de Avila knew he was that gruesome and
popular; and then he mooned along, talking sort of wandering, till
near midnight. The Injuns don't think his credit with the gods and
the elements amounts to much, anyway. This morning I crossed to the
north shore and saw more villages and plantations, and came back to
Titiaca's village in a catamaran rigged with a sprit-sail.
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