He knew that, and after no great time spent with
compass needle and circularly traveling polar star, he began
to talk gold and estate, and the pearls and silk and spices
they would surely take for gifts to their family and neighbors,
Palos or Huelva or Fishertown!
It was truly the hope that upheld many on a voyage that
they chose to think a witches' one. He talked now out of
Marco Polo and he clad what that traveler had said in more
gorgeous attire. He meant nothing false; his exalted imagination
saw it so. He was painter of great pageants, heightening
and remodeling, deepening and purifying colors, making
humdrum and workaday over to his heart's desire. The
Venetian in his book, and other travelers in their books, had
related wonders enough. These grew with him, it might be
said--and indeed in his lifetime was often said--into
wonders without a foot upon earth. But if one took as
figures and symbols his gold roofs and platters, temples and
gardens, every man a merchant in silks and spices, strange
fruit-dropping trees and pearls in carcanets, the Grand Khan
and Prester John--who could say that in the long, patient
life of Time the Admiral was over-esteeming? The pity
of it was that most here could not live in great lengths of
time. They wanted riches now, now! And they wanted
only one kind of riches; here and now, or at the most in
another month, in the hands and laps of Pedro and Fernando
and Diego.
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