He spoke to me of his son,
a young man whom he loved, who would sooner or later
come out to him to Hispaniola, if he, the elder, stayed here.
So soon as this we had begun to speak thus, "Come out to
Hispaniola." "Come out to Isabella in Hispaniola." What
a strong wind is life, leaping from continent to continent and
crying, "Home wherever I can breathe and move!" This
young man was Bartolome, then at Salamanca, at the University.
Bartolome de Las Casas, whom Juan Lepe should
live to know and work with. But this evening I heard the
father talk, as any father of any promising son.
With us, too, was Don Juan Ponce de Leon, who had a
story out of Mandeville of a well by the city of Polombe in
Prester John's country. If you drank of the well, though
you were dying you would never more have sickness, and
though you were white-bearded you would come young
again!
The palms waved above Isabella that was building behind
the camp by the river. It was beginning, it was planned
out; the stone church, the stone house of the Viceroy were
already breast-high. A Spanish city building, and the bells
of Europe ringing.
Out sprang the noise of a brawl.--There was that in the
Admiral that would have when it could outward no less
than inward magnificence. He could go like a Spartan or
Diogenes the Cynic, but when the chance came--magnificence!
With him from Spain traveled a Viceroy's household.
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